Lauren: Hey, everyone. 

Paul: Hey, everyone! 

Nailed it. Welcome back to Publish and Prosper. This is… I don't know what episode anymore, at this point. 

Paul: 94.

Lauren: Is it? 

Paul: That's what you told me.

Lauren: Wow, that's embarrassing. Matt is not here with me today, which is why it's extra embarrassing that my co-host knew what episode this was and I didn't. But I would love to welcome back Paul, our… 

Paul: Hey everyone. 

Lauren: What's your title?

Paul: Senior Marketing Manager.

Lauren: I feel like it changes every time I ask you that question.

Paul: It does. Matt's a fan of keeping me on my toes with that kind of thing.

Lauren: Fair enough. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: Master of all trades, person that keeps this ship afloat, probably.

Paul: I'm super buoyant. 

Lauren: Sufficient title? 

Paul. Yep.

Lauren: Blog post extraordinaire? No. Blog…blog host. Blog content writer. Copywriter. You…

Paul: Those two are enough. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: That's – Those are the big ones.

Lauren: Content monger. Is that the… Is that the post-it note that we have on your desk? 

Paul: I think so. 

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we got a lot of titles for Paul, but today that title is co-host of Publish & Prosper.

Paul: It's my favorite title.

Lauren: And Paul has also done one of my favorite episodes so far this year with me.

Paul: Oh, thank you. 

Lauren: So thanks for coming back. Hopefully everyone listening liked that episode too.

Paul: You did. 

Lauren: Better have. It was a good one. I'll link it in the show notes if you haven't listened to it. But today we're going to talk about something a little different. Last time we were here, we were talking about writing practices and kind of leveling up that process of taking a writing hobby and kind of building on that. Today, we're going to go a little deeper into some content strategizing and content planning. Less about the craft and the writing and stuff like that. 

Paul: This is the fun part 

Lauren: This is, actually, I would agree with that. I know this is like, that seems counterintuitive, especially coming from somebody who studied writing for years.

Paul: Same, yeah. I mean, I think it's sort of surprising to a lot of people because we're a content creation team, but the vast majority of what we do is actually strategy and planning. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: And so it's a huge part of being successful as a content creator is to strategize.

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. And I think that's something that is for some creators, makes a lot of sense right off the bat. And I think a lot of people tend to like, frame that in, well, strategizing and planning and making a structured content calendar is kind of stifling my creativity. And I would argue that one, that is absolutely not true. It's actually giving you more room to be creative and flexible within that structure. And two that, having that willy-nilly creative, free spirit approach to content channels is not a long term plan. 

Paul: Correct. 

Lauren: It's not going to work long term.

Paul: You need to have some kind of plan. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul. or else you're just scribbling stuff and hoping people pay attention to it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: I had a professor many, many, many years ago, who I think was quoting someone. I don't remember if it was just his own quotes or he pulled it from somewhere. But to paraphrase, he basically said that people who are naturally creative are more creative when there's constraints, because it forces you to work within a constraint. You know, Twitter, you're only allowed back in the day. It was like 140 some characters. How do you be creative in that few characters? It really forces you to focus on your message or what you're trying to convey or whatever. So I like to think of strategy as self-imposed, but very thoughtful constraints.

Lauren: I like that 

Paul: Thanks. 

Lauren: I like that. 

Paul: You can have it. It’s yours now. 

Lauren: I'm going to share it with all of our listeners.

Paul: Do it. 

Lauren: Thanks for that one. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: All right. Yeah. So we thought we’d talk through a little bit of that today. So we're going to kind of just try to talk through like, understanding what your content strategy is and then the different types of content or content channels or whatever. Why it's important, like that this is probably essential to anybody that is trying to build a long term content brand –

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: – of any kind. We're going to talk a little bit about the practice of batch creating your content. We're not really going to talk about content creation because that varies so much depending on what channel –  

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: – you're using, but I do want to focus a little bit on the idea of batch creating content in different ways. And then we're going to talk about some metric tracking.

Paul: Ooh those are my favorites.

Lauren: I know, it's actually – 

Paul: Give me some data.

