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The Social Media Content Buckets Strategy
Ahh, the social media content buckets strategy. It’s one of the most talked about, but least explained content strategies out there. So we’re going to dive into it – what it is, and why I don’t think it’s a very good strategy.
Instead, I highly encourage you to consider using themes when planning your social media content. There are 5 themes you can rotate through, and in today’s episode I’m covering what those are, how you can utilize them, and even what your calls to action should be for each theme type. If you’re constantly stuck wondering what in the world you should be posting about, today’s episode was made just for you.
Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- If you want your business to grow, effective marketing is crucial. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend a ton of time on your marketing – even if you’re a solopreneur. Do you dream of business growth, but aren’t gaining traction? Does the thought of tackling your marketing feel daunting? Or, do you understand the importance of effective marketing, but simply don’t have the time to get it done? There’s good news! Marketing doesn’t have to be so overwhelming, confusing, and complicated. Say goodbye to the confusion and complexity that has held you back, and say hello to a clear, actionable roadmap for business growth. In my book, Chasing Simple Marketing, I’ll take you on a journey to demystify marketing with simplicity as your guiding principle. You’ll walk away with a clear, concise, and personalized marketing strategy designed specifically for your entrepreneurial journey. You don’t need a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) or a background in business to tackle your marketing head-on thanks to the strategies and techniques in this book that deliver real results. No longer will marketing feel like an insurmountable mountain; instead, it will become an easily manageable and integral part of your business. Take your content from non-existent or inconsistent, to a true tool to grow your business by Chasing Simple Marketing. You can grab your own copy by heading to Amazon and searching for Chasing Simple Marketing, or you can hop over to amandawarfield.com/book/ to learn more about buying it for yourself.
- This week’s action step: For more ways to simplify your marketing strategy, be sure to preorder Chasing Simple Marketing!
- This week’s book recommendation: Chasing Simple Marketing by ME! Amanda Warfield
- Find me on Instagram and tell me you completed this week’s action step: @mrsamandawarfield
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*Just a heads up – the provided transcript is likely to not be 100% accurate
The bucket strategy is one of the most talked about, but least explained content strategies out there. So we’re gonna dive into it, what it is and why I don’t think it’s a very good strategy. Instead, I highly encourage you to consider using themes when planning your social media content. There are five themes you can rotate through, and in today’s episode, I’m covering what those are, how you can utilize them, and even what your calls to actions should be for each theme type.
If you’re constantly stuck wondering what in the world you should be posting about, today’s episode was made just for you. You’re listening to episode 168 of the Chasing Simple podcast, and I’m your host, Amanda Warfield. This episode was brought to you by my book Chasing Simple Marketing, and you can grab your own at amandawarfield.com/book.
How do I find time to create content without overwhelming myself? Where should I even be showing up in my marketing? How do I come up with fresh content ideas? Where should I be focusing my marketing efforts? What is lead generation anyways and how do I do it? Our launch is still a thing, and most importantly, how do I put it all together to market my business strategically?
Can I really grow my business without spending all of my time marketing? These are some of the questions that float around in your head when you think of marketing. Welcome friend. This is Chasing Simple where practical marketing strategy meets simplicity. I’m your host, Amanda Warfield, simplicity focused content marketing and launch strategist, speaker educator, and author of Chasing Simple Marketing.
I traded in my classroom lesson plans for helping creative entrepreneurs sustainably fit marketing into their business without it taking over their business. So that they have time to grow their business, take time off and live the life they dreamed about when they first decided to go out on their own.
When I’m working, you can find me working with one-on-one clients, such as the contract shop and Rebecca Rice Photography on their marketing strategy and copywriting, or helping my students simplify their marketing and launches. And when I’m not, you can find me spending time outside with my husband, Russell reading in our hammock watching Gamecocks boards traveling or forcing our cats to snuggle me.
If you feel overwhelmed by marketing, you aren’t alone. Many entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating, overwhelming, and simpy an obligation. They know they need it, but they don’t enjoy how easily it can suck up their time when what they really wanna be doing is the thing that they started their business to do.
