Speaker 1: If you've ever struggled with staying consistent with your content creation, you need a content calendar, my friend. And in today's episode, I have a brand new super hot template that I'm going to walk you through so that you get started with that first super important step. Let's get into it. All right, familia. So here we are inside our content calendar template. You can snag this free template in the link in description right below this video. So definitely check that out. And then the first step is really going here and understanding that you're going to be wanting to plan one month ahead of time, right? We're going to start with one month. If one month feels too much, then just start with one week. It's totally OK to just be one week ahead and work your way up. Eventually, I'd love for you to get to 90 days of content that's already planned and ideally batch created. But we don't always get there super quickly, right? We start baby steps. So baby step number one is making sure that you have the platforms that you're using right here. And we've made this super easy and interactive for you. So you can just go ahead and select the platforms that make sense for you. The ones that you are currently on and you can customize this to your heart's delight and content, really. So let's say that, you know, you're doing Instagram right here, right? So we have Instagram, Twitter. Maybe we're doing a blog or a podcast or some kind of long form content. This is maybe what that would look like. And so you want to go ahead and just be very specific with the content that you are creating. And I already have some ideas here prefilled for you. But I just want to show you what this could potentially look like. So let's say that for us, we're on Facebook or on Twitter, we're on Instagram or on Pinterest, and we are on YouTube. Now you have your social platforms. You can go ahead and add them for each week. And once you have these outlined and they're ready for you, you can go ahead. And step number two is to jump into the type of posts that you want to start creating. And so for this one, we like to call these content buckets. I actually have a really great blog post that I wrote like, guys, it's 2013. Ten years ago is when I wrote this blog post, but we kept it updated the last ten years. And it's the most popular blog post on our website. And for good reason. So part of that blog post, there's tons and tons of resources that are going to be in that post for you. But in this blog post, we have what our social content buckets could look like. And this is a really helpful visual just to kind of understand what you your content buckets and your content ideas could be. Now, keep in mind, this is going to depend on the individual social media channel that you're using. And so we want to go ahead and make those ideas or add those ideas right here at the type of post. This just kind of centers here and reminds you of like, OK, this is what I'm creating on Facebook versus what I'm creating on Twitter versus what I'm creating on my podcast. All these things are a little bit different. And so you want to add a little bit of strategy right here. This is a time where you can be creative, where you can add your own twist on things. And for us, let's say that Facebook really caters to things like, you know, memes and quotes and question and prompt starters. It's typically what gets a lot of engagement, in addition to, of course, short form video. And so we want to do, let's say, inspirational quotes, question starters and prompts on Facebook. Then with Twitter, we want to have like original thoughts, right? That's something that's important here. You can have retweets. Maybe you don't want to do original thoughts. Maybe you're just going to be adding here some some quotes and maybe you're going to be posting some fun facts, right? That's just an idea. Again, like, don't judge me over here. Like your Twitter strategy might be way more complex than this. But for someone who's just getting started, this is a really great starting point. And even for people who have been at it for a while, too. All right. So Instagram, let's say that, you know, you want to post inspirational quotes or IG stories for us. We mainly post reels. And these reels are from our long form videos. Right. So these are clips from our long form videos. And then we're always posting IG stories. And inside of these IG stories, we're going in and adding value, answering questions, sharing some of our clip videos. So it just varies, right, depending on the type of content you want to create, the type of platform that you're on. So lots of free reign here. If you want even more ideas and to dive deeper, definitely check out the blog post that accompanies this episode. OK, so obviously, questions, starters and prompts are not going to make sense for something like Pinterest. So we're going to want to go ahead and maybe we are posting a blog, just blogs on on Pinterest, as well as repinning content from other people. We want to curate content on Pinterest. We also want to create our own original content. And Pinterest does fabulous with blogs as well as like videos and podcasts, but in reformatted into blogs. OK. And then we have YouTube. And of course, we're not going to do new or existing blog. That doesn't make a lot of sense. But what does it this used to be a blog category? But what does make sense here is to, of course, add long form video and shorts. So we have our main content buckets and we are getting ready to write captions and start actually planning and creating some of our content. Now, one thing that's really important here is to keep in mind that no matter how these platforms change and evolve, let's say that you're watching this video two or three years down the road, every single platform here is customizable. So if shorts go away or maybe I don't know, whether is launching more video content than you want to customize this as you see fit. So the key here is to make it your own and make sure that you're creating this template in a way that helps facilitate your workflow, not that it hinders you or it makes you more stressed because that's not the point. All right. So now we're going into our captions and you can decide to go ahead and write the caption directly into the spreadsheet. It's what I recommend doing at the beginning because it keeps everything really simple and straight to the point. By the way, this is a ton of social media content for someone who's just getting started. I highly recommend selecting one long form platform, meaning YouTube podcast, a, you know, a video show, a blog, something that really builds your authority as an entrepreneur, as a creator, and then supplementing it with a supporting community platform, right? That's where your Facebook or your Twitter or your Facebook group or your LinkedIn or your Instagram, even, you know, platforms like TikTok, that's where they come in. And so that's something to think about as you're looking at this board. I don't want you to get stressed out that you have to be on all these platforms at once because you really do not. Okay. And so from here, we're just adding our captions, right? So let's say I