Lauren: I like that data. But just you know again, a high level look we're not going to go deep dive into metric tracking, but just kind of a high level look at like, how you can use metrics to inform your content strategy. And then we'll share some of our favorite tools that we've both used. Or we know people on our team – 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: – that used to help with all this. 

Paul: Cool. Buckle in. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: There we go.

Lauren: Yeah. And in case it's not already obvious, you should listen to us. You should take our word for this, because this is actually what we do.

Paul: Yeah. I mean, I actually think that we spoke to it just briefly about how a lot of what we do is strategy and planning, but the strength of our team and why we do a great job of creating content and so many people are learning from it, is not our writing skills or Chelsea's enigmatic characters on YouTube or…that's part of it.

Paul: But all of that comes from a strategy first. 

Lauren: Yes.

Paul: We sit down and decide this is how we're going to write this, or this is the tone, or this is the crazy thing Chelsea is going to do on this video. It's not just off the cuff craziness. It's a lot of very, very carefully planned out craziness.

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. So basically, we're giving you kind of an inside look into Lulu's content marketing strategy.

Paul: Pulling back that curtain. 

Lauren: Wow. 

Paul: Yeah. Can I read this ChatGPT quote that you've given us?

Lauren: Yes, please do. 

Paul: So, I love this one. At its core, a content strategy is the intentional plan behind what you create, why you create it, and how it all fits together. It's not just about producing content, it's about ensuring every piece has a purpose and works towards a bigger business or brand goal. That's a great definition. So I think it's worth including.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah no, that was one that I really like, I looked at it for a couple of minutes and I was like, I probably could paraphrase this, rewrite this in my own words or whatever, but I don't want to.

Paul: Yeah. Well, and now it's written in the words of millions of other writers, so.

Lauren: Maybe, maybe some of both of our own included in that.

Paul: I like to think it pulled the about or maybe the just from that sentence from one of us.

Lauren: I like that idea. Yeah. Why not? Yeah.

[6:18] - Defining Your Content Strategy

Paul: Cool. So, what's the first thing we want to talk about in terms of content strategy?

Lauren: Well, I think it is really important to define what your content strategy is before you can really…actually let me rephrase that. I think it's really important to define what your content is and understand your content, your content channels and your goals before you can figure out what your strategy is.

Paul: I'm going to even narrow it more and say goals first.

Lauren: I agree 

Paul: You had that third in your list, but I think it's the first thing. You don't know what channels you should use until you know what your goal is. Is your goal to earn followers? Is your goal to sell product or services? Is your goal to do something other than those things, because those are actually pretty the common ones, but.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul: So start with the goal. Do you want to build an audience? Do you want to make some money from selling a product? Do you want to sell your services? Do you want to be a speaker? Do you want people to buy your books? Like whatever it is that you want people to do, then think about the content and the channels.

Lauren: Yes, that's a fair point. And I do also think…this might sound like we're talking about how to build a content brand from scratch, and I don't want that to be the implication here. I think this is something that you can do, even if you already have an established content channel. 

Paul: Hundred present. 

Lauren: And you're just looking for a way to refresh your strategy. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: I still would start there. I still would say, like, let's start with what are my goals? 

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: Whether you have one follower or 10,000 followers. This is still a good opportunity for you to say, okay step one, what is my goal right now?

Paul: Yes, and I think that's actually an important point, because let's say you have a YouTube channel that's about refurbishing old Furbies and you've got thousands of followers, because Furbies are awesome and people want to know how to refurbish the ones they find in their attic and whatnot and get them working again. And then you decide that you know what, you're putting all of these electrical engineers skills to work and stuff. You want to write a blog about something more general, about fixing old technology or hardware or something like that. You need a strategy about how you're going to deliver that, even though you've already got an audience that's an audience for something else. You're going to a new medium. You need to figure out a strategy for how you're going to do that and how you're going to deliver it. You didn’t like my Furby example, I could tell.

Lauren: I mean, if I come into this office one day and there's a Furby on my desk, I'm going to throw it at your head. Whether or not you were the one that put it there.

