Welcome to, episode 414 people. I’m really excited. We’re gonna talk about content today. Content is one of my absolutely favorite topics, because it’s the lifeblood of your digital marketing strategy. It’s the value spot we put out. It also informs a lot of the other pieces. When you can build out this piece, you can break it down to social. You can drive content to it, or drive traffic to it, with ads. You can spin off of it for email content and exclusive content for your subscribers.
There’s a lot of pieces we can do here. This is actually a part of the larger conversation we’re gonna be having in a new freebie I’ve got coming out later this week. Stay tuned to my Facebook page, or Instagram channels, or all of the places like that, to be the first to get that.
In fact, my list will get it before anybody else does. If you wanna head over to the show notes page, all the way at the bottom, there’s an option to join the list. They get it at the end of this week. We’re actually gonna, in that training, build out a 30 day digital marketing calendar. Our content, our email, and our social for 30 days, paid and organic. It’s a killer, killer training that we’re doing. Here’s the deal though. This is a big part of that. This is essentially the second block that’s gotta drop. When we figure this stuff out, we really solve a lot of our problems, when it comes to email and social.
That’s what we’re gonna break down today, is how we choose content.
Now, for me, this needs the podcast. This is the content that I offer. It also means my live show that happens Thursday on Facebook, where we’re gonna continue this conversation this week, by the way. Be sure to join us. For you, that might be blog posts, that might be recorded videos. That might be some combination of all of these things. Whatever it is that you are doing to deliver content, this is how we build that content calendar.
To start with, I really want you to focus in on 30 days. I do this a couple of times, actually a few times a year. It sort of gets incrementally more specific. When we map out the whole years, I have a general sense of some other things I wanna talk about. I also have a review of that at the quarter level. As I hit a new quarter, I review, “Okay, let’s get specific about what we’re talking about.” And then, as I batch each episode, which I try to do about a month at a time, just deponing on what’s going on, I take it a step further, and I get really specific, where I’m actually bullet pointing, or scripting, or prepping. The content, researching in a lot of cases, the content that I wanna talk about here.
This isn’t a sort of set it and forget it, touch it and it goes away kind of thing. It’s an incremental process. To start with, if you’ve never done this before. This is how I started. This is always where we start with new clients, on our agency side, is we do 30 days. This allows us to really get a feel, for what we’re doing. Also, it may be that you don’t have the world’s best data right now. Incrementally making the step forward will give you a better quality data, to make future decisions from. This is where we’re gonna start.
Four places that I pull content from. Again, this is gonna be slightly different for everybody. We have different expertise’s. They’re gonna fall into these general categories that we’re talking about. The first thing we do … I think we’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but I’m not totally sure … We’re gonna dig into it more, when we have the free training at the end of this week, early next week. Stay tuned again.
Here’s the deal though. The thing, number one, that we do, is we look at, what are we trying to get the audience to do.
Now, this doesn’t … I mean it’s right … It’s not really as tricky as that. It’s not really as manipulative as it may sound. Our whole job, and I know you’ve heard me say this before. Our whole job is to move our community from problem to solution. We’re gonna do that incrementally with free content all the way to paid content.
If we’re trying to get them to a certain place, if we’re trying to get them to achieve something, or incrementally move down the spectrum from problem to solution, we’ve gotta know what it is we ultimately want them to do, so that we can move them in that direction. This comes back to, who do you serve and what do you do? More specifically, what are you focused on in your marketing right now?
For me, in this last quarter and again, transparencies the name of the game here. I’m gonna sell ya, what I’m gonna sell ya. For me, this last quarter of the year is really about our VIP day offering. It is a full day with me. It is a really killer opportunity to dig in and sort of do a done with you strategy build. We start doing some of the actual execution in the room. We can ’em virtually and in person. That’s where my focus is for the end of the year. I know that’s where my audience needs the most support at this point in the year. That’s my focus.
If I know my focus is ultimately to get people to sit down with me and actually hammer out these 90 day strategies. What can I give them to start them down that road, so that they can start feeling a little bit of the relief that comes with a strategy. Guess what? That’s how this episode came to be. You’re actually seeing this in action right now. Essentially, what I wanted to do, is give you a taste of what it’s like to have a real plan in place.
You’ll go, because you’re my people. You’ll go, and you’ll take action on this. You’ll build your 30 day content strategy, you’ll grab the free training that’s gonna release in a couple of days, where we talk about building out a complete 30 day digital marketing strategy. You’ll see the relief that comes with having that plan. You’ll go, “I want more of this. I want some support in doing this.” You’ll look into the 90 day strategy that comes with the VIP day, or you’ll go through this process, and you’ll realize, “I don’t wanna do this alone.”
It’s not that you can’t do it alone. You wanna have someone in the room keeping you accountable. You wanna have someone in the room, who can give you an outside perspective, which is incredibly valuable. You want somebody in the room, who has the expertise in this space, to give you the confidence that the right decisions are being made. Then, you look at the 90 day build that we do in the VIP day. Do you see what I’m saying? This is not some sort of elaborate plan, that’s going to trick someone into taking action. We’re just working backwards from, how can we give them a taste, how can we give them the experience, at a content level. That’s why I build out my first level of content.