Which is why I’m here to help make marketing simple and less time consuming so that you can spend less time on your marketing and more time growing your business and doing what you love. Each week offer you transparent conversations, actionable steps, and judgment free community to encourage and equip you.
So grab yourself a cup of coffee or whatever your drink of choices, and meet me here each week for love, support, practical tips and advice on uncomplicate, your marketing and business. Let’s do this entrepreneurship thing together, shall we? Really quickly, before we dive into this episode, I just have to share something that I’m really excited about with you.
My book, chasing Simple Marketing, is launching this July. I wrote this book for the business owner that stumbled into entrepreneurship because they were following their passion, but without that Master’s of Business Administration or that background in business, well, they find marketing. Overwhelming and frustrating.
Throughout these pages, I’m going to take you on a simplicity focus journey to improve your content marketing, and you’ll walk away with an actionable plan to simplify your marketing so that you can fit your marketing into your business without it taking over your business. To learn more about how to grab your own copy and even potentially get on the launch team, head over to amanda warfield.com/book.
I’ll see you there. So what is the bucket strategy? In all likelihood, if you’ve been around the online business space for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard of this before, but it’s essentially where you come up with five topics or buckets of topics that you rotate through in your content, particularly in your social media content.
And so you’ll talk about the topics in bucket one and then bucket two’s topics in the next post, and then a post after that, you’ll. Talk about bucket threes and then four and then five, and then once you’ve hit all five different buckets, you’ll go all the way back to bucket one and continue to rotate through.
That way you always know what you’re going to be talking about, and your audience kind of continually gets the same thing from you. The problem with this is that your business content gets lost in this shuffle, and there’s no real strategy behind it. You choose five different things and you talk about each of them on a rotational basis, but your content doesn’t lead anyone anywhere because there’s no journey for your audience to take, and you’re not consistently solving their problems.
Because typically what this strategy, what you’re doing is picking five topics that are. Things that you’re passionate about are things about you. A lot of people will do, you know, okay, my buckets are gardening and recipes and motherhood and travel and oh yeah, what my business about, which is.
Copywriting and all of these other things, while they’re a great way for your people to get to know you, because you’re talking about five different topics all along the same amount of time, you’re likely confusing your audience as far as what your experience is because you’re all over the map. Using buckets makes more sense.
If you’re in the content creator phase of your business journey where you’re just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, then it does wean. You’re further along and you’re trying to really showcase that you’re an expert in your field. It also tends to work better for people that have more influencer e type content, but when you are trying to showcase your expertise, It really just confuses your people because you’re talking about your expertise so little compared to how often you’re talking about all these different parts of what makes you you, and it gets lost in this building of a personal brand.
However, I do understand the appeal of buckets. It is a really simple way to make sure that you’re hitting all of the important parts of your business. And it’s a really easy way to come up with things to say for your social media content. My suggestion is that instead of having five topics that you rotate through, you implement five themes.
So these five themes will help you make sure that you’re creating different types. Of social media content, but you’re also able to make sure that you’re consistently showcasing your expertise. So the first one, first of the five Themes, entertainment. Now I already know, I, I know that there’s some of you because this would be Me Too, that’s going absolutely not.
I’m, I’m not entertaining. And you know, some people are naturally funny and outgoing and this type of post is a no-brainer for them. They can create entertaining content like nobody’s business. However, for those of you that are thinking absolutely not, no way, not me know how entertaining content doesn’t have to make someone laugh.
It doesn’t have to be funny. It simply has to grab their attention and make them curious. So, for example, I love time lapses of literally just about anything, cleaning, painting, working out. It could be the most mundane task in the world, and I love them. Those types of content pieces are always sure to make me pause on my scrolling and actually sit down and watch because I find them so entertaining.
So don’t feel like you need to be naturally funnier, outgoing for something to be entertaining. And these posts, they’re really great for letting your audience into your world and expressing who you are so that they can get to know you. Typically with an entertainment type post, your call to action is going to be to engage with the content in some way.