Paul: Don't worry. I won't be here. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Paul: I ain’t leaving something like that and hanging around.

Lauren: For the best. For the best, for sure. But no, I think that is a really good point. And I think even actually, if you are, if you already have your existing YouTube channel where you are refurbishing Furbies…what a phrase, what a turn of phrase. Even if it's just something as simple as I feel like my content is a little stale, or I feel like my audience growth has really stagnated in the last few years, or I used to make more money from just like pre-roll ads and stuff like that, and that's kind of like tapering off, so I need to inject some kind of new revenue stream in here. Even if it's just staying in your existing lane, it's always a good time to reevaluate your channel goals and your content strategies.

Paul: Yep. And that's it. And you can decide you want to reach a new audience. You want to expand your audience. You want to sell a new product. You want to sell more of your existing product, whatever that goal might be. If you're planning to achieve it by creating and sharing content, you've got to start with the goal and then strategize from there.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah I think it's also important to understand maybe, hopefully this has been clear already in the conversation, what we're talking about when we're talking about channels.

Paul: Yeah. It's not like ABC and CBS or something. So back in the day kids, there was three channels. And you click between them and everything else in the channel is static.

Lauren: Maybe where you're from.

Paul: Yeah. Fair enough.

Lauren: When we're talking about different content channels, we are talking about high level looking at things like social media or email or blog or podcast. And then there might be some niching down within there. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: So, you know, like here at Lulu, you've met some of our channel managers on this podcast. We've had Chelsea is a channel manager, she's our YouTube channel manager. I'm our podcast channel manager, Paul is our blog channel manager. Laurie’s our email marketing, our email channel manager. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: So like, that is literally how our team is created, is people that manage these specific content channels. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And that makes up the content team. You haven't met our social media manager yet. 

Paul: Yet. 

Lauren: But maybe soon. 

Paul: Those are the five content channels that we focus on as a company to distribute the content that we think is valuable for our audience.

Lauren: And then, you know, obviously within those channels there might be some niching down in there. So social media, you might be focusing on video content channels. So you might be just posting on…short form video, TikTok and Reels and YouTube shorts. Or maybe you are a long form video creator and you're creating primarily content that is like full length videos on YouTube. Or, you know, maybe a lot of your content is LinkedIn text in post content. So whatever it is, there's different channels, there's content within that channel. 

Paul: Yes. And I think you actually have to dig into the niche. I almost said niche just to mess with you and I didn’t it. I'm sorry.

Lauren: This is how Matt infected my brain. 

Paul: I know. 

Lauren: where it's still a content niche, but you niche down –

Paul: I know, I know.

Lauren: – into that content niche and I, eugh. 

Paul: Well, anyway, I think you have to niche down. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: Because if you try to create content for all of the available channels, you're going to get overwhelmed. I mean, we're a team of five people, and it can be overwhelming to create content for all of those channels. 

Lauren: Yes. As a team of people who've been doing this for a decade each, it's difficult. There's a lot to it. So that's the second step. After you've kind of established what the goal is of having this content strategy, what are you trying to achieve? The next step in the strategy is figuring out what channels are going to be best for presenting it. And I think that kind of comes into the format of the content. Like you were saying, is it short form video? Is it, you know, medium length blog post? Is it YouTube videos that are two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, an hour? Where are you at with the kind of depth and length of the content you're creating? And then you think about what channels are going to be most appropriate for it.

Lauren: Yeah. And I also want to clarify, you know, before we start getting into more of the specifics about the whys and the hows and stuff like that here, that we're going to kind of be framing this around the idea that you're using multiple channels. But I think that a really important way to look at it is that you have one primary channel, and then you have supporting channels.

Paul: Hundred percent. 

Lauren: Think about it in terms of this podcast. I am the channel manager for this podcast. So this is my channel, but I use our social channels to promote this. 

Paul: Sure. 

Lauren: And I use YouTube to promote this, and I use email to promote this. None of those are my primary channels. 

Paul: Right. 

Lauren: But I do create content and work with those channel managers as supplemental secondary supporting channels.

Paul: Yup. I like to think of it as, yes, you have a primary channel and then you have delivery channels.

