Content Calendar Mistakes that will Burn You Out FAST

Not all content calendars are created equally. In fact, most people will never be able to follow a content calendar because of some major mistakes I see time and time again when they set them up. I'm going to walk you through five common mistakes I see so many of my clients make when they are building out their content calendar. And then I'm going to tell you how you can avoid these mistakes so you can follow your content plan with success and not burn yourself out. The first major mistake is deciding to be on too many platforms. I know we have fomo. I know it seems like we should be on Instagram and X and Snapchat and Pinterest and blogging and email. But if you are a team of one or you even have a virtual assistant, it is going to be not only impossible to create and reproduce that amount of content, but for you to keep up with that content. Because if you are creating content for this platforms, you need to engage on those platforms. You can't post and ghost. But I know we hear all the time from the gurus that we need to repurpose and be on every single platform. But what I have found, not only in my business, but what I've seen time and time again, is when you are repurposing content everywhere, the quality of your content goes down and the effectiveness of your content diminishes as well. And I'm going to tell you, if you try to be on every single platform, you will without a doubt burn out. So what should you do? I highly encourage you. In fact, if I could go back when I started my business, this is exactly what I would do. Pick one platform. Now, I will say not all platforms are created equally. I would pick a platform that your content has longevity. Not TikTok, not Instagram either. I would say blogging, podcasting, YouTube especially. These pieces of content are more long form, evergreen content. They're going to live longer, they're going to be more searchable and having longer form content is going to increase conversion rates because people can get a sense of who you are in your teaching styles. I would stop and think how do I like creating content? Do I like talking through my content on a podcast? Do I like writing like blogging? Or am I good on video? So I always feel like my writing isn't the best. I feel like I can get across my personality in the style of teaching that I provide my clients with video. Then once you know what your hub content, so I like to call it my hub or my main piece of content every single week you can add layers. You can pick a secondary platform for you to build community or for you to test things out on. My secondary platform is Instagram and it allows me to get on stories, share more about me as a human, build that connection through more personal branding, test different styles of videos or topics on Instagram as well. And Instagram just allows you to open up the conversation in DMs. I'm absolutely having conversations in YouTube comments, but Instagram is more of that personal connection. When you're building your content plan, you first want to think what is going to be my main piece of content every single week that can live for me for weeks, in years. Then potentially, if you can, what would be your secondary platform? How would you take your primary piece of content and then repurpose it in the right way? We're going to talk about in a minute on a secondary platform. The next big mistake that I see is not blocking time to create and produce the content. You have a content calendar. You know you want a video to go out or a podcast to go out every single week. You know you then want to do a carousel post and you want to do two reels. But are you blocking time into your schedule to actually create these? You honestly need to treat content production like a dentist appointment, like a doctor's appointment. It has got to be on your calendar and time blocked off that you can't see fill that time in. You can't decide to push it back because if you aren't blocking time to create the content, you're never going to be able to implement your content calendar. I would encourage you when you're mapping out what you're posting each week, also mapping out when you're creating that content to post. And with something like YouTube videos, you need to think about the script writing or the video game plan writing process. You want to think about the filming process and the editing process and you've got to block that in otherwise you're not going to be able to keep up with your content calendar. I have found for me, production or creating content is easiest for me to follow when it's a routine. So the current routine that I follow is every other Tuesday and my focus time, which I talk about in my Google Calendar video right here and how I block out my Google Calendar every day. I have two hours of focus time in the morning and so every other Tuesday I dedicate that time to filling out my video game plan. And then on Wednesdays I will take that focus time to then film content because I'm primarily on YouTube. It will be filming YouTube videos. And I will say, as I am filming YouTube videos, I'm also grabbing B roll for reels. So my phone set up right over here that is recording me filming this so I can add that as a reel. And so you want to think about as I am filming, how can I kind of get more than two birds with one stone? And then I will upload my videos and send it to an editing agency. So the editing agency is editing my Wednesday videos. But since I've recently kind of up my posting schedule here on YouTube to test something out, I've also been editing my Sundays and my Monday videos. And so I do have to dedicate about, I would say about an hour and a half to then edit my videos as well. So every other week, Tuesday scripting, Wednesday filming, Thursday editing. And if I do not have that time blocked off or I let somebody book something during that time, it will not get done and I will not get my content posted. So you have to consider that as well when you are making your content calendar. Another major mistake I see is planning too far in advance. How many times have you seen a webinar or a reel or a workshop about planning an entire year's worth of content? It sounds great, sit down and maybe one week be done with content production and creation for an entire year. But this is unrealistic. You're going to end up wasting your time when you try to sit down and plan a year's worth of content. I'm going to bet within three months what you want to talk about, what is trending, what you maybe are offering is going to change. And all of that time you spent planning a year's worth of content basically wasted because you got to start all over. Or maybe you just need that flexibility to be creative. I know if I would have sat down in January and planned out all my content for this year, half of the videos that I've created this year would have never happened. So you've got to leave yourself that flexibility to to be creative. But what I like to do is plan my content calendar every quarter. So basically every 90 days when I sit down to determine what am I promoting over the next 90 days will determine what my content is going to be. And I also have to feel good or I guess feel a vibe on that content as well. Because if I'm not excited to talk about that, then I'm not going to want to talk about it or it's just not going to connect with you guys and it's going to Fall flat here. I go over my 90 day planning routine in this video right here so you can see how I use that process to then match out my content calendar. But