Welcome to episode 333 of Hit the Mic with The Stacey Harris.
Today we’re answering a question I get all the time, the “how often” question. We’re going to talk about how often you should be creating content, because it really hinges on three other questions. There is not, contrary to what Pinterest infographics may tell you, one perfect answer to this question. It really depends on the answers to a few other questions. We’re going to go through those questions so that you can figure out the answer for you because, guess what, guys, it might be different than the answer for me. Just like my answer now is different than my answer was a year ago or two years ago or three years ago when we started this show.
As you might know, we moved from two episodes a week to one episode a week moving into 2017. It’s been a little weird because I created 300 and something episodes of the show going twice a week for three years, almost four years, so it’s a little strange still, I’ll be honest, but again, it became about, what is the answer to these questions. That’s why I wanted to present this to you, because this answer might even be different for you now than it was before. Go through this. Remember there’s not one right answer to this question. If you say, “Well, you know, you do episode once a week, maybe that’s what I should do.” No, not necessarily. Okay, so let’s jump in.
First things first, real talk, guys, your schedule.
If you are currently doing the side hustle thing, then committing to doing five blog posts, podcast episodes, videos, whatever it is, a week, is going to be really, really, really difficult. Even if you’re full time, it’s still going to be really difficult. Five episodes a week is a lot. Five pieces of valuable content a week is a lot, so that might feel impossible to you, then that’s not the best place to start. Or maybe you have gone full time but you have the content to do more than once a month. That may feel like just not enough for you. Great, if your schedule allows you to do more, do more. Factor in, first and foremost, what is your schedule? When do you have the time and space to create value?
One little thing I want you to notice about that statement is, I didn’t say to create content. I said, to create value. If you say, “Oh, well I can absolutely bust out six or seven blog posts a day, no problem, easy breezy.” How much value are you going to be able to find in that content when you’re busting out six or seven pieces a day? Not a lot. Certainly if you’re doing that five days a week. It’s tough. Now, full disclosure, I do tend to do four-ish episodes of these when I record them, but I don’t do that every day, I do that every few weeks. I’m trying to get to a point where I’m doing this once a month where I record four weeks of podcasts in a day. That, A, it took me time to get there, B, I know the answer to a lot of other questions, so it’s easier for me to create content. Also, C, it’s the structure I’ve built that allows me to do that. I’m not creating that every day. Make sure there’s value in there, okay.
How much valuable content can you currently create in your schedule? Now, if you say, “Oh, well, I can absolutely do once a month.” Do once a month. That’s totally okay. Maximize that content, really use that content in as many ways as you can. I would rather see you honestly putting out one spectacular piece of content a month that you repurpose and you reuse and you promote the bejeezus out of, than eight half hearted pieces of content a month because you go twice a week, absolutely. First things first, what does your schedule allow?
Number two, how much content is your audience consuming?
This actually was one that I had to get really, really comfortable with at the end of 2016 when I was thinking about my marketing plans, content, social media, email, in person, everything for 2017. As I was laying out those content plans and marketing plans I was realizing that to do some of the new things I wanted to do, I was going to be adding a lot of extra content. For example, we’ve ruled out weekly lives, so we’re going live once a week now, which I absolutely love doing, but when you figure out that, “Okay, I’m going to go live once a week. I’ve got two podcasts a week. We want to do this guest post. We want to do this LinkedIn Publisher post.
I was putting out essentially four to six pieces of content per week, which is spectacular. It’s great, it’s all valuable. A lot of it’s repurposed, awesome. It’s a lot to promote, it’s a lot to give my audience to consume, and it’s a lot from an audience perspective for them to consume. I don’t want people to spend all of their time consuming my free content. From a business perspective, the next logical step to Hit the Mic, you know we’re all about transparency here so this is going to be a really transparent sentence, the next logical step, as I’ve set it up, to Hit the Mic, if you enjoy this podcast, is Hit the Mic Backstage, it’s this podcast plus, it is this podcast with more detailed trainings, one on one access to me. It’s this podcast even better.
Here’s the deal, if I give you guys so much free content to consume, you’ll never make it back there. That’s just a straight up real transparent sentence, okay? Think about how much content your audience is consuming. Are you going to overwhelm them by giving them too much to consume? That’s a big reason we stepped back to only one, because also there is such a library of episodes to listen to. Now, full disclosure, I have zero interest in you going back and listening to episode one of this show, because, a, I don’t think it’s as awesome as this episode is. I like to believe that I am getting better every episode. I cannot bear the idea of even me going to listen to episode number one. Also, episode number one, if I remember correctly, is about Facebook Ads. It’s three years old now, which means it’s outdated.
