The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 133: Creating Your Content Calendar
Today I am going to be diving into creating your content calendar. We are going to take a deep dive into the different types of content, when you should post and how often, how to map out your content and so much more!
Creating Your Content Calendar
By: Melissa Lin
Today, I am going to be diving into how I create my content calendar each week and ideas on how you can create content for your business even faster. We have a lot of new people in my community. If you are one of them, big, loving, welcome. I'm so excited that you're here with me. A question that actually came into my DM’s last week was Melissa, "How is it that you create so much content all the time and stay so organized?" I know that if one person had this question that dozens and dozens more did too in my audience. Well, I've got tons of tips and tricks coming your way.
My team and I, we spend less than one hour per week mapping out and putting our content calendar together. Yes. You heard it right, less than one hour per week. What we usually do is we will map out our content topics quite a few months ahead of time. Then the actual content itself is one to two weeks ahead of time so that we give ourselves that flexibility to pivot just in case I want to pivot for some reason or change direction for a launch or something along those lines.
So are you ready for my big tips and tricks to help you reduce your time in content creation? Amazing. Here we go.
Today, We're going to dive into all things content calendars and I'm so excited. It's pretty amazing because, you know, when I first started, it would literally take me hours and hours and hours to create content. I remember so vividly, like, sitting in my cubicle at my chemical engineering job, and I'd be sitting there in the morning before I got my work day started, I would spend, you know, like an hour, maybe 45 minutes trying to come up with a caption or a piece of content to put out to social media. This was before Instagram stories were even a thing. This was just Instagram captions. So I spent 45 minutes to an hour trying to determine what caption to write. I really had no strategy around it. When I first started in 2014, I literally just posted random stuff and then spent 15, 20 minutes to find a photo to use for that. So my job here, or my intention here is to really help you speed the process up. I can whip out a piece of content in less than 10 minutes, a whole blown out post, less than 10 minutes, because I've done this so much. I truly do love all of the topics that I write content about. I absolutely love it. I love content creation. I do a lot of content creation throughout the week with recording podcast episodes, creating new training videos for my programs. IGTV's, live training, all that stuff. I love creating content for you to help you move the needle forward.
Content Pillars
Before we actually dive into the content calendar aspect, I first want to talk about your content pillars in your business. So no matter what stage you are in your business, you have content pillars. We'll call these your expert pillars. These are the three to five topics that you're always sharing and always teaching on. So let's go ahead and map those out first. If you already have them amazing, this will take just a quick minute.
For example, my content pillars in my business are entrepreneurship, sales, client attraction, mindset and my story. So Melissa’s story, my own story, starting your business and also scaling your business. So what are yours? We really get to know what these are before we dive deeper. That's going to make creating your content calendar so much easier. We really get to define those. So if you're a health and wellness coach, maybe some of your content pillars could be, you know, nutrition mindset, your story, workouts, fitness. If you are a dating coach, maybe some of your content pillars are self-love, your story, dating apps. If you're really into, you know, sharing the different types of dating apps and your educational pieces.
So what are your content pillars in your business? As we dive deeper into this, you'll start to see how you can easily create 20 or more pieces of content today. So the first step is to know what your content pillars in your business actually are. Once we know your content pillars, let's start to talk about how you can start creating your content calendar.
How Often to Post
So I know that many of you my audience are starting their businesses, potentially on the side. Maybe they're full-time and they're nine to five and they're starting the side business wanting to make it full-time soon or they're full-time in school. So time is definitely an area that we get to be intentional with. I want you to know that you don't have to post an Instagram post seven days per week. I want to break that myth right now. You do not need to post seven pieces of content throughout the week. You don't need a caption every single day. However, we do get to post and to determine how often to post, this really is about you.
So I want you to ask yourself realistically, and it gets to be realistic because if we get to sustain this, it's got to be something that's going to fit your lifestyle right now, in this moment. We can always add to this and build, but start with a minimum of three times or more per week if you're able to. If you're already consistent with three, let's add a fourth, but at least three times, and let's create a routine with this. The more you create content, the easier it will be to create it.
