After Analysing 400+ Social Media Plans, This Is What You Need To Know

People that are spending the most time making the most money are making the most content. Direct correlation between how much content you make and how much money you make.

You have to have a form of long form content. Going into 2025, the business owners who successfully scale past 30k months, they all have a form of long form content.

Welcome to episode 69 of the Success School podcast. Today we are talking about what we've learned after analyzing over 400 social media plans in 2024. Steph, how you feeling? Second time around. Recording, Recording. This episode.

We have had technical difficulties, we have had quite the tech issues this morning. But we're here and we are so committed, we are so committed to bringing this to you. We do have our first guest, do.

Have a studio today.

Do you want to tell everyone who it is?

Welcome. Luna Frey. She is our daughter, 4 year old Rottweiler, IQ of 14, enjoys long, sleeps on the couch, eating a lot of food and farting.

She does love a good fart.

Welcome, Luna. So she may come into frame. So if you're not subscribed to YouTube and you want to see what she looks like, she's very big, she's quite fat and she's. She's well fed.

She's well fed. Sometimes she eats it up. The dog's food.

Food. Yes, she does.

Yeah.

But I'm actually holding a microphone today, guys. So if I sound like Bruce Buffer, that is the famous UFC presenter. It's time.

We have just finished that.

Yeah, we finished McMahon.

McMahon series.

Yeah, really good McMahon. It's like McDonald's McMahon.

I'm just trying to be more like Luna.

Yeah, more like Luna. Steph, do you want to kick us off? What's your personal win? So as we're changing orders on everything.

On this episode, so my personal update. Not a personal win. Personal update. Last night I had a dream. I had a dream about Alex and Layla Hormozy. Now it's not sexy one. No, not a sexy one. Not a sexy one. But we basically like weaseled our way or kind of like snuck into one of their conferences and like, I don't know, somehow we made friends with them and they were giving us advice. And it was funny because when I woke up this morning and I spoke to Tim about it, I had said the advice is fascinating because, you know, obviously that Layla and Alex didn't actually give us advice. And so who was it that was giving me advice?

Well, maybe they did.

It was my subconscious.

Oh.

So my subconscious in my dream was whispering to me to let go. It was whispering me to let go.

Welcome to the Woo Woo show.

Yep.

So what is it? What do you have to let go of?

Well, you know what I have to let go of? We have to, I have to let go of the way that things have been done so, so that we can create and path a new way forward with regard to very, very like, so it doesn't sound so woo Woo. Our social media strategy.

Next step, we're gonna stop making content. We're gonna manifest.

Yeah. We're just gonna sit here and meditate and you guys will witness it.

Yeah, that's the next level.

So that was me.

But how did that come to you?

Lesson of the week? Well, Laila basically just like kind of laughed at me in my dream and said, you know, at the end of the day like you're not doing enough and if you really want to take it to where you're trying to go and have the impact that you want to have, you're going to have to do a hell of a lot more. And you know, simple scales and complex fails. And that was kind of the message of my dream. I woke up this morning and I was ready to do some stuff different. Tim was rejoicing. Thank you Alex and Lalo for popping in and giving me that piece of advice.

I love that. So if you, if you resonate with that, let Steph know on Instagram. Let's, let's send her a dm if.

You have dreams about me. Yeah, I would love to know.

Yeah, she would love to know.

I would love to know. Tim, what's yours?

My lesson of the week. Well, it's not a lesson of the week, it's a personal update. Same as Steph. So officially the title of YouTuber now. So we have 223 subscribers on the successful YouTube account. We're killing it obviously. They are so famous and then when.

Does YouTube start paying you?

Yeah, I'm. It must, it must be soon. I'm giving so much value to the platform that they need to be paying me in abundance anyway. Up to 88 subscribers on my own account. The reason I did start is we do predict that long form content like a podcast or like YouTube will be a thing that separates brands going into 2025. So we're kind of getting a head starting that. 88 strong. I think Steph's at two 127 strong.

127 strong.

