Without fail, one of the biggest things people tell me exhausts them in their business is coming up with content each and every month. It can be so time consuming and often feels like it’s unsustainable when ‘gurus’ out there are saying you need to be putting out 30+ pieces of content every day.

Don’t get me wrong, I love content. I think it’s a great way to build community, share your knowledge, support people at different levels in their business, and grow your confidence and messaging at the same time.

But it can also be a lot to feel like you’re shouting into the void and content creation is taking up all your time and not creating any tangible results.

• So in this episode, I’m going talking about:
• My thoughts on what the “gurus” say about consistency in your content. 
• Why nobody cares if you do or don’t post.
• How content is both important and unimportant for your business.
• And my step-by-step process for planning a month of content in about 30 minutes or less.

Listen to the episode here:

You can absolutely follow this process with nothing more than a pen and piece of paper or a Google doc. And if you’d like any more support and all the tools and templates that I use to plan, create, and repurpose my content, you can check out The Content Ecosystem.

Also mentioned in this episode is my FREE 30 Day Content Planner, which you can grab here. 

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

This is the Emerge + Expand podcast, episode number 3 and in this episode I’m going to walk you through how I plan out a month of content.

Hi and welcome to the podcast, I’m your host Katherine Mackenzie-Smith and today I’m going to share with you my start to finish steps to creating content for your business each month.

I’ll probably mention a few resources throughout this episode – the first one is The Content Ecosystem (you can check it out at thecontentecosystem.com). It’s my full toolkit with Trello boards, templates, and videos to walk you through this whole process from planning to creating and repurposing your content.

I also have a free 30 Day Content Planner that you can grab at thecontentecosystem.com/30

So in this episode I’m going to walk you through how I use these two tools to simplify and streamline my monthly content because i know this is something loads of you find takes a lot of time and energy and can sometimes feel really unsustainable.

I get it. Especially with so many platforms and all the different things we’re told we should be doing, right?!

First up, the world will not end if you don’t post content. I just want to start here because I really think that even though we’re constantly told consistency is key with content, it’s not really helpful, is it? In fact I think it actually creates more pressure and can become a real block in just getting stuff done.

Like if you don’t post for a week or a month, then it feels harder to get back to it.

But the reality is, only we notice. Nobody else is sitting around going, oh where’d Katherine go, she hasn’t posted for 3 days.

I always feel like that takes the pressure off, because nobody cares as much as we do.

Also, there are a million things more important than consistency. Like your mental health, your energy, and your potency – and by that I mean, if you’re posting just for the sake of it, it’s just not going to have the full essence of you and your incredible work behind it. It’s like a watered down, pushed out version.

SO if you’re someone who can only create when the energy is there, roll with it, friend. It’s going to have so much more impact and cut through the noise to connect with the right people when it comes from that place.

And in saying all that, forming some habits with our content can also really help. So even if it feels like no one is paying attention, you just don’t know. You also can’t control what anyone does with it, but there’s something really powerful in showing up for your work, honing your message and your confidence, and trusting that this is all building to something, even if you don’t know what yet.

Last week one of my clients posted on Instagram this story about how she used to listen to podcasts while she was driving to her job that she hated and she discovered a lifecoach who had a podcast and she was so inspired that she decided to book in a call with the host of the podcast and then became a coach herself and it literally changed her life.

I was that coach. And that story is from probably 6 or 7 years ago and I only heard it last week.

I’m not telling you this to be like, oh how great am i? But to remind you that we have no idea the impact our work has – and it’s not really our business. But we need to keep showing up and sharing anyway.

So, with that being said, as you’ll come to learn about me. I’m not binary on anything. I don’t believe there are rules to how much you SHOULD be creating or which platforms you have to be on.

This episode is not to tell you exactly how many times a week you need to post and what content to create.

I’m going to walk you through my planning process so you can take what works for you and try some new things out, get into some good habits, and repurpose as much as possible so your time can be spent doing more important things.

If you head to thecontentecosystem.com/30 and grab the planner, you’ll see that the first section is a bit of a big picture perspective – I highly recommend that you check in a few times a year with your goals, focus and mission to make sure it’s still aligned and that your daily, weekly, and monthly actions as well as your content and offers are all working towards that bigger plan.

And you may or may want to do that monthly but what I definitely do monthly is what I call a Soul CEO day – which we do regularly in the Emerge + Expand membership where you review the month and then plan out the new month.

And one part of that review is to start planning for the coming month what your goal or main focus is for the month, if you have a launch or offer you’re going to focus on, and any other key dates or events coming up for the month.

What does this have to do with content? Well I know most of us will just post on the fly – and that is totally fine – I’m a huge advocate for following the energy. But I also know that it really helps to have a framework, even if you don’t stick to it every month. If you start the month with a focus, you can keep adjusting your course as you need to, even if you miss a day or a week of posting.

So, I basically open a new Google doc and I write at the top of it my focus or goal for the month, the offer or launch, any calls to action – like downloading my free planner or signing up to a workshop.