When I first started years and years ago, it would take me 45 minutes to an hour to write one piece of content. Now, I can write a piece of content in 10 minutes or less. So know that it will get easier. I do have tons of tools to help you with this. For example, I have something called "The Caption Capsule", which is something that I created in my business. It's a digital download with over 180 different headliners free to use for your captions and over 60 or 80 call to actions for your business. If you're in any of my programs, then you already have this. It comes with all of my programs. If you'd like to grab it, then you can save $5 today by using the code "podcast".
So now that we have an idea about how often you should be posting, keep in mind that there's a difference between posting and showing up on social media, like showing up in Instagram stories and showing your face and just showing a little bit of the behind the scenes of your life, because people do want to see that and there's a difference between those two. I try to show up every single day on stories, just something, even if it's a graphic, but showing up, and then at least quite a few captions and pieces of content throughout the week. We're at about, I think, five or six throughout the week. However, we have tons and tons of content, so I'm going to give you some tips at the end of this on how to create more content and you'll get a little bit of idea of how we're able to do it so quickly and efficiently. It's quick because we're efficient with it and again, very intentional with our time.
What Type of Content to Post
Now that we have an idea about how often we should be posting, Again, it gets to be sustainable, something that you really can keep to, let's move into what type of content you get to be posting. So I recommend at least one value add piece each week. This is an educational piece. This is where you're teaching your audience something through your content. For example, four steps to start your online business. Another example is Five boundaries to add into your business, giving them those boundaries, adding value in that content piece. Another example, six daily items to add into your business. I use these examples because they are some of the ones that we've used over the last month or so in some of our value add pieces in our Instagram feed. So I recommend at least one value add and at least one storytelling piece.
So, a story telling piece is where you share about your experience, your journey, your client's experience, doesn't necessarily only need to be about your experience, your client's experiences, what they've gone through and some of their stories to help create that connection between you and your audience, your ideal clients.
I also recommend at least one inspirational piece, and this is where you're showing what is possible for others. So for example, I could create, and I actually have many posts about this, you know, I bring in $100K months and work 20 hour weeks, so you can too. Show them evidence, show your audience, evidence that it's possible for them too. You really get to inspire and empower with these types of content.
The last big bucket that I recommend is at least one sales piece each week. So for example, "The Fierce Business Academy doors are open. Here are details of what we help you and support you with inside", and then a CTA, some type of call to action for how to enroll.
I also want to make a quick little side note. So it was actually very interesting, I was doing some market research last week and I was polling my audience. I asked them, you know, "Where they are in business?", "what your, their next goals were in their business?", "What's holding them back?", "How often they sell in their business?". I really wanted to see, you know, who was really doing well, who felt like they were missing X, Y, and Z, and what the correlation was with how often they were selling and a few other questions that I asked them. 80% percent of those that answered my poll said they sell less than one time per week. That's usually once per month or twice per month, max. So if this sounds like you too, let's add in more sales content. You're a business. People get to see your offers and with the algorithm, not everyone sees every post. So definitely get a few more sales posts, Instagram stories, reels, more sales content out there showing who you are a business.
Creating Your Content Calendar
So now we're going to grab a piece of paper and we're going to map your week out and start to actually create your content calendar together. So grab your piece of paper, and what I want you to do is draw lines so that you've got seven columns down your sheet and write each day of the week into one of those columns or one day of the week into each of the columns at the top. So Monday would be in the first column, second column would be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. What we're going to do is start to add in what type of content you'll be sharing that day. So if you truly feel that you are going to be able to easily get in three pieces of content, maybe it's Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Keep it simple. You know, add in what content you're going to share.