Lauren: Ooh yeah.

Paul: Email could be a primary channel if your content is a newsletter. But if you're creating podcast content, then your emails are really just letting people know that a new podcast is out, then they become a delivery method. So it's really about where the content lives and how you get it to people. And so some of them, you know, like a blog is kind of hard to be a delivery channel unless you're Substack or medium, but even that more of an email newsletter than an actual delivery method of the blog. Because in my opinion, SEO is basically dead. So there's not really a lot of reason to write for SEO in your blog. Sorry, Sarah.

Lauren: Oh, we’re going to come back to that. 

Paul: Anyway, 

Lauren: I’m gonna bring you back for another one of that. 

Paul: Okay. 

Lauren: Okay.

Paul: So yes, I agree with you that you have to have a primary channel or you're probably going to get overwhelmed and you're going to have content that isn't focused on that channel, like that style of content for that channel. If you try and write long form blog posts and do long form podcasts, that's very different content. You can talk about the same thing, but like the way you're crafting the content is different.

Lauren: And we're going to talk a little bit about that too, at the idea of repurposing your content on different channels. But I do just want to kind of make that clear, that we're going to be talking through this as though we are talking about one primary channel,

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And then your supporting or delivery channels. And I do think that if you wanted to approach this as like a, oh, this is an opportunity to kind of work through a strategy or a planning exercise or something. I would ask yourself the question of what's your goal for your main channel? And then also do that with your, your secondary channels –

Paul: Yep.

Lauren: – too. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: Because it should be different.

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: It should be like, if your goal for your main channel is I want to grow my audience, my main channel is my podcast, and I want to grow my listeners and subscribers. Then the goal for your secondary channels is to drive people –

Paul: Right. 

Lauren: – to that podcast channel. 

Paul: Yes.

Lauren: Which is a different goal.

Paul: Yes. And I think that's an important one, because you maybe won't focus on email subscribers if your goal is to get podcast listeners, because convincing people to subscribe to an email is very different than convincing them to listen. And so you might offer the option to get notified by email that a new podcast is out, but your content isn't going to say, hey, subscribe to my email list. It's going to say, hey, subscribe to my podcast, right?

Lauren: Right. Right. 

Paul: And so it's important to clarify that

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: Very much. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

[15:01] - Why Having a Content Strategy is Important

Lauren: This feels like a good time to start talking maybe in general about why this stuff is important. I think that's kind of important to establish, although I imagine after listening to everything that we just talked about, at least some of the why should be clear. 

Paul: I think so.

Lauren: Because this is…if you are doing this right, if you are doing content management right, there are a lot of moving parts. You've got a lot of pieces in front of you, and you have to be able to keep track of everything. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And you can't do that if you're just sitting down every day saying, what am I going to post on Instagram today?

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. Just to clarify, so that we're clear with each other, when you say the why you're talking about why have a content strategy, not why create content?

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Paul: Just to be clear. 

Lauren: Oh yeah.

Paul: I know, I just want to make sure we're putting it out there so everyone is clear. The why to create content is to achieve the goal.

Lauren: Right.

Paul: The why to have a strategy is so that you can actually actually achieve the goal. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: And not just be shooting things off into the void and hoping that someone sees it.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. Because that's not much of a strategy.

Paul: And there's the why of your strategy. You could write the most brilliant blog post about refurbishing Furbies that the world has ever seen. It could just be pure gold. Genius. But if you don't tell anyone that it's there and you don't get it in front of anyone, they're never going to find it, because the internet is just too big.

Lauren: Does your house have a basement?

Paul: No. We live in North Carolina. 

Lauren: Does it have an attic? 

Paul: No, this is North Carolina. 

Lauren: Okay. I'm just making sure –

Paul: There's a crawlspace.

Lauren: – there's no hidden Furby workshop in your house anywhere? 

Paul: No, that's offsite. I rent a space downtown for that. I ain’t having my wife find out about my Furbies. 

Lauren: Well okay. As long as it's so. Because those demons should not be welcome under, under your roof.

