Are you feeling like you're in the content planning? Messy middle, like things aren't necessarily terrible, they could be better when it comes to planning your content, or maybe are feeling like, Oh, I am kind of flying by the seat of my pants. Well, I wanted to do a replay of our episode 126 that came out in 2022. And in this episode, I am sharing five of my top content planning tips. So you're going to learn tools, tactics to save you time, how to establish and refine your content pillars, and how to create content that converts. You're also going to learn for Formula strategies for your blog post titles to make sure they get clicked on. So if you've been creating blog post titles, you're feeling a little iffy there. Then I've got some formulas for you. So this episode is jam packed with information and one that I wanted to resurface to the top and get it back in front of you to listen if you haven't already or to re listen, because it is full of gems that is going to help you for you know we're almost at the end of quarter one, we're going into quarter two. So let's get our content planned for quarter two together. This podcast is brought to you by the profitable blogger society, a mentorship program that gives bloggers direction for increasing their income and growing their brand to thrive together dot blog slash Pb S to learn more and enroll today. Welcome to the Thrive Podcast. I'm prepare your host and blogging coach here to help you take your brand to the next level. At thrive, we're dedicated to bringing bloggers and influencers tactics, strategies, and behind the scenes info from the best in the business. We know that you have a big vision for your brand and life. And we're here to support you with blogging and social media tutorials, workshops, a community and of course, this podcast, just head to thrive together dot blog for all the latest tools. If you're ready to grow your brand and looking for education and encouragement, then you've come to the right place. Now let's get ready to thrive. Hey blogging babes. Welcome back to another episode. Happy January Happy New Year, everyone. We are in it, we are in the New Year, which looks like looking over everything that is to come and planning out what we want to make happen this year. And so we've talked in the past a couple episodes back about looking at everything that happened in the last year doing that evaluation, and really determining what you want to make happen this year for your business. All right. So if you haven't listened to that episode, go back and listen to it, do the homework, do all the things that you need to do to be able to reflect and grow this year instead of repeating some of those past mistakes that you may have made. Now, the awesome thing about this time is that you're able to really look at the entire year. And even if you're listening to this episode, in the middle of the year, maybe you found it in September, whenever it may be, you're still able to look at an entire year from whatever month end date you're looking you're in right now as you're listening to this, you're able to look at an entire year and determine what type of content am I going to release for the next 12 months. So today, we are going to cover five different content planning tips. And the I'm going to walk you through each of these quick little tips to just help you as you're sitting down with that fresh piece of paper. Maybe it's a brand new planner, or maybe you have found a online tool that you use and love to plan your content in. And we're just going to look at the year as a whole and figure out what type of content we're going to release and win. Now this doesn't have to be hyper specific, but it is really good to at least have something kind of penciled in for a majority of the calendar year. Because as you guys know, it just seems like everything goes by so fast. And when we're in it, and we're busy. Life happens, things happen. Somebody gets sick. You have to shift a work schedule. You have to take care of something you didn't plan on vacations, all these different things. Some of them we can plan for like maybe vacations or weddings or anything fun and happy and exciting like that. And then sometimes there's things that are unexpected, right and so when we content Unlike this, and when we just even gently have an idea of what's going to happen, our stress levels will go down, first of all, and then when something does occur, we're like, it's okay. I've got a plan, right. So step number one is to have a favorite tool that you use for organizing your content plan. Now, for me, I use online tools for this. So I love to use Asana, and Google business. So that means like the Google Docs, the Google Spreadsheet, things like that. Those are two of my favorite planning tools online. Other ones that I have used before and love, but I'm not currently using our Trello. And also Evernote. I think Evernote is a really cool place to capture blog post ideas, especially as you're out and about because you can also have the app on your phone. And so if you think of an idea, you can quickly just jot it down in Evernote. And you can pull it up on your desktop later, when you want to import it into, you know, whatever tool that you'd like to use for organizing everything. So that is tip number one is just get a favorite tool that you love and commit to using. Oftentimes what can happen, especially when you're first getting started, is you'll try out