Welcome to episode 316 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
We all know that social media is a great way to connect, a great way to provide value, a great way to get to know your audience and their needs except what are you supposed to post? What are you supposed to share? Well that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re actually going to breakdown building your content calendar because that is actually going to tell you exactly what to post. How awesome does that sound? Sounds pretty good right? All right, so let’s jump in.
First things first, why have one? Why do this work? Real talk, we are very rarely creative on demand. Very rarely do I log into Facebook and I’m just struck by a wonderful amount of genius things to share. Even more rarely am I struck with something to share that’s completely on point with the rest of the things happening in my editorial and marketing calendars, so I have a content calendar.
Here’s the thing. A content calendar is not the same as an editorial calendar. It is a similar tool, but it is a different tool. An editorial calendar speaks to what we’re posting on our blog or our podcast or our video series. It’s our actual content marketing calendar. What pieces of content are we creating. When I talk about a social media content calendar, I’m talking about the content that actually gets posted on social.
A lot of this is your social media foundation. If you’ve heard me talk about that in other episodes, but it’s just a little more specific than that foundation. Your foundation speaks to the strategy stuff of what networks am I on, how often do I post on those networks and what am I posting as far as this thing or that thing. When I talk about a content calendar, I’m actually talking about getting more specific. Not only do I post five pieces of other people’s content to Twitter a day, these are the topics I want those posts to speak to. This is what I want them to support.
That needs to be in line with your editorial calendar and your marketing calendar because that’s what makes this whole machine work. I think a lot of times you hear email marketing experts or social media marketing experts and they speak to why this is the thing you have to do. This is the one thing you have to do. You see this with video marketing and email marketing and social media marketing, like I said, but here’s the thing. There’s not one thing you have to do. There’s a lot of things that you have to do and they all have to work together. When they don’t work together that’s when you see confusion and disconnects and having a hard time getting people sort of over the hump and getting them to buy in from an actual purchasing perspective.
Don’t think about these tools as the same tool. Think about them as tools that complement each other. Really consider the fact that using these tools together is what allows you to continue to build trust, provide value and make sales. Because ultimately that’s what it is. Is it’s a tool that helps you reiterate the same value.
A great example of this is right now, and I’m going to get super transparent here right. We’re pulling back the curtain. Right now, in this month, November, we did a brand new training in the community all around your content calendar. Now, right now, because that’s the brand new training, I’m doing this podcast episode about it, because it gives me an opportunity to tell you why you need to know more and start you down the path of creating your content calendar. I’m able to provide you value but also show you how I can give you even more value on the other side of this opportunity.
Now, to take a step further, I’ll also be sharing social media content about scheduling and calendars and knowing what to post and email marketing and editorial calendars because all of that supports the same message, which ultimately if you decide you want to know more about, you can do that inside of backstage.
All of these things play a part together. Another example of this is we rolled out a new free training this month called launch your podcast. It’s a free video training. It’s about 30 minutes long and it’s paired with a resource guide, and actual gear list, mics and what not, to get started with your podcasts. That program sells into Hit the Mic Backstage because inside of Hit the Mic Backstage we have the Rockstar guide to podcasting which is a whole five module program on launching your podcast, teaching you how to edit and record and stuff like that.
In addition to that, later this month, we’ll also have an episode of the show that’s around podcasting. I’m also going to have some social media content around podcasting, because I know that’s a big goal going into the new year. A lot of people want to launch their new podcast in January. Well, if you want to launch a podcast in January, now is really the time to do that planning and start recording so you have your episodes ready to go for a January launch.
This isn’t magic. This isn’t some sort of formula that only I know. It’s basic marketing. I’m giving you guys some value, absolutely. This podcast is 100% free and there’s 100% value here, but I’m also giving you an opportunity to get more value by investing in yourself, by investing in what you want to do.
When I have a content calendar and I have an editorial calendar, I can make those things work together and now I know exactly what it is I’m posting on social. When I go to layout what my social media updates are going to be I can tie everything in to these same couple of messages. For this month, that focus is going to be all around scheduling and content, and it’s going to be all around podcasting.
Now, that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing I’m going to talk about because it would get a bit repetitive. Also because of the nature of what I offer. I don’t have to go 24/7 with it. An example of that is when I launch social pro program, I am more all about … If you look back at January of 2016 when I was in launch mode for social pro, everything in January was about social media strategy. Everything, and that’s because I was in a very condensed launch window for that program.
Whereas with backstage it never closes. You can get in any time. Yes, not every single things feeds to that, but you guys hear me talk about it every episode. You hear a lot of what I tie in on social tie in to what I do there. That’s because again this is all marketing okay. This is all going someplace. I can do that again, because I have put together a content calendar.
Let’s break down really how you actually know what to put in the content calendar. For me, it’s A) based on my marketing calendar which is also what builds my editorial calendar, but it’s also the questions you guys ask me. When I go into Facebook groups and I do Q&As, that’s the stuff that fills out my editorial calendar, and by extension my content calendar. When we get questions in office hours from backstage, it’s the same thing. It feeds that.
That really allows me to make sure I’m answering the questions you need answers to because you’re who I want to join the program. Do you see how that works? It doesn’t have to be a guessing game. It doesn’t have to be what some other expert is doing. It doesn’t have to be what you think people want, because that’s very rarely what people actually want, at least in my experience.
What it does need to be though, is using the information that’s in front of you. Again, we dive deep on this in the training in backstage, but ultimately I want you to look at really getting serious about building out exactly what gets posted on social, exactly what content is going to feed your goals and your audience at this stage in your business.
Here’s the thing is, you’re not going to be building a content calendar that goes for six, eight months at a time because it might change. I sit down and evaluate kind of what content’s going out every couple of months, especially because with backstage it runs all the time, I can be a little more hands off with it. We kind of know what’s happening in the community and so it all stems back from that. We work backwards from that in a big way.
Again, ultimately I have to revisit this regularly. We actually have to think about how do these things feed together? Again, that’s how you figure out what to post, is hey what is happening in my business? What else is happening so that I can make sure that I’m speaking to that. All right?
Again if you want to dive deep in this, and we talk about resources and choosing the actual content that’s going to go on your calendar and filling that out, we talk about that in the community. On Hit the Mic Backstage, brand new training just came out November 1st. Also you can ask questions to me any time inside of office hours which is really going to help you dive deep on actually building this content calendar and making sure that you are aligned with your who and your where and you really figure out what that what is because that’s what this all comes down to. All right?
I will see you backstage, and I will see you on Friday.
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