So leave a comment, share tag someone who should see this, you know. Engage with that piece of content in some way, shape, or form. But here’s the thing. Those personal bucket topics that we get told to use within this themed content, this would be a good place to implement some of those personal bucket topics.
So you’ve got five different buckets, or four different buckets, or however many personal buckets you wanna have. Let’s say five instead of. One in every five post being about gardening because that’s something you’re passionate about. One in every 25 will be about gardening, so it’ll still get talked about and people will still begin to understand that that’s something you’re passionate about, but it’s not going to distract from the rest of the content that is actually going to be showcasing your expertise.
Now the second content theme that you could implement would be a client or customer showcase. So in these, you’ll want to somehow showcase your expertise and what you do to help others by showcasing your clients and your customers in some way. So this can be through a testimonial that you share through talking about an experience you had with a client or a customer.
Or even just through talking about what it’s like to be a client of customer or if you’re sharing that journey. It also could be as simple as. Sharing about the client. You don’t even have to say anything other than, this is one of my clients and I want to like, and here’s what they do. You don’t have to talk a whole lot about how you help them.
Just by the nature of saying, Hey, this is one of my clients, and then showcasing them. You’re still letting people know who you help and how you help them. So for these, your call to action is typically going to be the next steps for how someone can work with you. Or even in those cases where you’re just showcasing the client to go follow the client and interact with them in some way.
But for most of these, what’s the next step for how they can work with you? Do they need to go to the link in your bio to look at your services page? Do they need to go to your shop and purchase a course? Do they need to leave a comment so that. You can send them the link to your calendar to hop on a quick call, whatever that next step is, that’s probably gonna be your call to action here.
The third themed post you wanna put in there is educational, and it’s exactly what it sounds like here. You want to. Educate your audience under area of expertise and how it is that you can solve their problems. These pieces can just be straight informational pieces, or they can lead back to your latest piece of long form content.
You can say, Hey, there’s more on the blog. There’s more on my latest podcast episode. These are also a great chance to throw out new ideas that you’ve been thinking of to see how they stick maybe for a potential future offer or a future piece of long form content. I like to do this a lot. Actually.
You’ll notice that I will, you’ll probably never notice because it’s so far apart, but I will start talking about a podcast episodes topic on social media. Before I ever even create the podcast episode about it, just to get the conversation going and kind of see where people are at with it, these educational pieces.
Y it’s sharing what you know and how you can solve their problems in any way, shape, or form that you can. And your call to action here will vary, but can be anything from asking them to share, to comment, to say for later, all the way to encouraging them to go look at the long form content that gives them more context and.
I will just say, because these types are so valuable, I tend to sprinkle these in a lot more than the others, so, Yes, you’ll rotate through these five themes, but it’s not a straight 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I often will do one educational, two educational, three educational, four educational, and then one educational two.
So I’m con consistently putting educational in there. I do this for myself and for my clients because it’s just such a great way to really showcase your expertise and how you can help. The fourth theme is engagement. The purpose behind an engagement post is to well boost your engagement, and this can be as simple as posing a question to your audience and encouraging their response, or they can be something as complex as stirring up controversy.
I had a client the other day, and I, I do not take credit for this. In any way, shape or form. She did this all on her own. But I had a client the other day post on her Instagram stories asking, she put up a series of polls and it was just kind of a this or that, this or that. And the very last one was, if you had to give up one thing for life, would you give up bread or adult relations?
Um, and it, to me, it was just the funniest thing and such a perfect example of. This is just for engagement. That is all that was. Not only would she have people, you know, engaging in all of the different polls on her stories, but then I know for a fact she had to have gotten so many comments about that because my immediate response was to instead of vote, it was to DM her.
And so then not only. Is she getting engagement and boosting her profile and boosting the engagement on her account, but she’s opening up the door for tons of conversations with people. So super well done. But no matter what direction you take these pieces of content, your call to action, it’s. Always going to be to have them engage in some way, typically by commenting.
