Speaker 1: It is no secret that I produce a metric poop ton of content every single week, month, year. And I know because of the questions that I get asked on the regular, that if you are watching anybody who puts content on the internet at a semi regular basis, you are wondering how in the freaking world they do it. How do they get it all done? How do they, you know, make sure they don't miss anything? How do they do it? Like how does it all get done? And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that I could never do it all without a solid system and strategy in place. So I wanted to walk you through that, what the strategy looks like, what my system looks like so that you can literally copy what I do and do for yourself and your content plan. Okay. So I actually have my trusty iPad with me today because a lot of what I want to talk about, I kind of need to visually show you and I think it's going to work best to like draw it out for you. So instead of like a word, a word board, instead of like a whiteboard or using my big post-it notes, we're going to go high tech today and use the iPad. There's a couple of things that we need to get out of the way and make sure we have in place first before we plan our content. And that is your who and your content pillars. So what I see a lot is people not being super clear on who their who is, who is the person who is going to want to see your content, consume your content is going to benefit from your content. Who is that person? You have to be really clear on who that person is, not just entrepreneurs or women or people who like the color blue, right? Like it has to be pretty specific. So for instance, my who are entrepreneurs who want to create content that sells their passive products for them. So that's way more than just entrepreneurs or business owners. And then your content pillars are four to five different categories of things that you want to talk about in your content that are relevant to the who, right? These content pillars are relevant to the person you're talking to. Now I need to talk for a second about content pillars because I want to make sure you really understand this. Let's say that you're wanting to teach people how to better light their YouTube videos. Like that is your who. You want to teach people who are on YouTube how to better light their videos. Light their videos. If that's all you ever talk about, one, your channel is going to become this thing where they come in for what they need and they get out. They're not going to be really interested in whatever else you're talking about. Two, you are going to get bored and three, you're not possibly going to catch people before they think they need you. So people don't know they need lighting help in their YouTube videos until they know they need lighting help in their YouTube videos. So there needs to be other pillars inside of your who, inside of your broad topic. So if that's the case, if you want to talk to YouTubers who need help lighting their videos, then your content pillars are obviously going to be lighting tutorials and obviously it needs to be adjacent. It needs to be liked by the same who, but we can get creative here. So lighting tutorials, it could be reviews of lighting things like reviews of different lives. It could be behind the scenes. So if you are talking to people who are on YouTube and need lighting help, you're also talking to people who are on YouTube. So they might want to see the behind the scenes of you filming your videos, the behind the scenes of how you set up, the behind the scenes of what you do in a day or a week, right? So behind the scenes can be a really great one. And then let's say that you actually have real life examples and that's going to be one of your pillars and you have four pillars. We're just not going to have a fifth one in this, in this example. Okay. So real life examples would be like, you know, you're, you're actually showing them how to do things here. But in real life examples, you're going to go to people's studios and help them figure out their lighting situations. That could be great content pillars. Okay. So you've got to figure out your who, and you've got to figure out your content pillars. So for me, for instance, like I said, I want to talk to entrepreneurs who want to create content that sells their like one to many passive type of product. And my content pillars are behind the scenes content strategy, content creation, productivity, and systems, which are one pillar and passive income. So those are my pillars. And when I'm thinking about creating content, I'm thinking about those pillars. I'm not constantly only going to do how to videos or only going to do passive income videos. I want to broaden my horizon a little bit, but the way you broaden it is to keep the same who in mind and to just change up the content a little bit. The next thing you need to keep in mind is that you want to have one main content creation platform and one secondary content creation platform. And I really want you to think about it this way. One main content creation platform. That is where you're really putting most of your efforts. And then one secondary where you can take the content that is created on the main platform and feed it into the secondary platform pretty easily. I don't ever want you to focus on two platforms at a time. There should always be one that is the priority and one that's there. And you want to think about, but it's kind of secondary. So if we're looking at these for an example of me, my main platform is YouTube and my secondary platform is Instagram. So you want to have one main platform, one secondary platform. You've got your who, you've got your content pillars, and you've got your platforms. Fourth, you actually need your topics. So if we're looking at number four, you need your topics, right? You need to come up with ideas for what your content is going to be about. How do you come up with those topics? First of all, always remember your content pillars. Always remember that your topics need to fit into those content pillars, right? And then as far as finding topics, you want to pick up on trends that are happening on the platform. So if you're on Instagram, if that's your main platform, is there a trending reel? Is there a trending sound? Like you're going to want to pay attention to trends, right? Same thing with YouTube or blogs or really anything. The second way you're going to come up with topics is to refer back to questions you've been asked or you see people who are your competitors or who have a similar who to you being asked. So if you're someone like me, I am asked questions on the daily. I guarantee I haven't had Instagram open for about three hours at this point because I've been filming and stuff. I guarantee if I opened Instagram, there would be a question in there that would make a good YouTube video for me or make a good post on Instagram. So oftentimes we're actually like our people are telling us what they want to see, what topics we should talk about with their