different tools. And you won't commit completely right like you don't use it as often as you should to give it that full try, right. And so you only look at it when you want the month. And then it's like, oh, I didn't do any of that. Right? I can't be the only one that this has happened to. So make sure it's something that you're looking at and using. On a daily basis, make sure you know all of these pretty much have an app that you can pull up on your phone, if you're not on your laptop every single day, you can still pull those up and skim through things and just kind of remind yourself, oh, yeah, that was what I was going to talk about this week, which is just going to make it easier on yourself, the more you use it, and the more you put it in there, it's going to make it so much easier for yourself in the long run. So that's what I use for online tools for organizing. And then I also have a paper planner, you guys know, if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you know that I am obsessed with my golden coil planner. It's 100% customizable, and I pick the layout and everything that works best for my brain. And so that's what I love about it. And so I then used a paper planner every single day. And that's where I put my like daily tasks or meetings, appointments, things that I have to do is more in there. But an online tool is just for your big vision, big looking at things, typing things out really quick linking to other docs, anything you might need articles, and so forth images. For organizing, it would be really hard for me personally to use a paper planner for that, because I think content is also evolving and changing and moving around. And so it'd be a lot of erasing and moving things constantly. So
online tool makes it just a lot easier for me personally. But regardless, you need to just find what works best for you. And what works best for me is probably maybe not what works best for your brain. I think everybody works differently. So just figure out what you love. All right, step number, or tip number two, is to look at the holidays and big events for each quarter. Now I go into this really in depth in our yearly editorial scheduling system. It's a class that you guys can purchase and watch. If you want more information on that head to the show notes. Otherwise thrive together dot blog slash Yes. And there I really dive into like how to count plan out your content for an entire year in just two hours. It's really fun course and just helps. So so much and just solidifying what you're going to do. But one of the tips in there that I talked about, is looking at the holidays and big events for each quarter. So if it I don't think it matters what niche you are, I think at some point, either a holiday or a big event that happens during the year can dictate your content. So whether you are a home decor blogger, or a food blogger, fashion blogger, I think there are different events that we plan for and share content around it with our audience. So the first thing is just to make note of when all those are so like for instance in January through March quarter one And we've got things like New Year's Valentine's. Mardi Gras St. Patrick's Day. And so just thinking in your head, Oh, yeah. Do I plan any content around any of those types of holidays? I'm thinking in q2, April through June, do you plan content around things like Easter? Or Mother's Day? In July through September, q3, do you plan anything around the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale, or Amazon Prime Day, may be back to school or Fashion Week. And then q4, of course, we've got things like Halloween, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, so look at the year as a whole and those things, and that's where I suggest starting with your content planning. You can kind of see how like, oh, yeah, I could really go through every month. And just make a note, like, hey, this month, this week, I'm gonna want to talk about fall decor, or I'm gonna want to share a pumpkin recipe, right? You can kind of predict those type of things. And often we just forget like, oh, yeah, I just need to look at the year as a whole go through each week. Is there anything specific happening to my entire audience that they might be interested in? Let me go ahead and fill those in. And that right there is just going to help you start filling in your content. This podcast is sponsored by flow desk, my favorite email marketing tool for bloggers. It's no secret around here that I'm in love and obsessed with flow desk. There's lots of reasons, but here are some main ones I think you'll like. First, it's easy to use. There is nothing confusing about this platform at all. It's the most user friendly email marketing platform I have ever used. And I've tried a ton of them. Second, it allows you to send gorgeous emails to your audience effortlessly. They have amazing templates and endless customization. So you can make your emails match your brand and be the most aesthetic email your audience has ever received. And what more could you want as a blogger, easy to use, and it's gorgeous, done and done? Well third, with flow desk, you can get unlimited contacts and unlimited emails, they do not increase the price when you grow your list. How amazing is that. But I have to throw in two bonus reasons because I'm obsessed. The first is that you can now sell through checkout. So if you've been wanting to make money by selling your own