Mastering Marketing Strategy: The Power of Consistent Weekly Content | EP158

Are you ready to ramp up your marketing game and accelerate your business growth? We've got the perfect episode for you. Join me,  as we dive into the essential role of weekly content in your marketing strategy. We'll unpack the potency of consistency and the magic of evergreen content, regularly updated to keep it fresh and relevant. Harness the power of a well-planned schedule, building audience engagement and fueling your business expansion like never before.

We'll also take a deep look into the crucial aspects of a well-defined content strategy. Discover how personalising content can stir emotional links with your customers, and how an editorial calendar can act as a sales catalyst. We'll debate the delicate balance between selling and nurturing, and delve into why it's so vital to your business. Lastly, we'll guide you through the intriguing world of content change, assessing its effectiveness, weighing the risks and ensuring it continues to align with your evolving business objectives. Tune in for a marketing strategy revolution, powered by the consistency of weekly content.

Let me know if you have changed or are thinking of changing your weekly content over on insta @donna_eade_

Quote of the Week
"Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing." — Rebecca Lieb

Access the Class HERE

www.donnaeade.com

Chapters

• 0:00 The Importance of consistent weekly content
• 12:24 Creating a well defined content strategy
• 20:13 Navigagting change in weekly content

Transcript

Donna Eade: 0:38

You're listening to the Mindset in Action podcast, bringing you the map to grow and streamline your business in 2023I'm Donna Eade, your go-to gal for all things podcasting, planning and productivity and I'll be bringing you all that plus Mindset Goodness from experts with knowledge to share. Let's make 2023 the year of success in your business. Content is the atomic particle of all digital marketing. Rebecca Leib. All welcome back to the podcast. Everybody, I am so excited to have you here for yet another episode of the Mindset in Action podcast. So this week, we are going to be talking about content. Now, I have spoken about the importance of weekly content before, but I think it's important to keep revisiting these things so that we can make sure that we are up to date with information and that we can work with any changes that are happening, and changes that are happening is something that I want to emphasize this week on the podcast. So you may have been doing weekly content for a long time in your business, but is that weekly content still working for you? So we are going to take a little dive into that. So, before we get started on changing our weekly content, I want to talk to you a little bit about the importance of creating regular content. So, I have said it before, weekly content is a crucial part of my marketing strategy and I think it should be an important part of yours too. By having weekly content, you can market your business again and again, and again. And the great thing about a weekly piece of content is that you can utilize it in so many different ways across all of the different platforms that you market your business on. So you can take a blog post and you can break it down into a post for every day of the week, for your social media, for example. Or you can take a podcast and you can take snippets out of it for your stories or for a reel for your social media. You can take a video and do the same thing. So there are lots of different ways that you can utilize a weekly piece of content that can actually get much more use out of it, and it's not just a one time thing. So you shared it for the week, but you can still share it again at another time. So it is not just about sharing it once and then forgetting about it. It is a evergreen piece of content. So, even if you go in and you update it. That's when it kind of gets replaced. So if you have got a blog post on, for example, I'll use the wedding industry as an example because it's an easy go to for me. So maybe you are a wedding photographer, like I used to be, and you have done a blog on the seven most important questions to ask your wedding photographer before you book them. You may do an update on that based on the fact that we have had COVID and now there are different things in place that you may want to consider, because there are micro weddings, there are different rules and regulations that different venues have put in place since COVID and they may not have changed back, and all sorts of things like that. So, for example, I know that there is a restaurant that I go to regularly. It's not a fancy pants restaurant, it's a pub restaurant, but they are one of these types of pubs where you go up to the counter to order your food and then you go sit down and then they bring you your food. However, they were just walk in, sit down, go up, order and since COVID they went to a booking system so you had to book a table. I mean, you used to be able to book a table. So if you were a big party you would book a table, but they would encourage you to book a table for big parties, but other than that you could just go down, find a table, place your order, eat your food. Now if you haven't booked, they are likely to turn you away. They basically are a booking restaurant now. So it's really bizarre to go in, have to stay at stand there, see if you can get a table, if you haven't booked or get your booking booked table, and then you go up to the bar and order your food. It's not table service, so it's a little bit of a juxtaposition. But there are changes that people made during COVID that have continued post COVID. So you may be able to do an updated blog post on the seven questions that you think would be relevant for somebody to ask a photographer in this post COVID era, and it'd be different to the one that you did before. So that blog would then replace the other one and you would only refer to this one. But it means that you could refer to this one again and again, and