Content Marketing Strategy for 2023 | Time To Simplify Your Content Plan!

Last year, the social media landscape, I personally believe, made a major change. It wasn't just one thing, it was just an accumulation of a lot of things. And because of that and because of the way we've changed how we consume content as business owners, we have really got to change our strategies and our content marketing strategies if we want to continue using social platforms without wasting our time and seeing a return on our investment with our content marketing strategies. Did a little bit of digging and I went back to January 2022 to see what were the trends that everybody was talking about a year ago. And this article from Forbes back in January 2022 actually gives us 16 content marketing trends to be aware of in 2022. While there's no major surprises here, I do want to say my business has been built and thrived on organic social media content. Pretty much the bread and butter of my business growth has been this YouTube channel that you're watching this video on. So I really want to make sure the trends that I talk about when it comes to content marketing strategies are the things that I know because I'm going to tell you straight up, I'm not an expert in everything and if somebody does red flag, I'm going to talk to you about the content marketing strategies I've used and what I've seen work. So the way I'm breaking this down is I'm going to share with you the Trends predicted in 2022 that actually worked for me and then what trends that I'm going to implementing in 2023 based on those predictions. So up first in 2022, Forbes predicted guess what was trending video marketing. I feel like any business owner is well aware of video content and how important it is. I can literally stamp that trend for approval. Because guess what? My entire content marketing strategy hinges all on my weekly YouTube video. That's what allows me to create video content here on YouTube Re and even stories content on my Instagram account. Another trend that they predicted for 2022 was leveraging social media platforms. And like I said, my entire business has thrived on organic social media content. In fact, I haven't done the math yet for 2022, but in 2020 and 2021, only 13% of my business revenue was spent on paid ads. That means I've been growing my business every single year predominant leveraging social media platforms. So when we look at the predictions for 2022 from this Farbs article, the three that really stand out for me from 2022 is video marketing leveraging social media platforms and leading with empathy and value driven content. And what I can say here now, as we've gone through 2022, these were pretty much in line with trends that we saw happen in 2022. I mean, it was over the summer of 2022 that the CEO of Inst and actually stated Instagram was going to be focusing on more video. And he said, quote, even if Instagram itself makes no changes to the service, video content will naturally increase as more people choose to upload moving pictures rather than still images. So it's not like Instagram wanting to push video content. It is what us as consumers are consuming. We shifted the market. We wanted video content and that's why it continues to be a mainstay in any business owner's content marketing strategy. And I hate to break it to you, I've been talking about video content since 2016 and how it will remain king of content. And here we are seven years later and we're still talking about video marketing being a trend. Well, I honestly think it is a must, but we are still looking at video marketing as mission critical for any content marketing strategy you are building for your business when it comes to video content. I also need to tell you I've officially accepted reels. And I will tell you Reels has been a great opportunity to grow my audience and get in front of new people for paying $0 to do it. The thing is, I resisted reels for so long, probably for the same reason many of you are avoiding video because one I wanted to have a perfect reels strategy plan out mapped out in advance before I did it and 2 I wanted the reels to be perfect. Which is funny because I'm already here on YouTube doing content. You think it would be easy to just switch over to reels, but I felt like it was a new platform, it was a new way of doing content and I wanted to make sure I completely understood it and had the perfect strategy mapped out before I started. Then In August of 2022 I just ripped the band aid off and I challenged myself to post two reels every day in the month of August. It definitely helped grow and also prime my audience for a launch that I did in September where I released my signature program, Video Strategy Academy. I honestly believe because of the reels content that I did in addition to the YouTube content that I was doing, it helped me get to that six figure threshold of that launch in the fall of 2022. But the key to this video content actually ties into the third trend from 2022 that I want to talk about. And then we'll to 2023 trends leading with empathy and value driven content. There are two main points here when it comes to this trend that really stuck out to me over the past year, my content marketing strategy. So first I came to the realization that my YouTube channel traffic was really coming from YouTube search, which you would think isn't a bad thing because you hear people talking about ranking on YouTube. But the problem with search based traffic is I was making no connection with my viewer on the other end. And so the people that were predominantly watching my content were coming to get their question answered and piecing out. They weren't making a connection with me, they weren't wanting to learn more about me, learn more from me, want to work with me. And so it kind of led the content that I was creating on YouTube kind of valueless because people were watching it, cool. They got the answer and then they left. So that's when I started shifting to sharing more detailed content like I currently am, sharing more stories around why I did this, so that you can understand the bigger picture behind it. Which also led to me at the end of 2022, sharing private behind the scene vlogs. I created a separate email list and asked anybody if they wanted to see my private vlog that I would drop on Mondays. And I'm