digital products, or anything else, now you can do it all within FLOTUS. And bonus Reason number two, they've given me a special link. So you can take 50% off, just go to thrive together dot blog slash flow desk, and you'll get to test it out for free for 30 days and then your 50% off code will automatically be applied for you just head to thrive together dot blog slash flow desk to get started. Tip number two is your content pillars. Now when you have your content pillars decided this is going to help you so so much in planning your content. So I'm going to give you an example. But I just want to say first, if you don't have your content pillars decided or if you don't feel really solid in them to really sit down and maybe even sit down with a friend or jump in the Facebook group Thrive blogging community. Or if you're a part of the profitable blogger society head in there and be like, hey, I want to brainstorm my content pillars with somebody, Can somebody give me feedback? Or here's kind of what I'm thinking. But I'd love to get your ideas on it. And can I give you feedback on yours, right? We're all community here helping each other grow. So here's my example. Let's say your niche is home organization. And within that you have four pillars. Maybe pillar one is organizing tools. Pillar two is printables for helping you organize. Pillar three is demonstrations. And your pillar for for home organization is upkeep. Now, let's say you release one blog post a week, you can create a blog post for each pillar each month. Right? So now, when you look at your entire here, you only have to come up with 12 blog post ideas for each content pillar, and you have your entire year of content planned out, right? So you only need to come up with if you blog want released one blog post a week and you have four pillars. Then if you're you only have to come up with 12 post ideas for organizing tools 12 post ideas for printables helping you organize 12 long posts for demonstrations and 12 for appcake upkeep. And I'm willing to bet that it would be super easy for you to write down 12 ideas under each pillar, you probably already have those ideas written down somewhere and some other magical ideas in your head that you've been meaning to write down. So you can kind of step back and see, oh, wow, this would be really helpful and easy in writing out almost my entire year of planning this content. So how many content pillars Do you have? And again, jump in one of our Facebook groups, if you need help figuring that out, or making sure that you know, you feel really solid about it.
Okay, tip
number four, are writing content that is writing content that converts. So just keeping this in mind as you are planning your content. The first thing within this tip is right for your audience, and not for yourself. And that may seem like oh, well, yes, of course. But when you're really looking at your content, just make sure that how is this going to serve my audience? How are how is this going to speak to them. Ultimately, we always like to hear things and follow things that relate to us. And that make us laugh, or that educators teach us something are super highly relatable, those are things that we kind of gravitate towards, right. And so I think of like, funny, you know, Instagram accounts that I follow, like 30, A F, and it's just funny little memes, or tweets, or things like that, that are super relatable. And now I'm seeing them pop up in my feed all the time, because I engage with them constantly, right? So just remember, right for your audience, and always keep them in mind. The second thing underneath that is identify pain points and things that you can teach your audience or help them with. So if you are that home organization, blogger, what are things that you can teach and help them with? If you're a food blogger, then that just means, you know, sharing recipes, but then also, how can you share just how to make that simpler? Or maybe somebody doesn't know a certain technique? How can you teach that? Is that a blog post in and of itself? Or is that a real or something else that you post on social media? Just kind of go through and identify things. And here's what happens with me. And where I, you guys might notice, like, I try to ask questions quite a bit in our blogging group on Facebook, because I want to always make sure that I am answering questions that you guys have, right? And because what can happen with me is I'm like, Oh, that's so basic. Everybody knows this already. Maybe I feel like I've talked about it a bunch before. Or I've just feel like, oh, everyone knows it. But that's because I've been in the blogging world and this online space for over 10 years. Which is crazy. And I don't really understand how that works. Because I'm not that old. Right? But you know what I'm saying, like, you don't realize that things that you take for granted. And things that you're like, Oh, well, everybody knows that already. Because it just becomes second nature to you. That that's something because you're so immersed in your niche. And in what you do that it doesn't come second nature to everybody else. And so there truly are so many things that you can share with your audience. And it doesn't have to be like an actual, like pain point. But it could just be like, another example could be like a travel blogger, and you're like, Oh, well, everybody already knows to go to these five places, if you want
the best photo of the city.