But yeah, we're moving four videos. Steph's got six. They're probably trainings from our client portal. So yeah, absolutely. Killing it. But anyway, we're on the YouTube wagon. So if you know us personally, please just refer to us as YouTubers and podcasters now because that's what we're at. But yeah, we're going to be making a play for that, a video a week and we're going to keep it really simple. I think like when you think about YouTube, a lot of people would think, oh, it has to be high value, high budget, high edits, like those type of things, high production. We're just going to keep it really simple. A couple of Google Slides, some presentations. Yeah, Great content, really actionable stuff. One a week is kind of our plan.

Totally.

And I guess the lesson here is you've got to start somewhere.

Yes.

You're not going to start with a million subscribers like Mr. Beast and you know, he didn't start.

With a million subscribers either.

You know, we are not really starting at zero. We have a bit of a run up with this.

But 88 subscribers.

88 subscribers. We're getting going.

But I think like on that, I think a lot of people do not start things because they're scared to look crappy to begin, you know, and I just think you're missing out on so much opportunity. Like you and I are so fine with being sucky to start and we just laugh about it like it's not perfect. And yeah, we're using Google Docs now and probably in three years time we'll be like, whoa, look at us back then, like with our high production value, hopefully more Mr. Beast, like you know, maybe potentially. And so I think like you don't have to have all the, the knobs dial but you just have to, you literally just have to start.

Yeah, let's maybe potentially completely move into our topic. So what are we talking about today?

Did I say potentially completely?

A lot. Okay, you said potentially maybe completely.

Today we have an upscale episode where we dive deep on a business topic and give you actionable tips, tools and hacks that you can use right away in your business. And we're very, very lucky to see a lot of the behind the scenes of social media content plans and ad strategies from businesses earning 10k a month all the way up to 5 million. Because we're in a couple of masterminds and they share this stuff with us, which is really cool. And obviously we see all of our clients go content plans as well. And so we thought that it would be super. Yeah, so we thought that we would like share some things that we see pretty often that potentially holding people Back some lessons we've learned from analyzing all of these content plans so that hopefully you guys can learn something too. So, Tim, do you want to kick us off?

Yeah. Lesson number one, People that are spending the most time making the most money are making the most content. Okay. Direct correlation between how much content you make and how much money you make. Okay.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people get these backwards, especially in the small business world. They spend so much time delivering their product or their service to their clients that they content and creating content and creating social media and YouTube and long form becomes an afterthought for people when it probably needs to be the other way around. Like, the first thing you need to do every day should probably be like, how am I going to make more content to build my brand, to build awareness, to bring people in, to help people know, like, and trust me. And then it becomes a lot easier to scale a service when you have an abundance of customers that are willing to do business with with you.

Absolutely. So let's say we're talking to the. I'm going to say solopreneur. When I say solopreneur, I'm probably going to say, like, you are running a business pretty much on your own. Maybe you have hopefully a VA helping you.

Yeah.

Honestly, anyone who's listening to this podcast, I don't care what stage you're at, you should have a VA to help you. So let's say you have a solopreneur. They're maybe making, let's say, 10k a month, maybe 15k a month, and they've got a VA helping them. And so 10, 15k a month. That means they have quite a few clients under their belt at this point.

Yeah.

How much time should they be spending on making content? And how would you recommend breaking that up into their week?

Yeah. So my first ever mentor, Sean Greeley from MPA Fitness, I remember the first call I ever got on with him, he was like, the. The guidelines for working on the business is 10 to 20 hours a week, and 80% of that should be spent making content or marketing. And I kind of thought to myself, that's a fucking lot of content or time marketing. And this was like 13 years ago.

Or something, back before social media even really had rise.

This guy's off his head. Yeah, no way I'm making that much. But now I'm like, cool, I kind of get it. So 80% of working on the business, I think, should be around making content. If that's one of your roles, to bring people into the company. What are your thoughts?

I did see a statistic the other day. A girl was trying to prove that making YouTube content, which takes her approximately 20 hours a month for one video, which blows my mind, was saying that it takes people about 10 to 20 hours a week to make their social media content. Is that too much time to spend on making content? You know, if you have a 40 hour work week, let's say, and you have to service your clients, where do you think the happy medium is?

I think there's. There's three parts to this question, not just two, three.

Good.

So there's making content. There's making content. So one is just doing it for the sake of doing and the other one's doing it well.

Right.