Paul: I've never owned a Furby before. I really just wanted the opportunity to say refurbished Furbies. 

Lauren: I have.

Paul: I know you have.

Lauren: Obviously, I'm a millennial.

Paul: Yeah, I'm just a touch too old for Furbies.

Lauren: I was like, ten years old in the year, I think. I'm pretty sure I was ten the year that they were like.

Paul: That was a thing. 

Lauren: A thing. Yeah. So. 

Paul: I was a little too old for Furby, so.

Lauren: That's probably better. Honestly, in the long run.

Paul: You win some, lose some. Yeah.

Lauren: Fair enough. It's all right. But yes.

Paul: Why is it worth your time to have a content strategy? 

Lauren: So that you can provide your audience with valuable content, like an extended discussion of Furbies. 

Paul: Exactly. It also gives you some parameters for how you're going to use your content, how you're going to create your content, understanding how to reuse content. The strategy is kind of this holistic, guiding light to help you be always moving forward so that you, like I said, you don't ever just sit down and you're like, what am I going to make for TikTok today? That should never happen.

Lauren: Right.

Paul: I mean, they should happen like once and you plan out a month's worth or something, but it shouldn't be this just uncertainty about what you're doing today.

Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, for a lot of reasons. Anyone who's created any kind of…creative. I keep doing this lately. Anyone who's in the practice of creating art of any kind is familiar with the crippling anxiety of the blank page or the blank canvas.

Paul: It is the worst.

Lauren: When you have that deadline ticking in your head of I have to post something today. All the studies that I've read and the workshops that I went to, they all tell me that you have to post every day and I haven't posted anything today, and, and, and and now you're never going to think of anything. 

Paul: Yep.

Lauren: So having this to fall back on is always… And even if, even if it is something that is like a looser structure of like – 

Paul: Sure.

Lauren: This doesn't have to be that you've sat down and done a detailed, detailed strategy of like, this is exactly what I'm going to post at this minute of this hour of every day for the next six months.

Paul: Correct. 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: It can be a little bit more. It should fit your work style and your needs.

Lauren: Yes, yes. But even if it's just something as high level as.. Okay, I have five main content pillars. Which, if we need to dive deeper into what content pillars are, let me know in the comments so I can make Paul come back and do an episode on that. But let's say there are five subcategories of content that you post about semi-regularly. 

Paul: Right. 

Lauren: You might go back and look at a calendar retroactively and go, I posted my own blog posts seven days in a row last week, and I didn't post any other content, or I've been posting three times a week for a month and I haven't posted about like, subscribe to my emails since April. It's easy to fall into the habit if you don't have a strategy in place of just posting whatever's top of mind. 
Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And if you do have a strategy in place and you have something that you can take a look at, like your, your high level calendar and say, it's been about five weeks since I posted this type of content. Let me stick one of those in there. Or I want to make sure I'm posting this type of content once a week, but not more than once a week. So let me make sure I'm just bopping this around in here.

Paul: Yeah, I think that's the most bare bones strategy.

Lauren: Yes.

Paul: It's that kind of simple content calendar that helps you avoid repetition and ensures, you know, if you wrote a blog post, you wrote it for a reason. You want people to read it. So if you're not intentional and strategic about how you share it, you're not getting people to read it, which then it's not failed content, but it's not helping you meet your goals.

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: So like Facebook, for example, might be your primary content channel, and you're posting a little bit of your blog posts and your other stuff in your BI pages and your email subscriptions. But the goal is to really drive some engagement through Facebook, and so everything else is done in support of that. And that's what your strategy would define, so that when you go sit down to write, fill in a calendar, you've got this kind of overarching sense of what you're doing and where you're going –  

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: – and why you're doing all of these things.

Lauren: Yeah. I think this is also a good moment to add the disclaimer to anybody listening that doesn't know this. I used to be the social media manager here at Lulu, and a lot of my content strategy planning experience comes from that. So there are going to be multiple times throughout this episode where I'm going to default to talking about it from a social media lens without even realizing that I'm doing it.

Paul: I'll keep you in check.

Lauren: You are good at that. So, thanks. 

