35: The No Stress Way to Plan a Years’ Worth of Content (in less than an hour)

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Welcome to the Course Creators MBA Podcast. I'm your host Destiny Kopp and in this podcast we're covering actionable tips to grow your online course business. But before I begin, I want to let you know that this episode is sponsored by my free Facebook and Instagram Ad Mini Workshop series which helps you launch a high converting ad campaign in five short days. You can sign up for the free workshop series by going to destiny cop.com and I will make sure that this link is in the show Notes and today we're talking about the no stress way to plan a year's worth of content in less than an hour. It is that time of year. It's time to put together your content and promotional calendar for the upcoming year. And this year I put together my yearly content plan and promotional calendar in less than an hour and I want to share my super simple process with you. And to help you with this I have created a free content planning system which is a good Google sheet to help you with this process. So make sure that you grab it as you go through this process and I will make sure that that link too is in the show notes. And let me explain what I mean by my content plan and promotional calendar. The type of content that I produce is my podcast which you're listening to now. Occasionally I do a blog and also social media. Sometimes I do a Facebook Live and occasionally I have a special opt in for the content to help grow my email list like I do with this podcast episode. You may be doing something different. You may be doing a weekly Facebook Live or YouTube video. And for my promotional calendar for the upcoming year I am promoting my Facebook ad consulting service, my free virtual bootcamp which is called the Funnel Cure, and I'm launching that in March of this year, and my paid client program, which is magic marketing for course creators. You may be promoting your online course or a service that you offer. I also want to point out that I know my audience well. I know exactly what they want to learn and the topics that interest them them the most. If you're a beginner and you're just getting to know your ideal client, you may need to do some research to understand their needs. And the best way to conduct this research is to ask them. You can send out a survey to your email list or you can just ask them on social media. Also, I am very clear on the goals for my content is to ask, educate my ideal client and inspire them to take action. And many online course creators, they get stuck in a process where they are super, super busy, but they're not working on what's important to grow their online course business. All of my content is focused on these topics with one goal in mind to help my audience sell their online course. Now let's jump into the process that I use to create my content plan and promotional calendar in less than an hour. And if you don't have your free content planning system, make sure that you get it now. Now step one. In step one, I want you to outline the dates you plan to publish your content. And this will not take you long. Five minutes probably at most. Now, for the dates that you publish your content, you can do this weekly, you can do it monthly, or whatever makes sense for your business. There are some influencers out there that say that you need to post or podcast weekly. I don't believe this is true. I don't want you to kill yourself and constantly be in content creation. There are benefits for no doubt to publishing a blog or podcast weekly. It gives you content to post on social media and also email to your list. However, I will be honest on the list that I'm on when that certain day comes around and I know that they're just emailing their weekly podcast episode, I generally hit delete immediately because I know that I can listen on my iPhone and when and if I want to. For you, I want you to focus on quality over quantity. The other thing I want to mention is that I have planned out my content by week for the entire year. Will I launch every single podcast episode or blog that I have listed on my plan? Probably not. I'm sure that I will change some things around. Maybe Skip a week here and there, but I'm going to follow it pretty closely. Again, this is a plan, but not everything is written in stone. Moving on to step two. In step two, I want you to fill in your promotional calendar and this is going to take you about five minutes. My promotional calendar drives my content plan. Why? Because depending on what type, what I'm promoting or selling during that month, I need to publish different types of content based on the buyer's journey. And I'm going to talk about it a little bit more in step four. For instance, next month I am running my evergreen sales funnel for my Facebook and Instagram ad consulting service online course creators who are ever interested in the service are evaluating different Facebook ads consultants and they are in the consideration stage of the buyer's journey, getting really close to that decision stage and content that I have planned for this upcoming month to promote that evergreen sales funnel is one of it is is your online course ready for Facebook ads and how to choose a Facebook ads consultant? Now do you see see how this content aligns with what I'm promoting next month, which is my Facebook ad consulting service. So for each month you are going to outline exactly what you're promoting or selling that month. Now moving on to step three. In step three, I want you to brainstorm content ideas. Now this is going to take you a little bit longer, probably about 30 minutes. And in this stage of the process, I use a Google sheet so you can use my content planning system to write down all of my content ideas. For me. I think I came up with around 65, so my goal is to create around 52 pieces of content so not all of them made the final cut. And if you need inspiration for your content ideas, what what I want you to do is to review podcasts and other blogs related to your content area. I don't want you to copy what someone else has done, but rather I want you to use it for ideas and ways that you can put your own personal touch on the content. For instance, let's assume that you help moms with budgeting and managing their finances. Some podcasts and blogs to take a look at for