And then the other one's doing it well, but it taking way too long.

Yes.

So we've been in all three of those buckets in many times throughout our entrepreneurial career. But I think you need to make good content and you need to make a good quality and quantity of content. I think that is the key for it. I think people do spend too much time because they do overthink it and they don't actually have a structure or a plan to go about it. And I think sometimes like you need to look at it from an 80, 20 point of view. Like what are you actually doing that is creating the results in your business? I feel like you just need to be getting out there with high quality 8 out of 10 stuff doesn't need to be 10 out of 10 and the best at all times. And like I did drop on a podcast previously. I think a lot of social media or making content is it's how it looks versus actually what's actually in it.

Yeah, totally.

What do you think about.

Yeah, I agree. And I think that, you know, 10 hours a week would be probably a pretty sweet spot for someone taking it really seriously. If you're someone that's wanting to scale up past 30 plus 40 plus 50k months, then yeah, I do think that you need to be spending at least 10 hours a week on making content. I'm not talking about stitching reels together. Yeah, for 10 hours a week. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about writing, you know, great emails. We're talking about writing good, you know, videos to film. We're talking about making good podcasts, we're talking about potentially getting on some YouTube channels. We're talking about potentially getting on guest podcasts. Like there's a lot of ways to make Content that aren't just that. And you know, you can be really smart. Like you can cross post most content to most platforms. You don't have to be spending, you know, when we say make content, we don't. You're making three reels that take 10 hours. That's.

Yeah, it's far too long. It's a waste of time. Steph, do you want to give us lesson two?

Lesson number two, the business owners who successfully scale past 30k months, they all have a form of long form content. I don't want to be the person who's just banging this home, but I bang at home.

I think they need.

I think you need to hear it. Yeah, you have to have a form of long form content going into 20, 25. Yeah, just. It's just a non negotiable. I just really don't think that, especially if you're a personal brand, but even if you're not, people need to know who you are, what your brand story is, how you're different. And I think that it is the only way to really build an extreme amount of trust. Unless you want people to spend 100 days in your funnel waiting to buy from you. What was the statistic that ravi shared?

It's like 7, 4 1. So I don't even know what that even means. It was like they need to consume seven hours across four different platforms to have one purchase. To have one purchase.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so seven hours of content when you're making 30 second reels is tons.

Many, many don't make Steph.

Many many maths. It's very many maths and it's a lot of time. But it's seven hours across YouTube and podcasts where they can consume a lot back to back. I mean you could consume seven hours within a few days. And so I think that that's, you know, really where we're going. And I think the people who. And someone said, I think it was Ravi actually said, and this is someone that we've been learning a bit of about YouTube from.

Ravi.

Ravi. Ravi. Ravi.

Sorry.

Ravi. Ravi.

That's so Aussie.

Ravi.

Ravi, mate.

And he was saying that, yeah, it's hard and people don't start YouTube because it takes time. And he was like, well, that's exactly what makes YouTube so worth it, is because other people can't replicate that. Like they can replicate good copy, they can copy someone else's post, they could literally copy someone else's landing pages word for word, but they cannot copy your long form content. And so, yes, it takes a long time to build, you know, good rapport on something like a podcast or, you know, there's a high production value to what we're doing right now and there's a high production value to YouTube. And it does take time to build those and to understand it as a new marketing platform. But it's so worth it because most of your competitors won't bother to do it, which is why it's so powerful moving into 2025.

I agree.

Yeah. Lesson number three.

Lesson number three. And it is multiple posts per day. And I know a lot of people screech at this as soon as I say that, but, you know, people doing really well on social media doing multiple posts a day. Let me give you a mathematical example here. So let's say we post seven times a week and let's say that all factors are equated equally here. So it's good quality. It's to the specific ideal client, they want to see it, it gives them value. So imagine that. And imagine each post is seen by a thousand people. So you've got 7,000 and then we double it, we got 14,000. What's going to be better long term for your marketing? Is it going to be 14,000 people seeing your posts every week or is it going to be seven? Obviously it's the Volum game. And then all the, you know, maybe organic coaches out there are going to scream at me and be like, but it's all about quality. I get that it is about quality, but sometimes you can't beat quantity as well. So being in their face more, quote unquote in their face on social media is going to be a good thing for your brand. What do you think?