I don’t think anyone’s going to go through and sort of like, “I’m going to start at the beginning.” However, with that said, there’s still a huge library of content for people to dig through already there. It made sense for me to say, “Hey, my audience has a lot. My audience is doing a lot of consuming already. If I want to add more things, I’m going to need to make sure that I am taking some of these things out. I’m going to need to make sure that what’s here is here for a reason. What’s here is providing value. Because if it’s not, then it’s not serving anybody’s goal and that’s not going to be valuable and it’s not going to be useful.” Again, we come back to this place of value, we come back to this place of purpose. Think about your audience and how much they have to consume and how much they’re willing to consume, all right?
Number three, we’ve talked about your schedule, we’ve talked about your audience and their consumption style.
Next let’s talk about your funnel.
Like I mentioned, kind of briefly in the last one, for me, Hit the Mic Backstage is a logical next step to this show. It is this show plus. I want to make sure that the purpose of this show is to get you from here to there. Now, there are a lot of you who don’t need that and who want to just listen to this show and that’s absolutely wonderful and listen away and I appreciate you listening. There are also a lot of you who are saying, “Really? That’s what Hit the Mic Backstage is? I’m going to go check that out right now.” To you, I say, “Welcome backstage.”
There’s also a large section of people who are like, “I don’t know, there’s just so much here. Can I really … Do I have time to go there and add that and blah, blah, blah, and I love the podcast and I want to listen to the podcast and blah, blah, blah, blah.” You’ve now shut down. I know that third audience, because that’s how I am with a lot of pieces of content, that’s how I am with a lot of people. That’s the other reason we have pulled back a little. We have replaced that Friday episode with other pieces of content, absolutely, but I’m not just continuing to add more, because again, I don’t want my audience to fit into overwhelm because that’s going to get them to jump out of the funnel.
Where does your free content sit in your funnel? What is the goal? What is the purpose from a marketing standpoint, of your content? I would rather have less frequency and more targeted, more focused, more specific content that gets you guys to the logical next step of the funnel if that’s a step you need to take. Now, if that’s not a step you need to take, that’s fine. Listen to the show, I love you, we’re great, cool, thanks, welcome, thanks for being a part of the community, welcome to the community, whatever. For those who backstage is the solution, for those who are like, “Yes, thank you. I want it. I need it. Take my money.” I want to make that solution easy. I want to make that answer easy. I want to make that answer obvious.
This content needs to be really serving up that next goal, and so when you’re looking at, what does your content frequency need to be, you have to to look at your goals. Because you’re not creating content for the sake of content. You’re not creating content for funsies. You’re not creating content because, you know, well that’s the thing to do. No, you’re creating it because you want to help someone solve a problem. The best way, as we’ve talked about in past episodes, to get them to the solution, is to walk them there, is to guide them there, down the path from problem to solution, and that’s all the sales funnel is.
Where does your content fit in your sales funnel? By the way, this content can be podcasts, this content can be blog posts, this content can be live video, this content can be prerecorded video, this content could be something from each of those categories. I know for me, it’s something from each of those categories. We do weekly live shows, we’ve got the podcast, the podcast gets repurposed in the blog post, we may be adding, because we’re doing some cool stuff back behind the scenes, some more recorded video to the mix, because it’s super fun to do and it converts and you guys seem to love it. Whatever it is, whatever piece of content you’re creating, I don’t care what the type is, it’s got to serve a goal in your business and it’s got to serve your audience in getting them to their goals from problem to solution.
To recap, what does your schedule allow you to create value? How often? How often is your audience available to consume that value? Three, know your goal. Where does it fit in your funnel? If your goal is to get them into a membership site, then daily content might be a little bit of a reach, because guess what, I’m going to be so busy consuming your daily content I have no time to consume your membership content. Pay attention to that, all right? Big note, we are starting today, on the 24th is day one of the three day Launch Your Podcast Challenge. We’re going to go Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we’ll have wrap up call on Friday. All of that’s going to happen live over on Facebook.com/TheStaceyHarris. If you want to make sure you’re getting the emails and you’re getting where you need to go and you’re launching your podcast now, check out the show notes for this episode, TheStaceyHarris.com/episode333. All the way down at the bottom of the post you’ll see a link to the Launch Your Podcast Challenge, get on a list, you’ll get the emails.
I know this is starting the day this goes live, that’s okay, join us anyways, join us over the live streams over on the Facebook page. Even if you don’t necessarily want to launch a podcast, if you want to get serious about any kind of content, this is going to help, because we’re going to talk about a lot of the fundamentals of planning that, and really getting content that your audience is actually going to want to consume and that’s going to solve their problems, it’s going to get them again from problem to solution, which is what a sales funnel is for. Okay? What’s your content for? I will see you backstage.
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