So for example, we release a brand new podcast episode every Monday morning, that's always in our Monday column, we also add in some type of educational or storytelling post. So, Tuesdays we usually go live with my free Facebook group, or we'll host a mini training in my Instagram stories depending on the week and that's value right there, adding that educational content. I want you to start to physically put it on paper, put your content out on paper when you want to do it and keep in mind, you can repurpose. I'm going to talk about this when I get into some bonus tips and tricks. Your Instagram content that you post today can also get posted over on Facebook or over in your Facebook group. So repurpose, recycle. We do a lot of that as well, because not everyone on Instagram is going to see that caption. Not everyone on Facebook is going to see it. So you want to get in front of as many people as you can, who are going to really see value to that post. So as you're starting to plan things out just know that everything just feels more doable when they're written out and planned out. Like I love having every single detail about what's going to get out there so that everyone on my team knows very quickly, like, okay, these are what's going to get posted today, tomorrow.
Knowing When To Post
Now, the question you might be asking yourself now is “Okay, well, what days and what times do I post this content? It could be Monday, but is that the right day to do it? Should I post on Tuesday?” Well, this is going to depend on your audience and your ideal client. Something that you can actually take a look at is your insight analytics on your Instagram business account. You can also poll your audience, ask them when they would like to see some of this content or when they're most active on Instagram. You could also probably find some data or Google some of this information as well. So for example, my ideal client. They're usually in a business mode working on their business Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then as the week starts to wrap up, they're usually getting into weekend mode, Friday and Saturday. So when we get a little closer to the end of the week, on Fridays, I like to keep my content a bit lighter and inspiring on Friday and Saturday. Then when Sunday comes around, I'll usually start to get back into business content. So always have your ideal clients in mind because you're here creating content for them, right? It's not necessarily what's going to be easiest for you because you can actually, preschedule all of this content and it'll go out exactly when you schedule it to go out.
Content Type
So earlier, we defined your content pillars in your business and let's say that you have five content pillars. You can now create at least one piece of content type for each pillar. So for example, one of my content pillars is sales and client attraction. So what I could do is I could create an educational post, a storytelling post, a sales post, an inspirational post all about that one pillar. And you can do this over and over and over with each of your content pillars. You can even dive deeper. You know, some of your content pillars are gonna be broken down into so many sub pillars as well, right. Just because, you know, sales and client attraction is one content pillar, it's not that I'm only talking about that. I have some posts where I'm focusing on, you know, how to reach 5k sales this month, how to reach 10K, how to reach 20K. So I do have little sub pillars of each as well and you can do this over and over and over with each of your content pillars so that you always have content topics and ideas to use. We want this to be easy.
As I mentioned earlier, I sit down with my team and we usually map out the next two months of topics ahead of time. So we always know what content is going to be created. When we sit down to create content, we don't sit down on Mondays when it's our content creation time and start to brainstorm like, okay, what am I going to create today? Okay. Let's start to create it. No, we always have that ready to go. That way when we sit down, we're very intentional. We know. Okay, today, the podcast episodes about XYZ is getting recorded. We really want to batch and get as much as we can done, which gets me going into some of the bonus tips I wanted to share with you today.
Batching Everything
Now a few bonus tips for you. I love to batch. Oh, I love, love, love to batch everything in my business. So for example, when we are recording a podcast episode, we're usually not recording just one, it's usually two or three. We already have it mapped out and the topics ready to go so I can easily create two or three in a row because I'm already in flow. It's so much easier to create content back to back like this. Outside of content creation, I even batch my coaching calls, So I usually have a few days per month when I do my coaching calls and I work with clients back to back because I'm in flow, I'm in coaching mode. So we get to figure out and determine what's going to be best for you. Batching doesn't work for everybody. Some people love creating two or three months of content, like the actual content and have it all readly. All the captions and everything. Not necessarily me. I like to be ahead with my podcasts and some of the bigger things that take a bit more time to actually edit. But I like that flexibility for my content if I want to pivot, because we've needed to do this a few times in the past. So batching helps save so much time. Right. When I sit down and record one podcast episode, I can get so much more done if I do a few at a time, you know, if you sit down and write a few captions at one time, it's so much easier to whip through those verses, you know, you sit down, maybe nine o'clock every month, every day of the week to write a piece of content. What happens is you'll sit down, you'll start to get into it and you're in your content creation mode for maybe an hour, and then you go do something else. Then it's going to take you time to get back into your content creation mode the next day. So it might take you 10 minutes to even get into the mode when you could've just batched everything. When you're already kind of in the mode, in the zone, when you started the day before. So again, not for everybody.