inspiration may be the Chris Hogan Show, Dave Ramsey or Rachel Cruz. And I want to give you a really hot tip here. So when you're in the launch or selling mode for your online course, I want you to consider content that moves your online course prospect towards making a decision. So think about this as you're coming up with content ideas. So examples for this type of content would include an Ask Me anything type of podcast or a Facebook Live. You could do an interview with a successful client or a podcast and just talk about how you helped them. So that is the difference between a more awareness stage type post where you're just talking about, you know, high level information. When you're moving into the decision days, you're getting into helping someone make a decision to buy your online course. So in this 30 minutes, anything goes, I want you to write down all possible ideas for your content plan. Now moving on to step four. And in step four, you are going to organize your content based on the buyer's journey. And this is going to take you approximately 10 minutes. And if you're not familiar with the buyer's journey, let me explain it a little bit. So the buyer's journey is a step by step process that people go through when making a purchase decision. So in the first step or in the awareness stage, they become aware that they have an issue, but they're not clearly understanding what the issue is and they're working to define the problem. So they're just kind of gathering information, if you would. So they're in the awareness stage. Next in the consideration stage, they're going to, they've defined the problem, they know what the problem is and they're going to start researching options to solve that problem. And in the final step, which is the decision stage, they know how they're going to solve the problem, but they're working to choose a solution. They're looking at brands, they're looking at vendors to figure out who they are going to purchase from. Examples of content for the awareness stage is information that your ideal client would be researching on Google or on Pinterest as it relates to your expertise area. For me, this would include any type of content related to Facebook or Instagram ads or anything related to online course sales funnels and how to sell an online course. Just to give you some examples, here are some of the awareness stage type of content that I have planned for the upcoming year. One is five essential tools for your online course. Sales funnel, how to set your Facebook ads budget, the formula for a sales page that converts who you should target in your Facebook ad campaign, and choosing the best Facebook ad campaign objectives. So that'll give you some examples of some awareness type content. Now in the consideration stage, your prospect has defined the problem that they need to solve and they are in the process of evaluating options and trying to figure out how they're going to solve for that problem or migrate. So in this stage, your content needs to help them understand how they can solve problems and by seeking help and what kind of help that they need. So examples of this type of content that I published during the consideration stage includes, and I gave you some examples earlier, how to choose a Facebook ads consultant and using a self liquidating funnel to pay for your Facebook ads, what to focus on in your online course business and what's an evergreen sales funnel and why you need one. So for the decision stage, your content is going to focus on answering questions about your program like through a Facebook Live or through a podcast. It's also a great time to focus on highlighting a case study or a client interview testimonial. And in this stage, in the decision stage, you are answering object objections and you are also highlighting why you are the best person to help them solve their problem or achieve their results. Now in the final step, step five, you will determine the type of content you will publish. And this is going to take you about five minutes, excuse me, about around 10 minutes I would say. And in the last 10 minutes I want you to outline the type of content. So let's talk about this a little bit more. For example, if you're doing a client interview testimonial, will this be a podcast? Will this be a Facebook Live? So in my plan, here's a list of the type of content I will publish this upcoming year. It may be blogs. It may I may do the content as a podcast. I may do both podcast and a blog. I may do social media posts and generally I would do that for all of my content. I may do a Facebook Live, I may do a free opt in to go along with that blog or podcast. Other content options include, you know, YouTube, you could do an Instagram Live or other type of video. The other thing I want to mention is I'm not publishing all of this content every single week. Some weeks I may only publish a podcast and a social media post. In other weeks it may be a blog post, podcast, social media and an opt in. So I may do all of it. The Bonus Another thing I want to mention to you or a hot tip here, if you are interviewing guests for podcast or Facebook Live, add a column in your spreadsheet for that guest speaker. So let's just say like for an example, in one of the podcasts that I have planned this next year talks about mindset. So I added a column in there to go out and find a mindset expert. So that will give me some time and you know, a few months before I want to publish that episode, I need to start reaching out to get that mindset expert. So there you go. That is my super simple five step process. I use to plan out my entire year's worth of content you to help take my audience on the buyer's journey. And when I went through this process I did all of this in less than an hour. And if you haven't grabbed it, make sure that you grab your free content planning system to help you with planning your yearly content marketing plan. The no Stress Way Course Creators, thank you so much for joining us today. If you have any question about Facebook or Instagram ads or or your online course sales funnel, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or DM me on Facebook or Instagram. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Would love for you to rate and review the podcast on itunes or your favorite podcast platform and show us some love there. Have a great rest of your day. Bye for now.