Well, for somebody new coming in, or just in general, like I think of like, one of our favorite places to go here in Minnesota. To me, I feel like everybody in Minnesota should have been there by now. And so whenever I come across somebody, I'm like, oh, have you been here? And they're like, No, and they've lived here their entire lives. I'm like, Wait, I've only lived here for three years. And I'm obsessed with this place. I go all like every single year. How have you not been? No, like I just didn't even you know, I don't know enough about it. I didn't even know it was something I needed to go into. Right? So there's there's going to be moments like that, where you think, Oh, this is common knowledge. This is something everybody knows, but it's truly not. So identifying them is kind of that second stepped within this tip, right? And then the third thing there is addressing them. So when you address things that are going on for them personally, you know you're on the right track. And yes, your audience likes to hear personal life updates and things about you. But ultimately, they're looking at how your story relates to them. So when you're writing for your audience, when you're identifying these pain points, how can you relate all of this back to them? Right? If you're teaching something in the kitchen, if you're teaching where to go take photos, if you're teaching how to style something, how does it all relate back to them. And that's the constant that's always underlying, and it should be underlying whenever you're creating your content. And when you help them with something or when they feel like you know them, right, like I talked about the funny Instagram account. That's when raving fans are created. And that's when your content will really start to convert more. So to wrap this tip up, before creating any piece of content, always think, How can I make that one person think that I created this just for them, and then addressing their needs or their situation?
Alright, my last content
planning tip for this episode is blog post titles that convert. So whenever you may feel like you're stuck on what to use for your blog post title, or you feel like your audiences are responding to them. I've got four different categories with examples to help you step up your game. And don't worry, if you are driving or washing dishes and can't write these down, you can head to our shownotes thrive together dot blog slash podcast to get this list. Alright, so those four different categories, and it might give you an example for each one is,
the first one is lists. Lists, list lists are
amazing and not not super quick, but can be quick things for you to just jot down quickly and then fill in as you go. So an example of this would be number of questions I asked before,
blank
number of places to see this different lists of things that you can share. Then the next one is how to or what, or why. So exam two examples here would be how to start, like, so maybe it's how to start organizing your home to let's get a little bit more specific than that. But you know what I mean? How To Start A Podcast how to start organizing your kitchen. All right, or another example could be what no one tells you about this insert, subject here. And that can definitely be something where like, I feel like a lot of people should know this, but Maybe nobody's talking about this enough. It could be a place that you go and visit. It could be some like if you're a mom, blogger, it could be about what no one tells you about lunchtime, but no one tells you about naps, what no one tells you about starting a fitness journey. Right? I could come up with we could come up with something for every single niche there. So that's another title idea. The third category is resources and guides. So a complete guide to insert your niche here, a cheat sheet to link to never underestimate how those are going to attract your audience. Especially when you put things out there on Pinterest, when you really work on your keywords there. Things like that are going to grab people's attention and make them click on it because you're like, oh, I can get all of my information about this. In this post. I'm going to click on that one. And then the last category is a fun posts. So an example could be my biggest mistake with on time. I'm getting redundant here but my biggest mistake with
shopping at Nordstrom and then the next example could be ways to unexpectedly
step up your game. Ways to unexpectedly something yours Something so ways to unexpectedly organize your junk dorm waste, can you tell it's January and I'm like home organization and travel are like at the top of my list right now. So think of those different categories as you're writing blog post titles, because there is kind of a formula that comes with it. And these four here are truly ones that are going to convert are going to attract your audience and ones that they're going to respond to. There is a method here like a lot of times people want like will just tell me exactly how to do it give me the tools. Here it is, these are ones that are proven to work consistently. So they are one more time lists, how to or what why resources and guides and fun posts. And we have a blog post with more of this information Joe again, just head to thrive together dot blog slash podcast for the show notes and we'll link to things there. Alright, so those are my five content planning tips for you guys. Today we're keeping this episode short and sweet but powerful. And I hope this helps come and let us know in the blogging community thrive blogging community over on Facebook, what your struggles or pain points are with content planning or just if you want to brainstorm anything that is what the group is there for. So don't be shy don't be afraid. Start that post I will be there to responded to respond to it no matter what. So that's all I've got for you guys today for this episode. But we will see you back here as always next Thursday for a brand new episode. Thanks so much for listening. You can find all of the notes from today's podcast at thrive together dot blog slash podcast. Make sure you connect with us over on Instagram at thrive together blog and join our Facebook community to get supported by like minded bloggers and influencers. Just search Thrive blogger community on Facebook. And if you're loving this podcast, be sure to share it with a friend. Hit that subscribe button and leave us review so even more bloggers can get the support they need to grow. Until next time, keep thriving.