Now, again, that’s not every episode. That’s not every piece of content. It’s gonna be a big theme, throughout the 30 days that we’re looking at. Where can we create … I just list them out. I’m not even thinking about now, how many piece of content do I need for the month. I’m first, just getting ideas on a piece of paper. We’re essentially brain dumping these ideas. That’s where I start. Where do we want them to go, and how can I give them a taste of them?
The next piece is, kind of news, industry news.
If you’re in a space like I’m in, there’s stuff changing all the time. I always have things to share with you. I’ll factor that in. Now, new is a tricky thing. It may be that you don’t know, news is coming, until news is coming. For me, I very rarely get free warning, that Facebook is gonna make a big change. As much as I would like to be on that email list, from Facebook that’s like, “Hey guys. Here’s what we’re gonna announce tomorrow.” I’m not yet on that list. I don’t always know. News for me, doesn’t get planned. It’s something that I know, might come, and might be injected in what’s already there. I sort of set that aside for my Facebook lives.
Now, as I collect those pieces of news, they often go into our three things you must know. That’s really the birth of the three things you must know episode. There’s always kind of, some bit of news, or some bit of timely information, that I wanted to give you. I built that into my content strategy. If you’re in a business like that as well, starting the month with that three things you must know, kind of episode, or ending the month with, “Here’s what you need to know next month,” kind of thing, may be something you wanna build into your 30 day content calendar.
The third thing that I want to talk about is FAQ’s and updates.
When we have questions that we’re getting all the time, it means we need to address them at a larger level. Content is a powerful way to do that. This is especially true if … It kind of relates to our news. Often times, what sort of gets through the filter of, sort of what’s happening now into what actually makes it to those three things you need to know right now, are the things I got the most questions about. Tapping into that FAQ’s. What are those things that you’re talking about all the time on client calls? What are those things you’re talking about all the time with your audience?
Again, this is gonna tie back to these previous, sort of stems. It’s gonna tie back to, what do they need to know to move them further from problem and closer to solution. What do they need to know, based on the news of our industry? What do they need to know based on where they’re going and where I want them to go? These are critical pieces to build into your content strategy. You have to, have to, have to, have to be providing these baseline information, value pieces, to build trust.
When you answer FAQ’s, you’re able to answer a question that somebody hasn’t necessarily asked you yet. That’s incredibly valuable. That’s the last piece I want you to factor in, is what is that FAQ? What are those FAQ’s. Now that you’ve sort of brain dumped all of those things, now we take the next step and we calendar them. This is where we go, “Okay, so how much content do I really need? How much content do I need to fill this month?” I’ve talked about this in the past. I’m gonna talk about it in the training. This is not about more is more. More is not more. More is just like noise. We don’t want more for the sake of more. We want quality over quantity.
It may be … This is again, exactly what we’ve run into right now. This free training that I’m releasing, actually stems from the fact that I was a much bigger conversation, than I was gonna be able to scale into these podcast episodes. I wanted there to be a next step. I wanted there to be a place for you to go, after you’ve done this work. It’s very intentional that it’s not available today. I wanted you to do this initial work though, so that you would actually do the work in the larger 30 day training, in the larger 30 day planning.
This piece is critical for the next steps. This piece became a podcast, which I’m gonna give you a couple of days to do. And then, I’ll send out the new training. That will be your next step to this episode. In the future, this episode will actually, probably be bundled with that training when the email goes out. This episode is a critical piece of that training. That’s how I figured out, “Okay, where can I go and I can get them to take a little bit of action, and then I can give ’em a little more action to take, and then I can give ’em a next step.” Look at where that is for you, where you can establish value, but also you can establish action in your audience. That’s gonna be really powerful, okay?
I want you to work through this. I want you to figure this stuff out. Get on the email, to make sure you’re the first to find out about the new free training, otherwise, make sure you’re following me on social, because it in all the places of course. Do this work. That’s priority one. Do this work. Build out your 30 day calendar. Figure out what episodes are going to where what kind of medium they’re gonna go into. Actually, calendar this stuff.
Now, I know the question I’m gonna get right now is, “Okay Stacey, well, how do I calendar this? What’s the best place for me to store my editorial calendar?” Wherever you’re gonna freakin use it. Seriously. It’s that simple. Whatever space you’re going to actually use, that’s the one I want you to use. I straight up have a Google calendar, called Editorial calendar. It’s really not more creative than that. It is not more fascinating than that. It is not more systemized, and techie than that. It’s a Google calendar that lives in my calendar, that’s called, Editorial calendar. That’s where everything goes. It’s that simple.
Maybe you’re a Trello person. Great. Trello’s a great option. Maybe you wanna keep ’em in your project management tool. Fantastic. Keep them there too. I don’t care where they go, as long as they are someplace you can use, and that you’re going to use, so that you will actually do this. All right? That’s your call-to-action. I want you to go take action on this episode, and then let me know that you did. Come over to Instagram. Come over to Facebook. Let me know that you did this work so that I can get the training out to you next. All right? I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.
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