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Not sure where to start when creating a content plan?
Hey sweet friend! You’re listening to Chasing Simple, episode 070 and I’m your host – Amanda Warfield. If you’re new around here, I am so excited that you decided to tune in. And if you’re an old friend – welcome back.
Today, you are probably going to want to have a pen and paper handy because I’m going to lay out 4 sample content plans that you can steal and make your own. Two will be for service-based and digital product business owners, and two will be for product based business owners.
I’m also going to discuss the difference between content strategies and content plans – because yes, there is a difference. I could create an entire episode just on creating a content strategy, and an episode on how to come up with your plan, but today I want to share a few sample plans to get your brain turning.
If you enjoy this episode, I would love it if you would hop on over to Instagram and share about it in your stories and tag me. I love to know when an episode really impacts a listener! It helps me know what kind of content to add to my own content plan. And now, let’s go ahead and dive in so you can swipe these content plans for yourself!
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Take the first lesson in Club Content Batching – for free!
- This week’s action step: Feel free to steal one of these content plans for yourself, and if you want to brainstorm what it is you should be saying in your content, come join my content ideas challenge! Content Generator – a 5-day challenge to amp up your content ideas and inspiration. Walk away with over 50 ideas for what to say to your audience.
- This week’s book recommendation: Fix This Next by Mike Michalowicz
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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Have a comment about today’s episode, or a topic you’d like to suggest for a future episode? Shoot me an email over at hello@amandawarfield.com!
Rather Read? – Here’s the Transcript!
*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate.
Before I jump in and tell you what the sample content plans are. I want to pause and take a second and kind of touch on a plan versus strategy, because I think a lot of times content plan, content strategy, they get used synonymously, but they’re not, they’re two very different things. So a content strategy, it’s the overarching guide that you create for your marketing based on data, on goals, all of those things are what drives your plan.
So think of it as a building inner support and structure. You know, you’ve got to build the structural pieces, the foundation, the scaffolding, all of that stuff has to go in first, before you can build around that. That’s what your strategy is. So for example, personally, my strategy for my content plan is to drive my audience, to join us inside Club Content, Batching, or to drive them towards working with me on a one-to-one basis.
Based on what my goals are for the year. I have set goals for each of those things, and that is the strategy that I use to create my plan, my plan supports the strategy. And I think this is where people get confused when it comes to creating a content plan, because we want to start with the plan. We want to start with saying, okay, I’m going to post this many times on these places and I’m going to talk about these content buckets and I’m just going to flip through them.
And then that plan doesn’t do anything because there’s not a real strategy driving it. And so then we feel like content marketing doesn’t work for us. And that plan is how you execute a strategy with no strategy, your plan, isn’t guiding anyone to anything.
You want to think of this as the design elements of a building, you want to make sure that, you know, your marketing is supposed to be fun and flashy and cute, but also without that inner structure and that inner support, it crumbles. It doesn’t actually hold up and it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. If it’s a building, it doesn’t, without that structure, it doesn’t hold up. It doesn’t protect it, doesn’t shelter. If your plan has no strategy, your plan is not moving your business forward. Just want to touch on that before I dive into these plans, because I absolutely, like I said, in the intro, I could do a whole episode just on how to create your strategy and a whole episode just on how to create your plan. But for today, I just want to give you a couple sample plans. So we’ve got two different business owners here that we’re going to talk about today.
The first in this fictional business, Scarlet is a web designer for online fitness instructors. She takes on roughly 10 one-to-one clients a year, and she also sells templates for DIY-ers who aren’t ready or aren’t willing to commit to working one-to-one with a designer.
At this point, she has just wrapped up her final, big launch of the year. And she started to slow down to enjoy the holiday season. Her plan is to post one YouTube video each week, and also to post the Instagram three times a week because she’s not gearing up for a launch. She’ll pull her YouTube content ideas from an ongoing list of topics that she’d loved to talk about.
