How I Developed My Time Saving Strategy to Producing Long Form and Short Form Content Consistently
Updated: Jul 20, 2021
Episode 43 Content Creation Strategy
Did you know that on average only 9% of businesses rate their content strategy as effective? Are you one of the 91% of business owners who struggles with content creation? Maybe you don’t know what to say or maybe you have plenty to say but you can’t find the time to get it written and scheduled.
If you are struggling to produce consistent content that connects you with your dream client you don't need more time! You need a better STRATEGY. A system that makes crafting and scheduling a months worth of content in as little as 2 days.
I believe we are humans here to experience all life has to offer and not spend hours behind a computer being a slave to our business.
Enroll in the upcoming Content Creation Power Class to walk away with a time saving strategy AND 90 days of content already created so you can focus on your client!
Friends, it is time to get a better strategy. A system that is designed to connect you with your dream clients consistently. And better yet - A system that can grow with you as it can be easily outsourced when the time is right for your business.
Now imagine the feeling of getting up from your computer after having just written AND scheduled a month's worth of content in as little as two days!
Are you ready to slay the content dragon then enroll in my 2 week training course that launches on August 2nd.
This course is going in DEEP to help you not only learn a time saving strategy, but also will help you become a better copywriter in the process. After 2 weeks you will have had hands on practice and will walk away with 90 days of content ready to post!
Head over to thepassiveincomeexaminer.com/content to register today!
Use the special code CONTENT to get 20% off!
Have I ever told you the story about how my husband and I ended up in Idaho? I don’t think I have gone into very much detail about it on the podcast before. You already know the majority of my career was in the automotive industry, and that I was working ridiculous hours and my job was extremely stressful. Although, I thought I was handling the stress pretty well. It seemed I was mostly immune to it. But somehow I had a feeling that my body was being affected by it more than I could see. I remember telling my husband that I thought my job was silently killing me. The truth is it was.
I told him that I needed a change of pace. For years we had talked about leaving the city and moving to a rural town. We pictured living in a log cabin in the woods with a mini farm on some acreage. For our wedding anniversary in 2016 I made us each a custom calendar with beautiful log home images so we could keep our dream top of mind. Within the year I could not wait any longer. Imagine a giant whirlpool in the ocean and how it sucks in everything around it. This is how I felt like my life was - I needed to get out. One day after long discussion I finally asked him when are we going to stop talking about this and start acting on it. A long silence followed. Soon we were in the process of listing our house and finding a new one.
We were thrilled when this log home was reduced in price. It was large enough for our family and my grandfather because he was coming with us since my grandmother had passed.
Looking back it seemed like eternity to go through this transition, but really, once we got serious about our plan it only took about 2 years.
This little town we live in feels like it came out of the 50’s. They hang flower pots on main street. Everywhere I go I see people I know. People are friendly. And what I find so awesome is most of the people here value family and faith more than anything. It has been a dream come true.
Well, soon after we moved here I ended up working at a log home company which you might have heard me mentioning once or twice. My duties were to manage the office, bookkeeping, and marketing.
Being a small business this sounds like a lot more than it is, but what I found challenging was creating content for their business. I mean, really I knew very little about their company, product, or process. To make things more interesting is that many of the people they know in town follow their social media so if I posted something weird like one time I started putting down random cities in the place field on IG because I really didn’t know where the projects were, plus they don’t like to make a habit of telling the world where someone's house is, so I thought by putting random places it was fine. Until one day, one of the managers asked me why I was doing that. He said he’s had people making comments to him like, wow you guys have been all over the place these days haven’t you? Talk about embarrassing!
Sometimes I would get busy and forget to post on social media. One time, the same owner came to me and said in a nice way, hey , don’t forget to post on social media. I was like, oh ya, thanks for the reminder. Then a week later he was like, hey are you gonna get around to posting anything? I remember being shocked that a week or more had gone by and I hadn’t done it. I had been SO busy with all the other duties that I just put social media in the back of my mind.
The thing was they had done a really impressive job of building up and growing their social presence. He had been consistently posting content even though it was a burden for him. And he was really counting on me to take on that role so he could focus on taking care of customers. I finally scheduled a few weeks out maybe even a month.