Then I will write week 1, week 2, etc on the page. I’ll look at any key dates I have coming up and if I want to create content that leads specifically to them – such as a blog post that’s directly pointing people to a live event. I also look through my old content library dashboard and see if I‘ve created anything in the past 6-12 months that I could expand on in my longer form content – for example, this episode is directly linked to my freeplanner but also, I talked about this on a YouTube video earlier this year. I also look at my ideas dashboard that you get in The Content Ecosystem as well and see if there’s anything from across my content pillars that I want to include. I also keep track of any questions or comments I get across the month because I get loads of great content ideas from your questions as well!

If you haven’t thought about your main topics or your content pillars or categories, there’s a space in the planner to map that out.

You don’t have to do that, but I think it helps to give someone new an accurate picture of what you talk about and what they can expect from you if you vary the content across the month. And this goes ofr social media posts as well, in fact even more so, if you post 4 times a week on Instagram and they’re all about say meditation, someone who just stumbled upon you might not realise that you’re also a qualified reiki practitioner, and that you talk about other things as well. So it’s really helpful to vary your free content so people get the full picture in a snapshot and then can decide if they want to learn more from you.

So, once I’ve got my 4-5 ideas for the month, then I will jot down my social media and other content from there.

I’ll make a list of how many Instagram posts I want for the month, how many reels, how many newsletters, FB posts, etc.

Then I go back to the 4-5 pillar content ideas and work out how many times I can repurpose that content across the month and the different platforms, that takes up usually at least half of my month.

So that might look like my podcast episode or video becoming a blog post as well and my weekly newsletter. But then I might also create a reel, single post, carousel of each for Instagram which I will then cross post to Facebook, my Facebook group, and Linked in.

Then I’ll go back to my content archive and see if there’s any existing content that I can just repost to fill in some of the gaps, and also if there’s anything that was in one format that I’d like to repurpose. So I might have had a carousel which did quite well and that I can turn into a reel, single post, or even one of my pieces of pillar content.

Once I’ve got my full list mapped out of all the content I’m creating for the month, then I go back over and group everything together so then I know how much I need to write, record, film, and what graphics need to be created or updated.

And then I plan out across the month what I can batch or outsource, and what’s going to be done when.

Then, I add it all to my Monthly Content Board. Another Trello board that you get in The Content Ecosystem with the content archive and the ideas dashboard.

And then it’s just a case of sitting down to write my content, again, repurposing as much as I can from existing content or things I’ve created for my membership, group program, or written elsewhere.

This mkaes it SO much easier to not feel like I’m having to create from scratch every single month. At the end of the month, I then move all my content for the month into the archive so that it’s always there to give me ideas or to be repurposed later on into other content.

So that was a lot and it’s hard via audio because you can’t see the process so let me just recap it all.

At the start of the month, I work out my focus, my offer, and any calls to action or important dates I need to refer to in my content.

I sit down with just a pen and paper or a Google doc and I make a list of all the content I need across the month, across each platform. So that might be 4 videos, blog posts or podcast episodes, newsletters, if you’re creating longer form content like that. It might be 3-4 Instagram posts a week, and a weekly email to my list. NAd then I hae my groups as well. But I just jot it down and actually ave a template to just fill out each month.

Then I plan my content to lead directly into my offer or focus for the month, so it might be a specific episode or post that’s directing people to the offer or a launch activity like a free workshop. And then I go back through old content and my ideas dashboard to fill in any other content I want to create.

From there, I brainstorm how many different pieces of content I can create from those longer form pieces – so that’s newsletters that direct people to check those out, Instagram posts, group posts, Instagram stories, etc.

And then I go back through my content archive and pull out any old content that I can either repost as is, or turn into something else. So I might flesh out a caption from an old post and turn it into a carousel.

Then I pull together or highlight what needs to get done and schedule that in to be done. Once it’s created, I add it to my monthly content planner, schedule it in. ANd at the end of the month, everything ets moved to the archive to start fresh with a new month.

Now you don’t have to go into so much detail or create so much content. But it realy helps to organise it, have a plan, and when you’re in the creation zone, you don’t waste time and energy trying to work out what needs to be done, you just follow your plan, you acn outsource it to a VA or someone to do the graphics and scheduling part, and more than anything I recommend repurposing and reusing old content so you that you make the most of it.

So there you have it. That’s how I plan a month of content. It usually takes me about 30 minutes to plan it all out and the more you do it, the easier it gets.

If you want to get access to all the templates and Trello boards that I use, they are all in the The Content Ecosystem and I walk you through it all and help you work out what content you want to create that’s going to invite people to take the nex step to work with you so that your content is doing the work for you.

You can grab that at thecontentecosystem.com if that sounds like something that would help you! And if you have any questions at all,, please come over to Instagram and send me a DM @miss_kms. I love to help however I can and it also helps me with ideas for my content so it’s win-iwn!

To go back through these steps without having to listen again, you can grab the full transcript and recap at emergeandexpand.com/podcast003 in the next episode, I’ve got another interview in the Do Business Differently series, I can’t wait to share it with you so make sure you’re subscribed and I’ll catch you in the next one.