again until the point where it possibly needs updating. So you don't have to just do these things once, market them once to your audience and then forget about them. You can constantly be feeding these things in, depending on the posts that you're doing. You could tie them in with new social media posts that you're doing. So that's really important. The other thing about weekly content is it establishes consistency, it builds audience engagement and it drives business growth. So by providing something on a weekly basis, people are seeing how consistent you are and they are used to seeing you regularly. If you are somebody who is really consistent on your social media and with your content, you will often find that if you do disappear for a while, for whatever reason, your DMs get flooded by people saying oh, I haven't seen you in a while. Hope you're okay. That is powerful. That is really powerful because it means that people are paying attention and that just shows you the importance of consistency, because people will notice when you're not there. So they're not necessarily going to always pay attention when you are there because people are busy, but for them to notice that you're not there means that they're paying more attention to you than they are to somebody else. So that's really important. It helps to build that no-like and trust factor with your audience because they can rely on you to consistently show up and give them information, and that, in turn, will lead to business growth, because you are going to connect with these people. They are going to get to know you get to rely on you, and that Reliance on you being there every week with another little tip, another little ditty, another little Piece of information that they can use is going to help them make that decision. When it comes to them wanting what you're selling, they're going to go. I know this person, I trust this person, I'm happy to part with my money, so I think that's really important. And one of the things that I have been consistently consistent with is my podcast. I absolutely love doing my podcast. I've told you all this before, but it is the one thing that I make sure goes out and I have literally, I think, only missed like one upload, possibly. I know I take a break over Christmas. I have two weeks off over Christmas, but that is my only break and I am looking at, possibly, if my batching works, that I'm not even going to take that time off, but I always kind of feel like it's important to give it a break and also give you guys that break, because we need to have a switch off, and I think me putting more content out over those two weeks is actually just giving you more things that are on your to do list when you get back to work after your Christmas break. So I don't want to add to your to do list. I would rather just not do those two weeks and give you that break from the episodes. That's if you are somebody who puts me on your to do list, which I'm very grateful for if that is what you do. So I do think it all takes time and I don't want to be adding to people's to do lists, but I want you to hear the information. So I'd rather give you a bit of a break and myself a bit of a break as well, because it does make a difference. So I love doing my podcast and I think that the power of having consistent content is in that if you enjoy it, your audience will enjoy it. If your audience will enjoy it, they're going. It's going to build that no like and trust factor and then, like I say, when they're ready to buy, they will come to you. So the other thing to think about is the type of content that you're going to do or that you do do so. For example, I do my podcast. That's my weekly content. People do blog posts, they do video. Some people use their newsletter as their content, their weekly content, and they just send out a newsletter. And some people use their social media. They just regularly post on their social media and that's their content. What I would say is that I would urge away from social media being your only content, and that is because social media is something you don't own. You've heard it said before, I'm sure, that if Mark Zuckerberg pulled the plug tomorrow, would you still have a business, would you still be able to reach your audience? And for some people, that is a hard no and that is scary because, at the end of the day, before Facebook and Instagram met or existed, people ran businesses and if you know, when my space was there, for example, if my space shut down, businesses didn't all of a sudden not have a business to run, not be able to reach their audience, not be able to talk to their clients. But a lot of people in this day and age rely on social media heavily for their audience. Now, social media is a great way to attract your audience to you, but it is In the best interest of your business, in my opinion, to have content outside of social media that you can lead your social media following to, which is why I like podcasts especially. Of course I'm gonna be biased to podcasts, blogs and video because that can bring people out of social media to YouTube, to your podcast platform and to your website. So those three are like my top go-tos, newsletters I really liked. When I saw that I was just like yeah, of course your newsletter could definitely be your weekly content that you send out and that is much more personal than social media because you're in somebody's inbox. It just feels more personal because it's a conversation between you and that person one to one, even if you know, and we all know, it's going out to thousands of people. But I tell you what I will often reply to an email I get sent, more than I will reply to a social media post asking for my input, and that's because I feel like it's going to I don't know it's going to be heard and seen by somebody. So people monitor their emails. People who send out weekly emails, whether they have a team or whether they are solo people, they respond to their emails. They don't always respond to answers on a social media post. Because they get so many of