I know how frustrating it is to stare at a blank screen. You know you need a solid content calendar, but you just can’t come up with the ideas for your blog posts or videos and even when you do, you have no clue how repurpose that content to get a bigger bang.
Even if you suck at writing, aren’t great at marketing, or don’t know anything about social media, I promise this will work for you.
What I’m going to show you today is simple, powerful, and SO MUCH cheaper (and easier) than bringing anyone onto your team to help out. Once you’ve learned this choreography, your content calendar is going to be perfectly packed.
Hold up now … What is a content calendar and why do I need one?
A content calendar is just a list of all the content you plan on delivering to your audience in a given time period – things like your blog posts, podcasts, or videos.
Having a content calendar (as opposed to winging it every week) allows you to plot and plan out what content you’ll be delivering, when you’ll release it, and it gives you time to plan the marketing aspects you’ll need to go along with it.
Too often we spend a ton of time creating NEW stuff that we forget to promote the great stuff we already have.
That’s when you start to see burnout and inconsistencies. Folks just give up.
If you can make this part EASIER, you’re more likely to stay consistent. That means more great content and a reason for people to show back up.
Remember, your content calendar isn’t just your new weekly video or blog post. It’s the social media that goes out throughout the month, the promotions, testimonials .. all the stuff in your SPEED buckets.
How do you come up with ideas for your content calendar?
OMG so many ways! One of the easiest ways to come up with ideas to talk about is to ask your audience.
But what if that isn’t working or you’re just starting out and have no real audience? Here’s a couple of quick ideas:
1. Look on Amazon for books in your industry. If the topic of the book was good enough to publish, it should be good enough to spark an idea or two that you could write about.
2. Find active Facebook groups or pages where your audience is active. Hop inside and see what people are talking about. What kinds of questions are people asking? What topics are the owners talking about? If the owner has it set up with guides, you can look at the topics there.
Will a content calendar help your business grow?
In a word, yes.
Aside from keeping you organized (bonus!) it’s going to give you opportunities to connect with and engage with your audience and guide them through an entire journey.
That’s why having the RIGHT content is going to be important.
As lovely as you are, no one wants to hear how you’re doing or what you ate for lunch.
They are there to be entertained and educated. They want to hear how you’re going to solve their problem. OK, and they want to watch cat videos.
When you have a content calendar in place and you stick with it, you WILL see results because you’re consistently showing up.
You can use my “CORE” Method when creating your content:
C: Conversions – plan for them and how your content will achieve that conversion
O: One thing – ideally you’re doing ONE thing ONCE a week.
R: Repurpose – you can get more bang from your buck when you’re repurposing your content. I put my SPEED social media buckets to good use here.
E: Engagement – it doesn’t matter if it’s one person or a hundred that respond to your content – engage back.
OK, I’m convinced. How do I make the most of my content calendar?
First and foremost, remember that this isn’t something you’re whipping together just to check something off your list.
It’s an extension of you and your brand and it should fit into the narrative that you’re already telling.
I’m a huge Ronda Rousey fan. After the big ass-kicking, she started showing back up on Instagram … except it was their weirdest shit I’ve ever seen. It didn’t fit her brand at all. It was like she was trying to find anything clickbait-y to drop on there just to get the views.
Don’t do that.
Your content’s job is to draw attention to your expertise and to the problem your audience may or may not be aware they have, inspire some kind of action, and build awareness.
Think of it as slowly revealing another piece of the puzzle as your potential customers learn more about you, the solutions you provide, and ultimately, what you can do to help them.
When you create your content calendar, USE IT. It’s not a random document that may or may not be followed. That’s what I love so much about Jarvis – even with limited time, resources or ideas, you can create amazing content.
Once you’re in the swing of things, you can expand your content calendar to things beyond your main “action piece” of the week. Start including your social media, outside promotions, etc.
Are there ways to save time on social media with a content calendar?
HELL YEAH!
I like thinking about my social media and main content piece (my weekly Facebook Lives) as one big supernova. For me, everything starts with and revolves around my FB Lives.
That’s not just a marketing ploy, it’s because it’s EASY and takes less time.
I put all of my social media into one of 5 buckets (I call them my SPEED buckets) because they not only keep me moving fast but it speeds up the results of your social efforts.
Don’t be afraid to test things out to see what works best for you. Just because some guru tells you that you should post the exact same thing on every social channel doesn’t mean that’s what you have to do.
In the beginning, as you begin to piece together your content calendar, you might decide just to follow my method because it’s a no-brainer, but as time goes on, you might find that changing that up is going to work better for you.
Remember, your content is going to fit into 2 buckets, timely and evergreen.
1. Timely – these are things like live events I’m doing, launches or promotions, or sometimes even an in-the-moment post.
For example – I go live on Facebook every Thursday so every Tuesday or Wednesday, I send out a teaser video. I need those posts to go out on a certain day at a certain time.
2. Evergreen – I love SocialChamp.io but there are lots of options when it comes to a social scheduler.
You’ll want to look for something that has some kind of a requeue.
Different companies will call these different names, but basically, you can create a bunch of different buckets, put similar posts into each bucket and tell the system what days and times you want it to pull a post from the bucket and post.
Last week, I did a bonus training inside the Brand Soldiers Facebook group on wasting time and deadbeat marketing ideas. I gave them a specific guideline for the buckets and posting days. Click here and you can watch that for free.
Tips and Recipes for creating an editorial plan using an AI Copywriter
Jasper is the tool that I showcased in today’s video. I was VERY hesitant to even try it but I’ve got to say, it’s made my life so much easier.
In fact, not only was this blog post written (mostly) by Jarvis, but he came up with the blog title, the 3 emails that I sent out to my list, and the social media prompts that I used to promote the Facebook live.
#SoGood
There are dozens and dozens of templates available to you, but when it comes to my content calendar, here’s the ones I’ve used most often.
Video Titles or SEO Blog Posts Titles:
What I use to generate the title of the blog post. I usually have him write between 3 and 6 titles. Sometimes one hits me right out of the gate, but more often than not, I mish-mash a few of them together.
PAS Framework:
This stands for “Problem, Agitate, Solution” and it’s perfect for people who aren’t great at “marketing language” or persuasive copy. I use part of this for both my emails and the intro to the blog.
Blog Post Outline:
This is perfect for when you have a topic in mind but you aren’t sure what to write about specifically.
I usually have Jasper create at least 10 different outlines for me and between the copy that comes up there and the ideas that it jogs for me, I narrow it down to 5-7 ideas.
While Jarvis can write more copy on each of the list items you come up with, this is the part that I usually write myself.
Sometimes I will use a medium output length to get some ideas swirling and then write the copy from there.
Video Script Hook and Introduction:
I usually use this to not only come up with an idea for how to start my videos, but I’ll often weave it into the intro of the blog, on social media, and in my emails too.
Engaging Questions:
I love this one and have really good luck with the outputs. I’m aiming for at least 5 good-quality questions that I then turn into social media ideas.