going to tell you, those vlogs got some of the best comments that I've ever gotten on a YouTube video because I was being real authentic. I actually did a few of those without any makeup on and I just sharing, you know, what I was feeling on a Monday morning, what was difficult the year before. And I really think that goes to show that us as consumers of content, we want something authentic. We want to connect with that person. We want to feel like we're listening to a friend when we are watching content. So let's talk about how these trends from 2022 are going to move into 2023 and evolve because it's still the beginning of the year and you're probably still trying to figure out what your content marketing strategy is going to be for 2023. Write the comment below it if you're still trying to figure out what your content marketing strategy will be for 2023. Because listen, if you don't have it all mapped out, I want us to show solidarity in the comments below that none of us all have this mapped out just yet. So go ahead, let's support each other and say it's me. So you know you aren't the only one without this strategy yet. So I did some research and the Marketers Insider group recently released an article that they will be the big trends for content marketing in 2023. Now, before you dig into all of these trends, you need to understand we can't do them all. I can't do them all with a team of three people helping me. You can't do them all, especially if you are a team of one. But what you can do as a team of one trying to work to consistent monthly income, trying to continue to grow your business, is pick one or two and dedicate your content marketing strategy around these trends. All right, so don't like freak out, overwhelm. Look at all these trends and think, how am I going to do this? This, this. Pick one or two. Seriously. I'm actually going to share with you the big three that I pulled from this article that I plan to implement in 2023 with my content marketing strategy. So I'm going to share this with you and then I'm going to share how I'm actually going to implement this. Because what good is a video telling you what I'm going to do if I'm not going to share with you how I'm going to do it? The first thing that I am going to focus on is diversified content brings in new audiences. I am million percent experiencing this right now on my YouTube channel. I'm here to say my YouTube channel is literally dead. I've mentioned this a few times before. It's been dying a slow and painful death. But the problem is that I haven't diversified my content here on my channel. I talk about YouTube all the time, every video. Because I know when I post a video about YouTube, it's one of my best videos. But here's the problem. I'm tired of talking about YouTube and how to grow on YouTube and my audience. Those of you that have been here for a while, you're tired of hearing me talk about YouTube as well. You know that I'm not just using YouTube to grow my business to over $700,000 in revenue last year. You want to know the other pieces that I'm doing to get to there. You know that YouTube is just a small sliver of my business strategy. And you want to hear more. You're tired of just hearing about YouTube. So this year I'm breaking the YouTube niche rul and cracking that niche egg, so to speak. And I'm going to be sharing what my audience wants to know. How am I creating content to lead people into my funnel what does my funnel look like? What does my Instagram strategy look like? How do I build courses? Everything that you are wondering about how I consistently grow my business outside of just YouTube. Because like I said, YouTube is teeny tiny percent of how I'm growing my business. So I do want to tell you if you're really interested in following this new content that I'm going to be sharing, specifically on how you can reach $10,000 monthly income in your business, how you can do it sustainably so that you're not burning out, and how you can do it consistently so you don't have this constant feast and famine mode when it comes to making money in your business. Do make sure you're subscribed to my channel and tap that bell notification so that you're notified as soon as my videos go live. Because I've already got the Nets six videos mapped out and we are diving deep into multiple strategies that I'm using that has grown my business. So you're not going to want to miss these the next trend is actually kind of ironic from somebody that just preached video for so long, but the trend is the written word speaks louder. I love video through and through, but the one thing that I need to work on because I feel I'm not good enough and we can talk about how that can root all back to junior year in high school when I thought I was a great writer and I loved writing and a teacher at the time told me I had bad style writing and it just, you know, affects you, changes the way you think about writing and just makes you hate writing forever and ever. But let's get back to writing content for your content marketing strategy. I'm going to break out of the mindset that I suck at writing and every single week I have blocked time for myself to write, write emails, write Instagram captions. These are the two big things that I'm working on. Writing and sharing more stories to make a connection with my audience. Now if you're wondering what am I writing for my emails again, that's why you're going to want to be subscribed. Because I have an entire video coming out over the next week or so sharing with you my specific email marketing strategy. But I do want to dive into another reason why I want to do more writing is because of a third trend from that article focusing on content experience. As business owners, we have to understand that people consume content differently and they enjoy different types of content on different platforms. One of the biggest lessons I think I took away from 2022 is just repurposing my YouTube videos on Instagram reels or TikTok isn't going to cut it. And what I mean by repurposing is just literally taking a clip out of my YouTube video and putting it up on Instagram. It just doesn't work. But after I'm done planning my YouTube video, I've used my viral video script template to write my YouTube videos and then write three short little scripts for an Instagram reel to shoot right after I'm done shooting