Build Content Around What's Already Happening
Hunter Lopatin reframes content creation as something every employee already does on the job. No special skills required — just a new way of seeing daily work.
Transcript
What's up everyone? This is Hunter Lopayton, director community here at MarketScale. And today I'm gonna talk to you about one of the biggest mistakes we make within our job is thinking that when we need to create content or if we need to create content, we have to have a completely different skill set that you have to have this magical content creating skill set. Well, no, that's wrong. Because every single thing we do every day is an opportunity and a chance to create content because that is what people wanna see. That is what people wanna hear. I always say frequently that your job is a is a life of games, has a lot of games in it like if you were an NFL player. Right? You have each Sunday, you know, you have a game, so you have the preshow, the during show, and the post show interviews, and the content that you create from it. And it's the same thing in your job every single day. And so you should always map out what are those things that are coming up for me that can be content, right? Maybe it's just me going to a job site. And I want to show my experience to everybody. So I pull out my phone, and I start recording. I record my drive into the job site a little bit. I get there, I talk through what we're doing. I show off what the team is actually up to. Boom. There's a piece of content. Even better, let's say you have a trade show coming up. You know that's a Contentpalooza because before that show, you gotta get everybody hyped up. So you gotta have a lot of pre show content from it. And then at that show, year round, all your customers, your partners, your dealers, you gotta get content while you're there with them and then after. Right? And so the the cool thing to realize about this is that each one of those, let's say, games, you're already doing it. You're already there. You don't need a new skill to learn how to create content during those things. All you have to do is pull out your phone and just start recording. You guys are already the experts. Your sales team's already experts. Your engineers, your product developers, your dealers, your partners, your clients, you're all experts in what you do every single day. Now all you have to do is realize, I'm just gonna take my phone out and start recording and not miss those opportunities even though you sit there and you say, well, we don't have anything coming up. I don't know what we should create content about. Well, what do you do every single day? Because that's what people wanna hear. That's what people wanna
Overview
In this 2-minute training, Hunter Lopatin makes the case that content creation is not a separate activity requiring special tools or talent — it is embedded in the work your team already does every day. Using the structure of an NFL game week as a framework, Hunter shows how events like trade shows, job site visits, and daily operations each have a natural before, during, and after that can be captured and turned into meaningful content. The video is designed to lower the psychological barrier that keeps employees from contributing to a company's content program.
What Is This?
Building content around what's already happening means treating existing work events — meetings, site visits, trade shows, deliveries, installations — as structured content opportunities with a clear beginning, middle, and end, rather than creating content from scratch.
What You'll Learn
- Recognize everyday work moments as viable content opportunities
- Apply the pre-game, game day, and post-game framework to real business events
- Identify low-effort entry points for team members who are not content creators
- Capture authentic, on-the-job content without disrupting normal workflows
- Frame trade shows and job site visits as high-yield content moments
- Reduce friction for team participation by anchoring content to familiar routines
Key Insights
- Content does not require a special skill set — it requires a shift in perspective about what already qualifies as content.
- The NFL analogy (pre-game, game day, post-game) gives any employee a repeatable mental model for structuring content around any event.
- Trade shows, job site visits, and daily operations are all 'games' — each has anticipation, action, and reflection built in.
- When content is tied to work people are already doing, participation becomes a natural extension of the job rather than an added burden.
Deep Dive
One of the most common barriers to employee-generated content is the belief that content creation belongs to a separate department or requires a distinct creative skill. Hunter Lopatin challenges that assumption directly by pointing to what employees already do every single day. Every job site visit, every customer conversation, every trade show booth setup is an event with inherent narrative structure — and that structure is what content is made of.
The NFL analogy Hunter uses is particularly effective because it is universally understood and immediately transferable. Before a game, there is preparation and anticipation. During the game, there is action and execution. After the game, there is reflection and results. Apply that same lens to a trade show: pre-show logistics and team prep become pre-game content; live booth interactions and product demos become game-day content; post-show recaps, leads generated, and lessons learned become post-game content. The event has not changed — only the awareness of its content potential.
This framework matters for team buy-in because it removes the blank-page problem. Employees no longer need to invent content ideas. Instead, they are invited to document what is already scheduled. A foreman walking a job site, a sales rep setting up for a regional conference, a technician completing a complex installation — each of these individuals is already in the middle of a story worth telling.
The practical implication is significant for B2B organizations building a user-generated content program. When contribution is framed as observation and documentation rather than creation, more people feel qualified to participate. That broader participation leads to more authentic, diverse, and consistent content output across the organization.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does 'building content around what's already happening' mean in practice?
It means identifying events your team already attends or activities they already perform — trade shows, job site visits, product installations — and capturing content before, during, and after those moments. No additional events need to be organized; the raw material already exists in the workday. The shift is in awareness, not in workload.
How does the NFL analogy help teams create more content?
The pre-game, game day, and post-game structure gives employees a repeatable mental model they can apply to virtually any business event. It breaks a potentially vague content task into three distinct, manageable moments, each with its own natural story. That clarity reduces hesitation and makes it easier for non-creators to know exactly what to capture and when.
Do employees need content creation experience to participate using this approach?
No — that is the core point Hunter makes in this training. The framework is specifically designed for employees who do not see themselves as content creators. By anchoring contribution to familiar work events, participation feels like an extension of the job rather than a new and unfamiliar responsibility. A smartphone and awareness of the moment are the only tools required.
Related Topics
Teams looking to build on this foundation should explore how to establish lightweight content capture habits that persist beyond individual events, as well as how to coach managers to recognize and prompt content moments in the field. Understanding how to repurpose event-based content across multiple channels — turning a single trade show into weeks of social, email, and video assets — is a natural next step for organizations scaling their UGC programs.
#UGCActivation #ContentStrategy #EmployeeGeneratedContent #TeamBuyIn #B2BMarketing #TradeShowContent #LowFrictionContent #ContentCreation #MarketScale #WorkplaceContent
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