them they don't react, but I always get a response if I email somebody. So I have before. Now I was looking at doing something for social media content and I was looking at it for an episode and I can't remember which episode it is, but I'm pretty sure that it's been out where I talk about Jasmine Star and how she has pillars for the different types of content she does on different days and I couldn't remember what these pillars were, but I knew that she had a free before it. I emailed her team and said hey guys, I'm looking for this seven day content plan that you did. I'm going to refer to it in a podcast. Can you send me the link because I can't find it? And they sent me the link because there's people at the end of this and when they send emails to me they sometimes ask questions. Jasmine does it, amy does it, ashlyn writes does it? Like? I have a lot of different emails that come in and they will ask questions and ask for feedback or ask for input or ask a question and I will sometimes respond to them and it's more personal and I know that they've sent that to thousands of people, but they ask for a response. It created an emotion in me that made me want to give them a response, and when I send that, I will often get an email back from the team saying thank you so much for this. We will pass it on to Jasmine, to Amy, and let her know, and whether they do or not is like besides the point. The fact is that there has been a personal connection there and you then feel like you have more connection to the people that you're talking to. So I feel like social media posts is a dangerous place to live for your marketing strategy. But creating a blog post or a podcast or a video or a newsletter and then breaking that down and creating social media posts from it is a great strategy to have, because you never then run out of content there is. It's so easy to take a podcast episode or a blog post or a video and take snippets out of it that you can then create posts for. So I've done it for the first episode and I'm going to attempt to do it for episodes going forward. I have created different sound bites from the first episode of the Mindset in Action version of the podcast and I took five different sound bites one from each of the guests that I had on and one for me and that gave me five stories that I could add to my stories. And that means for five days of the week working days of the week I can share my podcast episode daily and send people to the podcast so they can listen to the full thing. So that is a great way of consistently getting people off of your social onto your website, podcast platform, whatever, and from there you can look to try and get them on your email list in some way. Now, when it comes to creating that content, a well-defined content strategy and editorial calendar is essential, and it is a non-negotiable in my business. So every quarter I sit down and sometimes I do it for longer than a quarter, it just depends on how advanced I'm being. But I sit down and I plan out the podcast episodes based on my four pillars mindset, productivity, planning and audience building and I make sure that I'm covering all those topics pretty evenly. I look at the guests that I could have on in that quarter and what they can bring to the table to help with those four pillars, and I also look at my marketing calendar, my promotional calendar, what I've got coming up and what I need to gear the content towards to help me with that promotional calendar. And you guys need to be doing that too. So, depending on the type of business that you have, if it's a seasonal business, you know when you're looking to get more bookings versus when you're just wanting to nurture your audience. If you work in a business that is quite consistent, that you're constantly selling, then you know that you need to mix it up so that you've got a bit of selling and a bit of nurturing throughout the whole month. But that is something for you to sort of sit down with and know that you know at least once a month. If you are somebody who needs sales consistently through the year, once a month you'll blog posts, your podcasts, your video needs to be geared at some sort of sales pitch, and then the others need to have a call to action to lead them to your funnel, to get them to purchase something from you. And if you are more of a product service, then your calls to action always need to be to those products and your content needs to show people how those products can help them. And for me, I look at it that I have different times throughout the year where I am sort of in quote unquote selling mode, and that is when my podcast will gear more towards that kind of selling part of what I do. At the end of the day, you know there is a lot of angst around selling for a lot of people. But when you see it as you're serving people and you're helping them to get to something quicker and easier than they could if they did it on their own, or you're solving a problem for them with the product that you're selling and it's gonna make life easier for them, then it becomes a different conversation. So we will definitely get somebody on to talk to you guys about sales and mindset around sales, because it's something I struggle with. So I am absolutely happy to bring somebody on to talk about that. But when it comes to our content, we need to be very well-defined with what it is that we're gonna be putting out and have a plan in place so that it works for us rather than it just be regurgitating things or just, you know, putting content out for the sake of content. There needs to be a strategy behind it. So let's talk about navigating change in your weekly content. So a lot of people start a piece of weekly content a blog, a podcast, a video series, et cetera and that's what they do and that is what they have always done. Some people have made it an absolute art form and have made a living from it. So some people who do a blog, their blog brings them in a lot of money. So if that is the case, then you know you do YouBoot, stick with what you've got because it's