questions. If you're not there yet, if you don't yet have a big enough audience or you're not creating content where you get questions, go to people who have a similar who to you and see what their people are asking them. You can look at YouTube comments, you can look at Instagram comments, you can look at all of these things and kind of see what people are asking them. Okay? So that's another way to come up with topics. The third way to come up with topics is to understand what your audience needs. And we're going to talk more about this one in a minute, but this really has more to do with creating content that is going to sell your own products and services. So at that point, you really have to be good at seeing what does my audience need to see before they're ready to buy from me. So to like round up what we need in place here, a who, content pillars, um, a primary and a secondary platform and then topics. A few things you need to keep in mind before I actually like show you how this all works on a content calendar is that the whole point of creating content is so that your content is working for you. And so if all you're ever doing is playing on trends and answering questions and you're not strategically thinking about how this content sells for you or how this content is going to grow your email list, then you're going to miss out on the opportunity that the content actually provided you. Keep a couple little rules of content in mind. The first rule is that about one in every four pieces of content should grow your email list or your income. Now, a disclaimer here or the exception to the rule is if you're creating multiple pieces of content per week, then one in four is going to be entirely too much. I would then say like once a week or maybe even once every two weeks, you're creating a piece of content that is going to grow your email list or your income. Okay? So for me as a YouTuber, if I am putting out eight videos a month, then somewhere in there there's going to be one or two pieces of content that grows my income or my email list. If I'm on Instagram and I'm posting a real every single day or I'm posting three times a week on Instagram, I might say like once every two weeks, I have a post that's really going to point people to my email list or to grow my income. So that's one rule you need to keep in mind as we look at the content calendar. The second one is that if you're launching anything, your content should be working for you. So if you're launching a product, launching a course, launching a challenge, a webinar or whatever, your content should be doing the footwork to get people in the door to that. So when you're planning out your content, not only are you planning out the fact that one of those pieces of content per month or whatever it works out to for you is going to grow your email list and your income, but you're also going to be planning out what that content looks like as you lead into launches or as you lead into paid things. Okay. So I just screenshotted a blank calendar of March of 2022 here, and we're going to use that to plan out the content calendar for me to show you what happens next. So you know the who, you know, the content pillars, you know, what is your main platform and what is your secondary? And by the way, we'll get to how those work together in just a minute. You know, all of that, you know, your topics, you know that you're going to try and make money and grow your email list with these, right? And now we actually need to plan it all out. So let's say that your main platform is YouTube like mine is, and every Tuesday you're releasing a new YouTube video. And I'm actually going to go into this first week of April that's showing down here, cause I think it'll make more sense. So every Tuesday you're releasing a new YouTube video. Let's also say that you have a secondary platform of Instagram and you want to post at least twice a week on Instagram. And your goal on Instagram is to post on Mondays and Fridays. Okay. So that's kind of messy, but we've got Mondays and Fridays Instagram in the, in the pink and Tuesdays are your YouTube videos in the yellow. Now, as we're planning this out, let's say that on April 8th, you are actually opening the doors to a product. You're actually launching something on this date here on April 8th. Let's say it's something that's going to open the doors on that day in the content pieces that happened before that launch. You really want to be gearing people up to be ready for whatever it is. So let's say you're going to do a webinar on how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube. That is the launch you're doing here. And so you really want to gear people up to being ready to want to learn about how to get their first 1000 subscribers. So maybe this YouTube video and this YouTube video are both kind of prepping for that. So this one might be start a YouTube channel today and it's just like a really easy, let's get started video. And then let's say this one is how to get your first 1000 subscribers in 30 days. Okay. So both of these videos are going towards people who would want to learn this. The people who would watch both of these videos would be interested in a webinar on how to get their first or next 1000 subscribers, right? Even though this video is how to get your first 1000 subscribers in 30 days, there's still more to be learned that I could talk about in this webinar. So I have two YouTube videos that are going to lead up to this launch. So those are leading up to my launch and those are growing my email list and my income because they are leading up to my launch. And I'm going to promote my webinar in them. I've kind of checked off my two boxes there. What you want to do is you want to plan your main content first. That's why I said this YouTube video, this YouTube video. Now I have three more, no, I'm sorry. I have four more YouTube videos leading up to those two I already have planned. Now I just need to go through my content pillars, my topics I have planned out and decide what is going in each one of these. Ideally it's the same who that's going to watch these that's going to want this. So you see how this all works together. All of these might be a little bit off in left field or over here and they're not quite as pointed as like how to start a YouTube channel to direct them to a webinar on how to get their first 1000 subscribers, but they're still talking to the same who, right? So you're going to plan out all of these based on the topics you already came up with, your content pillars, your who, all of that stuff. Then you can take your main pieces of content and turn that into multiple pieces of content for your secondary platform and even platforms beyond the secondary. So this one YouTube video could be split into two reels that are going to be posted on Instagram this week. Not only that, but it could be the same topic could be put on a carousel post on both of these days. The same thing here. We can use this YouTube video to make the Instagram content. You could quite literally use