want to post an inspirational quote and I want to add an entire caption around it, right? So I can pull in that inspirational quote that I want to add here. And I'm going to pause the video, find one that I like, and then add it here so that it's easier for you to follow along. All right. So I love this one by Aristotle and it says, be a free thinker and don't accept everything you hear as truth. Super timely, be critical and evaluate what you believe in. Now, one of the things that I do with this type of quote, you know, type of post or content bucket is I actually like highlighting a bunch of the books that I'm reading and pulling quotes from the actual books I read, whether it's business or marketing, the Bible, inspirational books, faith books, things that really move me and I want to share with my audience. And then I will add it here. Now, because we're kind of doing this on the fly, I just looked up a quote that resonated with me and you can easily just go in here and add something else right to the caption if you want to. Um, otherwise you could just leave it as is boom, ready to go. Then we can jump into actually creating the visual for this post. All right, great job. Now that you have an idea of what your caption is going to be, we're going to go ahead and create the visual for this particular post. And I love using a tool like Canva, but feel free to use whatever graphic tool that you enjoy. Now this goes a lot easier and a lot faster when you actually have templates like the ones that we sell on our shop. Shameless plug. But if you don't have this already, there's some really great ones that you can customize right here. So I'm going to go ahead and search for a quote and let's say that I like something like this. Of course I'm picking something ultra girly. That's how I roll. And then I'm just going to add the quote that I just found. By the way, this is the perfect thing to outsource to a VA once you hire one makes life a lot easier when it comes to content creation. All right, so we have our type of pose or our content buckets. We have our caption and we have our graphic, right? Super easy, super simple. You can decide to go ahead and download that graphic and add it to the spreadsheet. I think it's a lot faster just to go ahead and link where it is. So I'm just going to pop in my Canva link and then the next step is figuring out your post frequency, which is exactly what it sounds like. You're going to figure out when you're going to post on the different platforms that you're posting on or carrying content on. Now, again, going back to our blog posts, I just wanted to show you a little bit of a visual of what that might look like for you. And for us here we have, okay, let's say that we're going to be posting on Facebook one to three times a day on Twitter, six to 10 times a day, Pinterest three to 10 times a day. Obviously we don't have Google plus anymore, so we're not going to use that. But Instagram and YouTube, it just depends on the frequency and the strategy for each platform. Now, of course, we're going to be updating all of this to make more sense for you guys, but it's really important to just have an idea of what works on each platform and also how much content you can sustainably produce. Now you saw the frequencies, right, that are suggested right now. And I just wanted to remind you that this is why we want to do, you know, a little bit less when we're doing less, we're actually accomplishing more with our content creation. And that's why I highly, highly recommend, please, please, please start small, right? Select one platform that's long form because it's going to allow you to create so much more micro content for social media a lot faster. And then do one or max two, you know, complimentary community platforms where you can actually interact with your fans and followers and build that relationship more than that. And it gets a little crazy. All right. So back to our template here, this is what you're going to be selecting. So let's say that on Facebook, I'm going to be posting twice a day. These are maybe the times that I found work really well, and I'm going to keep adapting and changing this as my strategy gets more and more dialed in. And you want to do that for all your channels, right? For all your platforms that you're posting content on. And from here, I'm going to go ahead and select my ideal scheduling tool. Keep in mind, your content calendar template is just for you to have that big picture, that bird's eye view of what's happening in your business. Like, what are you going to be producing that week? What are you going to be creating that month? How does it align with your promotional schedule? And from there, you're going to be able to import it into a scheduling tool. Now, there's a ton of tools that we love and we've recommended on this channel. There's going to be linked episodes in the description as well as many blog posts that are related to this topic so that you can dive deeper into some of the tools that we love and we recommend. But if you haven't chosen a tool yet, the blog really just walks you through some really great ones. So for us, we have been fans of CoSchedule for a long time. We've been using CoSchedule since like 2014 and I have many videos on this channel. Well, maybe not many, but I have a couple videos on this channel where I walk you through how to create a really great scheduling workflow for your content. I love that CoSchedule integrates with WordPress. You can also use Trello. If you haven't seen my whole Trello video on how to actually plan your content calendar, you can check that out. You can link Trello with other tools to integrate with your scheduling platform of choice through things like Zapier and IFTT and if you're in our content calendar system program, you have recipes for all of these and it's super easy and seamless to set up. So it really just depends. You can again use, you know, Google Calendar if that's something that you like, but we can even go further than that and use tools like Hootsuite or let's see what other tool do we, Panoli or Later. There's so many awesome tools on the market. It's just about figuring out which one works the best for your platform and for your individual content workflow. All right, my friend, you did it. This is awesome. It's that simple. Setting up a content calendar does not need to be overwhelming or frustrating and now that you have a great template to get started with, you are on your way, my friend. Now, don't forget to download that template below this video. There's going to be a description and check out the accompanying blog post for even more resources, ideas, links to tools, links to all the things that we mentioned in this episode. I think you're really going to enjoy it. And hey, before you leave, I would love to hear from you. Comment below this video and let me know, number one, what kind of business do you run? And number two, what kind of content are you creating to market that business? I would love to get to know you better and that helps me create even more relatable content just for you. All right. I love you. I mean that and I will see you in the next episode. Un beso. Bye for now.