Yeah, views and impressions, like, people have to see your brand a certain amount of times. People have to experience you a certain amount of times. People have to read your thoughts a certain amount of times. And thank you for joining us, Luna. Luna's just joined us. They have to consume your stuff a lot of times. And so, yeah, I think it comes down to impressions. Like, the reason that that is even a metric that gets measured across all platforms is because impressions matter. Like the amount of times people see your brand, it matters. That's literally how you build a brand. So I think that multiple posts per day is something that they're all doing. And when we say they're all doing, we're talking about people who are making a lot of money using social media across multiple platforms. Yep, yep.

All right, take us into lesson four.

Lesson four is give, give, give. Do you want to teach where you learned this lesson?

Whenever anyone starts a business, I recommend getting in a networking group. Like I used to go to bni, business networking, whatever. And when you go in there, it's a bit of like a culty type thing and they give you like an induction and it's like a hazing type thing. And the one kind of lesson I really got from that whole like hazing induction process was givers gain. So at any point where you're networking or you're marketing or you're, you know, having a one to one chat with someone, you should go into the conversation or the relationship with the intention to give them as much value as possible because you will get back what you give. And they didn't say this, but the energy you put into the universe is reciprocated and comes back to you tenfold, usually. So this is manifesting show, manifesting school.

We are having manifesting school come out very soon for anyone who's interested. No, but it's true. And I think that this is why people say to me, people ask me recently, Steph, how do you guys hire such a players into your team so quickly? Like literally we put a job out up and within two days we're hired, they're onboarded, it's done. We've attracted the best person, the best candidate. We like win every game that we play in this world in that hiring space. Right. And the reason is because of your network. Yeah, it's always your network that delivers. And the reason your network delivers is because you are such a giver. And when I talk about Tim being a giver, like what I mean by that is that it doesn't matter who drops into your deal DMs, especially if you've known them for years. Most of the case these are people that you've known for years. If they need something, you're the first person to go out of your way to connect them. So whether that's they need something from us, like literally you had a one to one this week with a friend who's been a friend for a long time, who you know, you don't charge, you don't, you know, you don't say, hey, yeah, of course I'll do one to one like for a mate, you'll just do it.

Yeah.

And you give so much to people all the time. If someone's like, hey, I'm struggling with this, you're connecting with a person who can solve that problem. And so we call you a power connector. And the reason that You're a power connector. Is, is because you give and you do it without ever expecting anything back. But because you do it, you get a lot back.

Yeah, for sure.

And I think that there's a lot of people out there right now who think that if I give too much, people are going to take advantage of me or I can give too much away and no one's going to buy my stuff. And there is like no world of that. Like, if I look at all the people in, in our world right now who are making the most content, who are making the most money, they give, give, giving. There's freebies going out all the time. There's mask us going out at the time. They're, they're doing YouTube, they're doing all this stuff and they're just giving constant amounts of content and giving to their clients and really focusing on making sure that people are aware of how much value is in their world.

Yeah, for sure. I love that.

Point number five. Tim, take us through.

Yeah. So ads definitely need to be in your strategy. We've spoken about this on the podcast. We feel social media is going to move to a pay to play model in the future, which means these ad strategies that we use and suggest are going to be leveraged quite heavily going forward. I feel when I say we, I speak for both of us here. We. You need organic content for that branding piece. And then when people come and check you out, obviously you're going to tick all the boxes from a content point of view. But ads is usually what brings new eyeballs into our audiences, which is great. And if you're not adding new eyeballs to your audiences, you're going to be slowly dying. So I guess the major component of our marketing strategy at Success School is paid and we are bringing people in that fit the criteria. They are within age, demographic, they have the right jobs, they are coaches, consultants, agencies. We're bringing them in and then we're nurturing them with emails, content, long form and podcast. So if we look at it from like a high level funnel point of view, ads are at the top capturing people and then we're working people all the way to the bottom of the funnel. And bottom of the funnel for us is email driving them to an offer.