Repurposing
I do recommend however, to repurpose as much as you can. So we repurpose and I'll kind of map it out quickly for you. So for my podcast, for example, we repurpose this into so many pieces of content for you. So for example, we have the podcast episode, we then transcribe it and it's actually on a blog on our website as well, which then goes to Pinterest. So it's in dozens of pins. So right there alone is a dozen pieces of content. We then also take this podcast episode and create a few captions for Instagram, Facebook and other social media as well. So we are repurposing this content. So it's not just one piece of content. It is now 10 pieces of content. So a lot of different things you can do, but repurpose as much as you can, it's going to make content creation so much easier and you don't necessarily need to use all of that content in one week. Right? This podcast episode, for example, we may use the caption pieces of it next month, you know, but we do put them into our content banks, then we can use it whenever we have that space in our content calendar for it.
Recycling Old Posts
The next tip is recycling. This is one of my favorite things, because I feel like it breaks so many rules yet it doesn't because this is your business. You get to create the rules. Anytime I share this with somebody, they're like, "What? I can do that?!" Yes, you can recycle. I love to recycle my content. Not everyone sees every post. So it's a reminder for them, if they do see it again, if they don't, they haven't seen it. So we recycle older posts and repurposed them.
I would say if you're just starting, wait until you have about three months of content. After three months you should be at the point where you're ready to start to recycle some of that content. You don't necessarily need to recycle everything, but maybe take, you know, one post per week from a previous week, from three months ago and start to recycle that way. Instead of you needing to create four new posts per week, you can use an old one and then create three new posts per week. Start to recycle some of your content.
Also, some tools that we use, this is just kind of a note on my tips and tricks. We preschedule, all of our content. I had tried quite a few different softwares out there. We currently use"Later" to schedule all of our content for us. We have been very, very happy with them. We were using "Plan" prior to that. We also played around with "buffer" for a while, but Later is definitely our favorite..
Content Theme Matches The Program You're Selling
And then the next tip I want to share with you is if you are in launch mode right now, if you are selling something, let's make sure that your content matches the theme of your program. So for example, let's say that you are launching a program or selling a program right now all about mindset. Then your content on Instagram is talking about, let's see, uh, strategies to launch, right? Those two don't necessarily match completely. So keep your themes related to whatever it is that you're selling or offering at this moment. That's also going to make it easier for you to create that content. And pre schedule some of that content out. So I like to map out themes each week. So that things kind of feel the same and my audience doesn’t get confused. I'm talking about one type of theme in my content, and then also the same sort of thing as I, you know, sell on my Instagram story. So for example, if we are launching my mastermind to help them scale to 10 K a month, I'm going to talk about scaling in my content and my Instagram captions, some of the things that are needed to scale versus how to start your business, which would be my Academy content. Then as we're selling the Academy, I would start to shift gears and create themes each week in my content about starting your business and those beginner stages of creating your business.
I can't wait to see your content calendars come alive. Again, would love to hear about them, DM me on Instagram @TheMelissaLin. I can't wait to see your new content as you continue to create new content over that next few months and the rest of this year. Thank you for hanging out with me today. I'm always going to be your biggest cheerleader so you taking time out of your day ro hang with me truly means the world to me. I'll see you next time.
Topics we cover include:
Content Pillars
How Often to Post
What Type of Content to Post
Creating Your Content Calendar
When To Post
And so much more!
Times to check out:
(7:50) Content Pillars
(9:56) How Often to Post
(12:44) What Type of Content to be posting
(15:54) Creating Your Content Calendar
(19:35) When To Post
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