the YouTube video to make the content. Cut out a piece of the video that was really awesome. Make it vertical and turn it into a reel. You can do that. You can also just use the topic as a way to diversify your content. So let's say here on this one I'm talking about like how I plan out my content I might just use the talking points or the topics or even like a subset of the topics that I'm talking about in this video to create an informative post on Instagram that I want to post. So you use your main content to feed your secondary platform so that all of this is working together. So when we get down here to this launch strategy, you are using, so if I, if this video started YouTube channel today, then maybe I have five tips and this day I'm just going to post an informative post where I talk about the five things you need to do to start a YouTube channel today and in the caption I'm going to be like, Hey, I'm hosting a webinar. Go sign up for it. And then let's say I take a clip of it here and I turn it into a reel. Same thing in the caption. I say, Hey, I'm hosting a webinar. And then here, how to get your first 1000 subscribers in 30 days. Same thing. Maybe I take this one and I make it into a reel and I take this one, I make it into a post. So I'm going to reverse engineer my content based on anything that I'm launching and based on anywhere that I need to be promoting my own stuff or whatever. The other days that there needs to be content going out, I am rotating through the topics that I have figured out based on trends, questions I'm asked, what my audience needs to know and all of this fitting in my content pillars and the who. Now I'm going to take all of that that I planned out and I'm going to build it out in my actual content calendar in ClickUp, which by the way, if you've made it this far, I actually have a really fun content planner that's going to break all of this down for you and help you figure out like where your topics come in and what you need to be talking about. And I have a ClickUp template, Trello template and Google Sheets template to help you do all of this for yourself. And I have linked that below in the description. So if you're like, okay, Jessica, you've convinced me I need to figure all this out. I have all the stuff to help you. It's all down there. Okay? So next what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to go into ClickUp and plan all of this out. I showed it to you on the iPad because sometimes for me it's easier to kind of you know, look really far ahead and then work my way backwards and then go to ClickUp and put everything in finally. But you can start here. You could get one of those really big desk calendars and start in that place, but you really want to kind of reverse engineer, make sure your content fits around the things that you're launching and make sense with what you actually have going on in your business. Right? And then I'm going to go to ClickUp and I'm just going to put it all in there. So this is my actual YouTube calendar. So right now I'm filming this steal my content calendar strategy video and you can see what videos I have coming up that are all based on what I just told you about. So I just go in here on ClickUp and I add a task for the videos and then inside of those tasks is how I like outline everything. It's all there. And then if I want to make a reel or a post from one of these YouTube videos, I'll plan that out here as well. So what I do is I try not to be too batched out on my content anymore because I feel like you get a little too disconnected from your content and your audience and you really want to be able to pick up on trends when they're happening too. So if you're too batched out, that can really hurt you there. So I try not to be too batched out, but I'm usually a week to a couple of weeks out on my content. So when I have filming days in my calendar, I know exactly what YouTube videos I'm filming and then I don't have to think about what needs to go on Instagram, what reel needs to be done this week or whatever. I can literally use the topics that I'm going to release on YouTube that week as starting points for the content that I'm going to create on Instagram. So even if I'm not taking the actual video itself and turning it into a reel, I can take the topic and turn it into one. Okay. So I just pulled up in my phone, look how cracked it is by the way. Fun for me. But I just pulled up in my phone to look at reels on Instagram and the audio of Anna Delvey or the actor that played Anna Delvey on Inventing Anna on Netflix, which by the way is spectacular. The audio of her saying, I do not have time for this. I do not have time for you is going viral on Instagram and is a trending audio on Instagram. Instead of looking at that and trying to think about what topic I would like right across the screen to make sense for that audio, I can literally take the content I'm putting on YouTube this week and think about it in that frame of reference. Okay. So if I want to use that audio and I have a video on my calendar that's going live this week, it's all about how I saved my YouTube channel, how I took it from dying to not dying. Right? And maybe I don't want to take a clip of that and turn it into a reel, but I can take the idea of that and turn it into a reel. So that audio, I do not have time for this. I do not have time for you could be me talking to my YouTube analytics when they're like plummeting. Right? So the text across the screen might be when I see my YouTube channel plummeting and dying, I do not have time for this. I do not have time for you. That makes sense. So yes, I would encourage you to take the content you create for your main platform and actually turn it into content for your secondary platform, but you can also take the topic and turn them into content too. And it helps you not have to activate so much junk in the brain. You know what I mean? Okay. So I know that was a lot, but like I said, I've created that content planner and all of those templates that you can grab in the link in my description for you to hopefully help you figure this all out because once you have figured it out, all of this comes really naturally and will happen much, much easier than just trying to come up with topics week to week or day to day or time to time. Having a solid content calendar strategy in place and having a way that you plan your content that makes sense to your business and makes sense to what you're doing and makes sense to your secondary platform is going to be lifesaving. So I hope you learned a ton. I'm going to be honest here. This is my third time filming this video or I should say this is my third time trying to film this video because for some reason I got into it every single time and nothing made sense in my head. Like what I was trying to tell you did not feel like it was coming across and I hope that I came across okay this time because Lord knows I don't want to film this again, but if you do have questions, let me know in the comments below and until next time, bye y'all.