Yeah, absolutely. And our clients that are making the most money, that are running the best kind of, they're all running ads, obviously. What kind of ads are they running? What's working? Like what's kind of hot right now for ads? Obviously this changes all the time, but what are you seeing like, you know, if we look at the people who are making the most money through ads or getting the most emails collected or getting the cheapest leads. Maybe all of those things.

Yeah.

What kind of ads are they running?

So three ad strategies. The first one I call Follow me Funnel. So you're going to run five pieces of content, $5 a day each. You're going to let Facebook target whoever they find with this. You just want to call them out in the content. So if you're targeting coaches, call them out in the content, then you want to retarget anyone that's seen that or is an Instagram follower, Facebook follower on your email list with a VSL funnel. So VSL funnel is typically where you're teaching them how to do something in a certain time period and then at the end of it you're going to invite them on a call so you've attracted them into your audience. At the top, the follow me funnel, you've shown them that you know you're shit and you know what you're doing and then you've offered them to jump on a call. The third one is a lead magnet funnel. So essentially you're solving a problem for them and then you're showing that you are the expert and then you're retargeting them with emails or just sending an email sequence on top of that. So they're the top three. Follow me Funnel, VSL funnel and then a lead magnet funnel which we are going to nurture with email.

Yeah, absolutely. And to the question, yeah, totally. The reason that we run ads. Yes, New eyeballs and email addresses and emails where it's bottom of funnels where we make the most, it's where we make most money. So a lot of our clients make the most money. It's always worked, it will always work. But you need emails to send emails. So it's just such a no brainer.

I got a couple of follow up questions for you. Where did people go wrong with their content plan and their marketing? From what we've seen in successful like where do people go wrong in terms of attracting new people? Is it like they're overthinking it or is it they're not taking enough action or they are not reviewing if the stuff's even working. Like what do you think and where do you think they go wrong?

I think that they're not bringing enough new eyeballs into their world and the only way that organic is going to bring new eyeballs into your world is if you really spend a lot of time figuring out how to make that happen. It's possible, of course, people go viral all the time. But if you look at anyone who's gone viral, it's very rarely an accident unless it's gone. You gone viral for the wrong things. But it's usually you go viral and then you post a lot trying to figure out what works, trying to figure out what the hook is or what's, oh, this video got more likes or this video got more reach. Okay, this, this video got posted to more different eyeballs, new non followers. Right. And then they try and make more and more and more and more of that. If you are willing to play that game, you have to pay to play. Like if you're not willing, we're not willing, you and I are not willing to continue trying to go viral. And so we don't play the game and so we pay to play. We have constant growth in our audiences everywhere because we run ads. That's 90% of the reason why we have constant audience. So number one is they don't bring enough audience in. What do you reckon?

Yeah, I think follower growth and just not prioritizing it, it just becomes an afterthought for people.

Yeah, there's a lot of people who are posting like on the day still on the day.

Yeah, there's nothing scheduled, it's not planned, it's not structured. I think you will lose trust as a black brand if you do that and you are just missing days. And you know, I look at like people that I want to work with. I want to see them posting at least four times a week minimum. If, like, if I'm working with them in a business context, I want to see what they're about, I want to know the values, I want to know what they're about. I want to see that it's good quality, I want to see it's high quality. I want to see that it looks good. I think that's the major missing piece for me.

Totally. And I think think the other thing that I'll add to that is like if you are currently creating posts and posting them on the fly and you know that you shouldn't be, but you don't want to use a scheduling tool because it hurts your reach or whatever. Honestly, you're better off using a scheduling tool because at least it's going up. Do you know what I mean? Like if you are still waiting and on the fly creating content, like I think most entrepreneurs got into business to do the thing that they want to do. Most of that is not marketing. However, unfortunately, this is the game. And if you really want to grow your business, you are going to have to learn how to be a marketer. Yeah. Even if at some point you want to outsource that, you do have to learn how to be a marketer to be able to outsource it for sure.

All right, guys, that was a great episode. Please let us know. Send us a dm, either of us if you got something out of that podcast. As always, we're trying to get our subscriber count up, so make sure whatever platform you're on, you hit that subscribe button. Even maybe leave us a review. That would be incredible.

That'll be.

So, any final thoughts, Steph?

No. Thank you guys so much for listening. Please share the show and we'll see you next week.

Thanks, guys. That.