Some of it’s educational and informative. And some of it’s other topics that she’s passionate about that don’t necessarily correlate heavily with web design, but she loves to talk about them and she wants to put that passion into her content plan. Her Instagram will be full of fun, brand-building posts as well as educational posts.
So brand building things like introduction posts for me personally, if it was me, the brand building post would be, you know, one of the cats, a Reel with Padmé, something like that, where I’m just placing little pieces of my brand into my posts. That’s what I mean by that.
On the flip side, the second business Magnolia is a sticker shop owner, and she has a set basis of stickers that she is always creating and always has for sale. And then there are a few points during the year where she designs new kits that are only available for a limited time. Currently she’s just wrapped up a big launch and is getting ready to wind down for the summer months. So both of these in both of these plans, These business owners are in a slower frame for their businesses.
Her plan is to post one YouTube video a month, and to post twice a week in her Facebook group, her YouTube videos are always planned with me is where she showcases the various kits that she has available. She loves to switch up which kit she’s using every month. So there’s a wide variety for her audience to see, and that helps to showcase those kits that are always in stock and they don’t have that urgency attached to them as the new kits do.
For her Facebook group, those posts are on a rotation of four different posts. So every two weeks the rotation starts over and these posts were created to encourage engagement while also subtly showcasing her always in stock kits. So during the slow season, she’s posted on YouTube once a month, she’s posting on her Facebook group twice a week. She can batch those, get them ready to go out, and it doesn’t need a whole lot of hand-holding.
On the flip side of this, if we look at what their plans might be for the hustle months, let’s head back to Scarlet our web designer for fitness instructors. She’s back in office after the holidays, and she’s gearing up for a launch in her template shop. So for the next eight weeks, she’s going to get really specific with her YouTube content and make sure that it’s all surrounding those templates that she’s getting ready to launch for the next four weeks. Her videos will all be showcasing different elements of web design using some of her pre-made templates, of course, which she’ll make sure to mention in the video.
So for the first four weeks of this prelaunch period, she’s showing her audience how they can do it themselves. While also showcasing those gorgeous templates. It’s a subtle way to let them know like, Hey, these are coming not super, super soon, but kind of keep it on your radar. Then she’ll spend the next four weeks leading up to her launch, busting myths and overcoming objections.
For example, she frequently hears the potential buyers. Just don’t think that they need a website yet. So she’s going to do one video on why even new businesses should have a website in another. On my social media cannot be the only place you build a business. She’s busting that objection. Over on Instagram, she’ll stick with three posts a week for the next four weeks with a heavy focus on educating, tips, tricks, hacks, actionable steps, as well as making sure she’s really talking up those YouTube videos so that she’s driving her Instagram following to YouTube to start showcasing those templates. In the final four weeks, she’s going to up her post to five a week, instead of that three a week. She’s going to have them to five a week with more of an emphasis on Reels or IGTVs or Lives. She plans to be more intentional with showing up on stories for those four weeks. And she’s going to keep educating, but also sprinkle in information about her templates and the upcoming launch.
Popping back over to Magnolia. It’s time for her to start designing and preparing for her back to school launch. Everyone is always gung ho about using their planners right when the new school year is starting. So she always designs a few fun, new kits only available for a very limited time in August.
The next eight weeks are going to be full of sneak peeks, and behind the scene looks to help build the hype around her new kit. Her monthly YouTube video this month is going to be a plan with me featuring an always available kit. But in it she’ll mention and plan around designing those new kits. Next month, YouTube video will showcase one of the new .Kits or maybe even a mix of a few of them.
As for her Facebook group, she’s going to up her post two, three a week and a live every other week. Two of the posts will continue to be the ones that she always posts, but the third will become a great place for market research. And for teasing the new kits. Her lives will also be updates on the design process and teasing the new kits as well.
At the beginning of the eight weeks, those extra posts will be more along the lines of help me decide. What would you like to see? What kind of kit should I do? Type of question. The closer and closer she gets to the lunch. The more she’ll be showing off what she’s already done. Four weeks before she might announced the themes for the kits three weeks before she might show off the design process and what the kits currently look like, two weeks before she might show off on the finished kits.