working for you. But there are times when you might look at it and think that actually this piece of content, this way of doing my weekly content, isn't working for me anymore. So that could be because your business has changed, your goals have changed, so what was working previously won't work for the goals that you've got set. You may find that actually your audience is moving away from the type of content you're producing and that is not suiting them anymore. And it may be that the market that you are in is changing. So weddings have for a very long time been very blog heavy in that space. I don't see that going anywhere. I think wedding blogs are really popular still and people still love to go and read about stuff, especially with the reduction in magazines, like physical wedding magazines and that type of media. I think brides and grooms really enjoy wedding blogs and I don't think that we're gonna see it move away from blogs. Particularly, there is obviously room for podcasts, room for videos in that. But I think blogs have been very popular in the wedding industry and I don't see that changing as like the number one way that wedding vendors share their information with their clients. There may be market trends where you see that actually in your trade you have seen that once upon a time, blogs were really, really popular, but now there is a shift and people are doing more video or people are looking at podcasting as an option for their weekly content, so you may want to look at changing it. So one of the things that you need to do before you decide to change your weekly content is you need to assess the effectiveness of your current content. So look at your website hits and I'm gonna say that you're changing from a blog to something else at this point, but the same applies whether you're moving from a podcast, moving from a video series, et cetera. Look at the number of hits you're getting. Has that decreased over time or is it still increasing? How much time are people spending on your website, looking at that blog? Are they, on average, reading half of it, three quarters of it, all of it? You know what is that stat, and has that changed over time? Are people clicking off more quickly? Are they spending less time on your website? Are they therefore consuming less of what it is that you're putting out there? If that's the case, then it might be time to look at doing something a little bit different. The other thing to look at is polling your audience. So, like I said earlier, you know your audience may have changed their preference of what they like to consume. So doing a poll on Instagram or Facebook, putting out an email to your list and asking them you know how do you like to consume information? Do you listen to podcasts? Do you read blogs? Do you watch video? What's your favorite one of those? If I was to do XYZ, you know, would that be something you'd be interested in? Ask the questions, poll your audience. You don't have to do it. I mean you could do it as a market research piece and do a survey where one of the questions is do you read more blogs, listen to more podcasts or watch more videos, and make sure that you mention in it your trade when it comes to consuming content from people like you, because it's all fair and good if they turn out and say, yeah, I watch video all the time, but they might not watch any videos from people that do the same sort of thing that you do. It may be that they just watch videos for the entertainment purposes. So they might listen to podcasts for business, but they don't listen to it for entertainment. So if you said, do you listen to podcasts, they might say no because they're thinking entertainment. So make sure that you clarify in the question so that you're getting the information that you need to see where it is. They're consuming their content in relation to what it is that you're selling and what you're sharing. Then you need to look at your business objectives and does your content align with those objectives? And it's OK if your objectives have changed and it doesn't now align with it, but it is something to consider and look at. So definitely doing that little bit of research, doing that little bit of data, digging in the back end to see how well your content is currently performing compared to when you started doing it, compared to three years ago, you know, depending on how long you've had it. You may see a change, you may see a decline, and a lot of the times we don't necessarily pay attention to that because it's just something that we always do. You know, I always do my podcast, so it always goes out. Do I always look at my stats? No, I don't why, because I get, you know, just getting the motion of it and it's just something that I do. But it's really important to keep an eye on those statistics and make sure that what you're putting out is actually working for you rather than just being something that's taking up your time and not benefiting you in any way. So definitely something to dig into before you decide whether you want to change and where you would want to change to. Now, there are risks to changing your content. Of course, there is always a risk when you change anything, but you could lose audience engagement, which is why it's really important to do that data dig first, and then I would say you know, talk, you know, let your audience know about the change. But we'll come on to that in a minute. Brand consistency may be affected, because if everybody knows you as the person who does copywriting and has a blog, they might get a little bit confused that suddenly there's a podcast involved. So there is an issue with brand consistency. However, I don't think that's something that should stop you from changing it if your stats are showing that it's not working for you what you're currently doing. So those are a couple of things to consider when you're looking at changing, but I don't think they are things that necessarily should stop you from changing if that strategic stat digging part of it shows that what you're currently doing isn't benefit