I will tell you one thing that helps me create my content quicker is I do have an entire year's worth of YouTube content ideas. Now, it's not solidified. It is not in the series or the weeks that I want to publish it. But I've done the research. I solidified what topics are going to be best for me to attract my best audience here on YouTube. So when I sit down every other Tuesday to come up with my video game plan, I already have the main topics at hand and I don't have to spend time researching what those videos are going to be. Now, if you want to see how you could build out your year's worth of YouTube content ideas so you're not wasting your time and that research process every time you need to create content, I will show you exactly how to do this in my next live Profit per View workshop. It is 90 plus minutes. I'd say save two hours for it because I do have an open Q and A at the end of this workshop to answer any specific questions that you have. But I tell you exactly, exactly how to ensure you're building a content plan here on YouTube that is going to attract the people who are ready to buy from you. Look, if you're creating beginner content here on YouTube, you're never going to see sales or leads from YouTube because most of the people who are ready to buy from you are not beginners and they're never going to see that beginner content. So I walk through exactly how to determine who the right person is here on YouTube, how to use the YouTube search data to solidify what video that you should create and how to create series. So you're making binge worthy content here on YouTube which feeds the algorithm what it wants and it warms up your lead to ultimately say, done, I'm in. How do I work with her? If you want to see how that is done, go to trina little.com ppv to save your seat in the next live workshop. Moving right along to the next big mistake that I see people make with their content calendar is forgetting to sell. Let's stop a moment and think about why are we creating content? Most of us aren't content creators, most of us aren't influencers. We're trying to get people to buy our courses, our digital product, work with us one on one, right? Ultimately, we're trying to Grow our audience, get in front of more people who will want to buy from us, who will help generate revenue in our business. I see clients sit down and they plan out all of this content and I say, okay, what are we selling that month or what are we promoting that month? Are you building your email list and pushing a lead magnet to get people on your email list? Are you doing a flash sale to get people to buy your product during a certain amount of time where it's on, on sale? How are you using this content plan to grow your business, not your social media numbers? That's not going to pay the bills. How are you getting people either to buy your product, submit an application to work with you, or get them on your email list so you can sell them later on? I'm going to go back to that quarterly planning video again because one of the key elements I walk my clients through when we look at our 90 day plan, what are we promoting each month? Yes, each month. Month. Now, each month we're not going to be promoting a massive launch, but what are we doing each month to take people from social media, whether YouTube or Instagram, to get them on our email list or to get them to buy something? Because we have to ensure our content we are creating is going to generate revenue to our business. And if we don't talk about the products or the services that we have that they can buy from us, they're never going to know what they can buy or that they can sign up to work with us. Right? So we have to be loud and ensure. We're talking about that in our content calendar. Now that you're looking at your content calendar, right? We got your pillar pieces of content. We've got maybe that secondary piece of content. We know we're planning 90 days at a time. Now you want to look at your 90 days and think, okay, how is this content selling something, promoting something, helping people get on my email list? This is probably one of the most overlooked steps in one of the biggest mistakes I see when it comes to building out content calendars and it's not reviewing and analyzing your past content, I think it's the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So if you're posting YouTube videos every single week and you're like, why am I not growing? Why am I not getting more views? Or you're posting reels, you're like, why can't I get more than 100 views? Why can't I get people to comment? And you just keep Doing the same thing. That's the definition of insanity. And I see this so frequently when I work with my one on one clients in my coaching program. They come to me with their YouTube channel. I'm like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm posting every week and nothing is growing. And I say, well, have you looked at your click through rates? How have you been able to increase your click through rates this month? Have you looked at your audience retention? How are you tweaking the way you deliver your content based on your audience retention? What about end screen clicks? Are you getting people to binge watch your content by having a solid call to action from the end of your video to the next video? What about what are your Google Analytics saying? Are you getting people from YouTube over to your website, over to your sales page? And if we don't take the time to or take a pause to do this every single month, which I know is hard because we have so many things on our to do list, we have so many things we need to get done in addition to creating content. But if we don't look at the data that we are provided and make the changes to see actual growth, instead of staying stuck in a rut, we will stay in that rut. This is such an important piece of seeing growth on YouTube channel that I audit my clients YouTube channels. Anytime that they want me to, they just send in a request. I get in the back end of their YouTube channel. I dig around. Okay, here's your audience retention and here's where I think that you can improve. All right, your click through rate is a little bit low. Why don't we try changing out this thumbnail for something like this? And I will do this for every single one of my clients as many times as they need to. Because if we aren't making changes, we are not going to be able to see the growth that we want on YouTube. And the same thing for Instagram. You need to be looking at the metrics that really matter on Instagram as well if you're trying to reach more people there. This is something that I've been perfecting and tweaking and changing creating this marketing calendar. And we've recently decided to allow you all to download my marketing calendar, standard operating procedure for totally free. This is something we should probably charge over $100 for. But you're going to see exactly how I do my marketing calendar much more detailed. You're going to get the template for how to use it inside Asana. You're also going to get my reels production process when I create reels and also my promotions calendar. So how I link in what I'm selling, what I'm promoting within my content calendar. You can grab that for totally free for a limited time@trina little.com forward sl marketing and if you want to see how I implement or set up a color coded content calendar like this inside of my asana. Click the video that's on your screen right now and I will do a complete walkthrough on how to set this up. See you in that video.