But you can also encourage shares and saves. And then in Instagram stories, you’ve got all of those different engagements, questions and polls and all kinds of fun stuff that you can use to really encourage engagement. And this is one of those posts that I think, especially right now when we are. Not seeing a lot of engagement, we tend to also stop doing these and then it becomes a chicken or the egg situation.
Make sure you’re putting just engagement for the sake of engagement type post-op, because yes, we’re not seen as much as engagement as we’re used to, but also we will continue to see less and less if we’re not encouraging engagement. We’re not encouraging our people to engage with us. And then the fifth and final theme is promotional.
And here’s the one that most of us avoid, like the plague. The big ask in this kind of post you’re selling, you’re sharing about a free download that you’ve created, or you’re sharing about some sort of collaboration, like a summit or a bundle that you’re part of. Your call to action is going to be along the lines of whatever it is that you’re talking about in that post, whether it’s to apply, to work with you, to go buy a digital offer, to sign up for a seminar bundle, or to download your free opt-in.
You need to post these more than you think you do. You need to post ’em way more than your ego wants you to. You have to share exactly how someone can work with you or they will not know. The educational content theme that I said earlier, I use most. It’s so important. But if you never then take it to the big ask, then ask people to take the next step with you.
It’s not gonna do you any good because then you’ve got all of these people that know what you do, but have no idea how you do it, and have no idea how they can even work with you. So make sure you are putting in that promotional content. I try to make sure that within every. Five posts, there’s at least one big ask, and I try to make sure that at least every other week, one of them is a sale.
Whether it’s you’re selling an offer in a shop, or you’re telling someone to work with you, or whatever that may be. Every five, whether you’re talking, you know, five feed post or five stories, whatever that looks like, have at least one big ask, and one time it can be a freebie, but the next time it needs to be.
Selling and then it can be a free vegan, but then the next time it needs to be selling. You want to make sure you’re letting people know how they can work with you. So those five themes, again, entertainment. A client or customer showcase educational engagement and promotional. By rotating through these five themes, you’ll make sure to cover a variety of types of content and do everything from educating to building relationships to selling.
Without confusing your audience by talking about a wide range of topics, it should be noted that you don’t need to blindly rotate in this exact order over and over again. Like I said, you’ll want to ensure that you’re using a mix of all of these throughout the month, and again, you probably do need to add more promotional posts until the mix than you plan to now, your action step for this week.
For more ways to simplify your marketing strategy, be sure to go pre-order chasing simple marketing. You can either. Head over to amanda warfield.com/book or head straight to Amazon and just search Chase and Simple Marketing and go ahead and pre-order that everyone who pre-orders is going to get in the first chapter of the book sent to them already so that they can start reading.
And they’re also going to get my KPI spreadsheet template. This KPI spreadsheet is what I use for myself and also what I use for my clients to help make sure that we’re on track with our goals and to help inform our content marketing strategy. So it helps break down what your goals are and then the key performance indicators that tie back to those goals.
So for example, if you have a one-to-one offer that you are trying to book a certain number of. Well, it’s going to have a section for that one-to-one offer, and then underneath that it’s going to have a bunch of different key performance indicators that you should probably be tracking. Like how many people fill out your form, how many people book a call, how many people convert at the call, how many people, so on and so forth.
So I have that all broken down for you already, and you can get that for free just by pre-ordering, chasing simple marketing. If you purchase through Amazon, please be sure to forward me your receipt because Amazon doesn’t tell me who buys. What, so forward me your receipt so that I can see and so that I can get you those pre-order bonuses.
Again, either head to Amazon or head domain to warfield.com/book, and that is your action step for this week, and your book recommendation is Chasing Some Marketing, a crash course, and content marketing for showing up, saving time, and growing your business. Until next time, my friend. I hope that you’ll go out and uncomplicate your marketing and business.
Thank you so much for joining me here today, friend. You can find this episode show notes as well as all of the resources you need to simplify your marketing over@amandawarfield.com. If you liked what you heard here today, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you never missed an episode. And if you could take a moment to leave a rating and review, it would truly mean the world to me.
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