in you. So let's look at that. The biggest part of that, you know, brand consistency to me. You know it'll eventually come back, but it's the audience part of it that's really important because obviously, the reason that you do your weekly content is because you want to grow your audience, with the eventual thing that those people will eventually want to buy from you what it is that you're selling. So you don't really want to damage your audience by changing your content. However, there are ways to mitigate the risk when it comes to your audience. So I think it is really important to be transparent with your audience and let them know what you're changing to and why you're changing it. It is really important to communicate with them about it and why it's happening. Let them involved, make them part of the decision making process. So, for example, if you're sending out that email, you can send it out and ask them. Hey guys, you know I've been looking at my stats and it's showing that not as many people are reading my blog as once were. I'm potentially looking at starting doing something else either podcast or video. I'd really love to know your feedback. I'd love to know what do you consume or what would you love to see from me. If I was going to stop doing the blog and move over to podcasting or video, what would you enjoy most and start to involve them in it? You are always going to get the people that do not like change and are frustrated or angry with you because you've changed what you normally do. That's just a fact of life. But if these people aren't actually people that are buying from you, then I don't think you necessarily need to focus on their responses. You want to focus on what the majority of people are saying and listen to the feedback. So collect the feedback in, listen to that feedback and get a good feel for what it is that your audience would like from you when it comes to your weekly content. There's always going to be resistance to change, but you can work around that and people who aren't going to grow with you aren't going to buy from you either. So that's something to consider there. The other thing is is you can use this new podcast, this new video series, this new blog whatever it is you're changing to as a way to reengage your audience. So you may have lost some of your audience. They may still be on your list, but they might not click through to whatever it is you're sharing. They might not be engaging very much at all with you. This is a great way to actually get those guys back listening to what you have to say. So you can send out the emails and get them excited about it. Let them know that it's happening. Create more engagement emails where you're asking for them to click on a button or share back to you. Use a click baity title. I don't advocate click bait as a general rule because I don't like it, but if you're using it sparingly for a reason and it's not completely click baity, then I think there is. You know, it's a great way to get people to open up. So if you've got people on your list that haven't opened an email for three months, I would say that you probably need to delete them. This good good to go and clear out your emails every now and then, but if you've got people that haven't opened your emails for a long time, if you do a headline that says this is goodbye forever, that might encourage them to open, or open now, before you lose out. You know doing something that is going to make them open that email so they can see that there is something that has changed and they might be interested in engaging with you again. You have to follow it up. This is why I say don't be click bait, you know. Say saying goodbye forever, open up before it's too late, something like that. And in that email say hey guys, you know you haven't opened my email for X amount of time and I just wanted to let you know I've got this brand new podcast coming out. If you want to stay on my list, then please click this button. Get them to engage with you. Then you can get rid of the dead wood and you will have a newly engaged audience that you haven't had to work to actually get on your list because they were already there. So it's a great way to do that. You can offer like sneak peeks of what's coming up with the video or the podcast or the blog, whatever it is. You can offer incentives to challenge, create exclusive content for the people who are already on your list and just engage them in this process of changing your weekly content over to something new. So we have looked at the importance of weekly content. I can't emphasize enough how much I believe weekly content is really important for your business success and how we can look at adapting and changing our content type. I would encourage you to go and evaluate your current content strategy, consider the benefits of consistently creating content and be proactive in navigating changes in your content approach. I would love to hear from you guys if you are thinking of changing the type of content that you put out. I would love to know what content you're moving from, what you would like to move to and why you feel it would be a good idea for your business. I am fascinated by how other businesses see their content. Like I say, I absolutely love to do my podcast. I can't see me changing from that. I just think it's the most versatile type of content that you can make video clips with. You can make Word documents with, you can make social media posts with, and you can do it in your pajamas if you so wish. So that is what I love about podcasting. So I don't see myself changing from podcasting to anything else. I did use to blog when I was a wedding photographer. I think I would have probably transitioned to a podcast if podcasting had been around then. But that is just me. I would love to hear from you, so definitely come over, send me a DM on Instagram at Donna underscore, ead underscore, and let me know your thoughts on this episode and what you're looking at doing with your content strategy, and I will talk to you guys in the next one. Bye for now.