But the next thing I knew I was scrambling to create more content. Learning so many new things and having a lot of responsibilities was really making time fly. I was going to have to come up with a better system.
I started by putting a reminder in my google calendar to schedule content. Now, I gave myself a weeks head start. After a few months thought I realized I was posting the same things repeatedly because I had forgotten what I had posted the month or two prior. This was not that big of a deal, but I found it annoying and I wanted to be better.
I found a free content calendar from tailwind that gave me suggestions like International Coffee Day and Dog Lovers Day, but really what do those have to do with log homes? And quite frankly who cares?
This was when I created a social media posting system - a method to where I was using canva to create images and a google spreadsheet to track my posts and engagements. My plan was to repurpose the posts that got the most engagement. So far this was a simple little strategy that at least kept me from posting the same thing over and over like a weirdo.
One of the other problems this company was having that related to marketing was that google was only showing them to clients that were searching for a log home builder in idaho, but they build log homes for people all over the world. The new algorithm were really messing with their leads and they didn’t want to fork out thousands of dollars to play in the google ads world.
This is when I had the idea to start a podcast for them. Ironically it was about the same time I had the idea for this podcast. So inevitably I ended up starting both at the same time. Now you know, I host 2 podcasts - Theirs is called My Dream Log Cabin, if you are a log home dreamer you should check it out.
I remember one day my boss asking me what we would discuss on the podcast. And like a flash, my mind raced with a flood of ideas! I couldn’t even write them down fast enough. By that time I had learned more about the company and had done quite a bit of writing for them. I even got two articles published in magazines!
The problem for us was not coming up with content ideas it was producing podcast episodes consistently that became a challenge. One day a propective client was in the office. He was raving about the podcast telling me how much he has been enjoying it. Then he said, I noticed you haven’t posted one in a few weeks. When will the next episode be released?
I think I turned about 2 colors of red before I admitted that I need to do a better job being more consistent.
Holy cow! I didn’t think people noticed. This blew my mind and proved to me that we were doing a good thing by keeping this thing going.
That is when I really buckled down and upped my game. Writing came easily for me so coming up with ideas was never really the hard part but finding time to write my episodes, record them and edit was hard.
Using my experience in creating systems and processes when starting departments in the automotive industry I applied my skills to develop a strategy that got us producing a podcast a week. I was even turning that podcast into a blog and a youtube video each week as well. All while keeping up with my normal office duties.
Now, up until recently I didn’t think this was something worth sharing about. I figured who really cared that I created a system that simply made my life easier and allowed me to keep up my performance as an employee. Quite honestly, I did not even see this as impressive until I hired a business strategist. By the way - I’m gonna plug her here because she has been amazing. Her name is Nas Echevarria and I’ll link her website in the show notes because she has been awesome. I’m sure at some point I’ll invite her on the show so you can meet her.
Anyway, during our initial consultation she asked me a little more about what I was doing in my day job and I shared with her the story about creating content. She just started blankly at me for what felt like a minute and then said “Do you realize that like 80% of my clients tell me they struggle with content creation and here you are telling me its easy for you?”
Of course that was news for me. And the only reason it was easy is because of the strategy I created and applied.
So, all this to say that I am now going to teach this strategy to other business owners. Whether you are a solopreneur or you run a business and have an office manager slash social media person I can help you cut down the time it is taking you to produce content, crush through the writers blocks, and become a better content writer.
My first training class is coming up on August 2nd. You can find out more at https://lindsaysutherland.mykajabi.com/ContentStrategy which I’ll put in the show notes as well.
This training is going over strategy. I’ll be teaching you the method I developed to stay on top of content creation as well as the tools I used along the way. Then we will be diving in and doing a hands on content creation workshop for your business where I will be there to help you generate ideas and actual craft content. This will be a great way for you to have my eyes on your business and help you up your copy writing game.
I have a promo code that will get you 20% off just because you’re my tribe and as a thank you for following me on the podcast. Type the word CONTENT in the code box at check out for the discount.
Today I leave you with this quote by Jim Rohn "Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time." This course will create more time for you so you can be productive in other ways.
All right friends, until next week - Bye for now.
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