And the week before launch, she might reveal all four of her new kids. So with those two business owners, we talked about a slow period and a hustle period, two different plans based on two different times in their business. Something I want to point out about these plans. One, it is absolutely normal to have both slow months and hustle months.
Online business culture likes to make it seem like it’s all or nothing. You’re either in all hustle mode or you try to never, ever hustle. But realistically businesses more flowing than that. There are different time periods, different frames. And I want you to take advantage of both. The second thing I want to point out is that your marketing plan should change based on those times.
So often we think that we need to constantly push out content all the time and then we get burnt out by it. It is perfectly okay for your social media to go through waves. As long as you’re still showing up consistently, even in those slower months. Don’t ghost and then all of a sudden jump again, right before a launch. Also, note that in both of those examples, they’re long form content. In this case, they both had YouTube videos, but long form content could be blog posts or podcast episodes as well. Their long form content did not change in frequency because long form content isn’t in such a crowded space. Consistency is extremely important.
So make sure you choose a frequency that you can stick with year round. So their long-form content frequency did not change their plan changed based on what kind of period they were in, but the consistency didn’t. Social media though, it’s such a crowded space that you don’t have to post at the same exact time at the same exact day, every week.
There’s a lot more leniency because of the algorithm and because it’s just so crowded. So use that to your advantage. Don’t feel like you need to post every single day on Instagram all year long. There can be slow periods as long as you’re not completely ghosting.
Now I want you to feel free to steal these content plans for yourself. I made sure to get really intentional here and do a digital and service-based entrepreneur and also an actual product shop. So you could kind of see how you could do it differently based on what it is that you’re offering, but feel free to steal one of these and tweak it for yourself.
And if you want to brainstorm what it is that you should be saying in your content, I would love for you to come join my content ideas challenge. The Content Generator is a five day challenge to amp up your content, ideas and inspiration. You’ll walk away with over 50 ideas for what to put into your content and say to your audience in just those five days, it is going to be a quick, short and simple five, 10 minute exercise every single day for five days. And I’ll be going live in the Facebook group. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I would just love to see you in there with us. You can head over to Amandawarfield.com/challenge to sign up for the Content Generator. Again it is Amandawarfield.com /challenge. And that’s your action step for this week.
Now this week’s book recommendation is Fix This Next by Mike Michalowicz . And if you’ve been around for any length of time, you know that I love his books. Every single one of them that I’ve read. I haven’t read all of them yet, but every single one that I’ve read has just been so actionable. And I love that in a business book.
I also do enjoy mindset books sometimes, but for the most part, I want a business book that’s going to truly change something for me. And that is going to be actionable. And all of Mike Michalowicz books have been, it’s just, they’re phenomenal. This one in particular. I really like, because he sets up this, this hierarchy, which the nerd in me loved because he kind of compared it to Maslow’s hierarchy.
And anyways, he sets up this hierarchy and he explained the different parts of your business that need to be shored up before you can go to the next step. And I just found this so fascinating because as solo preneurs, it’s easy for us to feel like we need to fix all the things at once.
And it’s also kind of pushed in our industry that you need to make sure you’re saying if a business has got a legacy and you need to make sure that yada yada. But a lot of times, because of that pressure, we end up skipping some of these bottom foundational pieces, and then we wonder why our business isn’t working.
So not only does he give you this hierarchy, but he also gives you a way to figure out which one you need to show up first. And then when you can move on. So, highly recommend this book, for sure. If you want to check it out, there’s a link in the show notes And again, feel free to steal and tweak these content plans, where members, or there is a difference between the plan and the strategy.
So whatever plan you’re putting in place, make sure you think about the strategy behind it first. I definitely think I’m going to add an episode about content strategy and how you can create it and use it to create your plan or maybe two episodes. Even. I’m going to add that to my ideas board, because I think that’s something that you guys will really like.
And don’t forget to go sign up for the Content Generator Challenge. I would love to see you inside. And until next time, I hope that you will go out and Uncomplicate your life and biz.
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