this YouTube video. It literally takes me about a minute to maybe two minutes to shoot one reel in this format. And the success rate of these native reels is so much higher than the repurposed YouTube clips. And look, if I'm going to take the time to clip out 30 to 40 seconds from a YouTube video and it not really reach anybody, but if I can spend about two minutes doing a reel talking about the same content, only creating it specifically for the reels platform and get return on my investment like reaching more people, getting more comments, getting more followers, I'm absolutely going to do that. You can see here the difference between a repurposed YouTube clip and a native video where it's literally the same content. Just perform specifically for Instagram reels. There is one more thing to mention when it comes to creating content for each platform, specifically when it comes to reels. And again, I'm diving into my Instagram strategy in my next video, I believe. But you also want to be capitalizing on trends over on Instagram, but not over capitalizing on it. So I'm going to save the rest of my Instagram strategy for my next video. I do want to dive into it more because you can see how I use a trending song, this Megan Trainer song, to talk about and promote a workshop that I was hosting. But I spoke to it specifically to the pain points I knew my audience was having. It wasn't just to go viral. It was to get in front of the right people. And you can see while it had over 10,000 views in the comments, you can see how the right people were served this reel. So how am I implementing this new content marketing strategy for myself in 2023? First up, no surprise, YouTube will remain my number one. All of my content that goes out on any other platform will always start with a YouTube video. I'm also going to be upping my content here on YouTube for from one video a week to two videos a week. So if you caught on Wednesday, that is our new posting schedule. We'll be posting on Wednesday and Sunday. So if you caught on Sunday, my brand new Google Calendar video, that is our new posting schedule. It's going to be every Wednesday and Sunday and these videos are going to be meaty. You can see we're pretty long into this video right now. My video editor, I love you for getting through these, but I really want to share high value content with you. Not just sharing tips and tricks, but how you can think of ways to implement it in your business, in your way. How I'm finding time to do this is I do have a team that is helping me. I now have somebody who is running my YouTube production agency. Yes, we still have clients that we do full YouTube strategy and editing for, but I have an amazing person, Mia over there who is basically running that. I also now have a marketing director, Erica, who is helping me plan what posts go live, when and tracking whether that content is effective. So as we release this content, are we seeing more leads come into our email list? Are we seeing more clients reach out? Are we getting new clients inside of our 10k on replay program? So that leads me basically two weeks. Every single month I will alternate these that the time that I have to work will be focused on creating content. And if you watch that Google Calendar video, you know that I basically only have about two to three hours a day to focus on this kind of stuff. Stuff. Otherwise I'm taking calls, I'm talking to clients. So it's only about 10 hours a week every other week that I'm working on this content. So it is about 20 hours a month that I am working on creating content. But I love it. The next piece. My content marketing strategy is continuing to create reels. Our reels generally fall into three different categories and this all falls under a process that I teach to my coaching clients inside a 10K on replay called social cycles. Now if you want to learn more about my social cycles and work with me inside a 10k replay so you can start hitting consistent 10k months in your business, go to trina little.com forward/10k to apply to be one of my clients. So when we built out our initial social cycle, we realized there were three main categories of reels that really helped us grow. Those are education reels, trending reels and promotion reels which are so important we need to be promoting what we are selling. So my goal is to continue creating three to five reels every single week. Because after I'm done filming this YouTube video, I'm literally going to be shooting at least two reels based on the content that I shared in this video. The next thing I talked about was how am I going to implement more writing? So since my content all starts here with a YouTube script, which takes me about 90 minutes to really fill out, I can pull from that script that took me about 90 minutes. Like I said, two to three reels, an email newsletter, at least two Instagram carousels that people are either saving or sharing, and an outline for multiple Instagram stories throughout the week. This is honestly how you're going to be able to stay consistent with your content marketing strategy if you're looking at strategic ways to repurpose your content for the platform that you're putting content on. Now the question you may have, because I get this asked all the time, is but Trina, how do You Script your YouTube videos to do this and how do you know what to actually say in your reels? I have a brand new program being released on Monday, January 16 called Going Video and inside that program you're going to get everything that you need to follow this format that I talked about. Not only are you going to get my viral video script template, you're going to get my YouTube workflow, Asana Board, a list of all the equipment that I use to pull this off. I'm actually going to share with you a behind the scenes look at how I set this all up and how I film my reels. Plus my reels workflow as well. For just $37 you can grab that for a limited time at treanalittle.com forward/going video Like I mentioned in my next video, I'm going to deep dive into my Instagram strategy for 2023. What I'm posting, how do I know what I'm posting and a few other things that I'm doing to help grow my account, but more importantly how I'm getting more sales from Instagram. It will be released on Wednesday, January 18th or it's already here on the screen for you to watch next.