[20:45] - How to Build a Strong Content Strategy 

Lauren: But yeah, I think that is something that is a really important part of this. Or, you know, even if it's just in terms of not the type of content that you're posting, but the subject matter of the content –

Paul: Sure. 

Lauren: that you're posting. The Lulu blog has how many main categories? 

Paul: Five. 

Lauren: Five main categories. Sometimes it's nice to look at it and go, oh, we haven't posted something in this category in like three months.

Paul: Yep.

Lauren: Maybe we should prioritize putting out a piece of content that goes into that category.

Paul: Yep. Or even I'll do you one better. Maybe we need to reframe the categories because we're not, you know, one of those categories isn’t speaking to our audience as much anymore. And that's why we're not creating content in it. And you should. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: Reconsider how the categories are structured. This is the kind of thing, that holistic strategy around your content, that gives you kind of insights into these things in a way, to have framework to track those insights so that you can see what's working and what's not. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: And I feel like as we chatted about this, if you're listening, it might sound like really vague. And it's because strategies are – 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: – by nature they're sort of vague. And we will get into the more structured way to write one out and kind of create one that you can work with. But even that is going to be you. Like if you looked at the document where I track what I want to create for new blog posts and the document, or you track what you want to create for podcasts, they are vastly different. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: Because it has to be true to you and the way that you want to function. So there is no one size fits all template design. You can go on the internet and find a million of them. You can have ChatGPT make you a template if that's helpful, but there's no one size fits all template for how to plan your content, because it needs to be versatile and nimble and changeable.

Lauren: I think even, yes our two planning docs, like the way we approach our content planning and our content strategy are pretty different, which in itself is telling because you and I have been working together very closely together for like six years. So we have evolved our styles –

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: – of working to be similar. But even that, that is something that is very distinct for sure.

Paul: Right. Exactly.

Lauren: But separate from that, my podcast content strategy doc versus my social media content strategy doc. Completely different. 

Paul: Yep.. 

Lauren: Different appearances, different things that I was focusing on, different strategies, different approaches to it. So absolutely something that it is hard to talk specifically about this. 

Paul: Right. 

Lauren: This would probably have to be a series if we wanted to do it, we'd have to probably have to do like, channel by channel specific series. If we wanted to actually get into –

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: – the specifics of how to do this.

Paul: And even then, a detailed template of some sort isn't gonna always work for everyone. 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: So it always has to be kind of you have to have a strategy for how you're going to have a strategy. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: Unfortunately. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: But that's where you start. And like you were saying, it doesn't have to be a ground up content business that you're just starting. You could already have an audience, you could already have content that you're creating, and you might just decide you want to grow it. It's stagnated a little, and you need to keep boosting it, or you've got some new piece of content, you're offering a new service. You're trying to get speaking gigs, you published a book, you've got something that you want to promote that's new, and you need a strategy around how you're going to use your content marketing skills to get people to find that.

Lauren: I actually think that this might almost be something that is more, I don’t want to say more relevant, because I do think that it's important information to have, no matter where you are in your, your content, your content channel stage. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: Building, whatever. But I do actually think that this is almost something that you have to start considering when you're at a point where either a deciding to start taking your content channel seriously. Not that you haven't been taking it seriously, but you're starting to get to that point where you're like, I think I could make some money off of this, or I think that I could do something new with this, or launch something else with this. Or if you're at that point where you're like, it's been going, but the algorithm has kind of handed my ass to me, and now I've got to figure out how to inject some new life into this.

Paul: Yes.

Lauren: So I think this actually might be something that if you're starting from scratch, you might want to be a little more simplified than what we're talking about right now.

Paul: I absolutely agree. I think if your goal should be simpler, if you're starting from scratch, your goal should probably just be to build an audience and you should keep it very simple. Aim for fifty people subscribing or following or whatever channel is going to be your primary one, and set a time frame of whatever, six months. I'm just making all this up because again, it can be… It has to be true to you and what you're trying to do, but keep it simple and then build on it. And that's, you know, a strategy is never set in stone. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: You should definitely like, time gate it and say, I'm going to follow this strategy on social media of posting one long form article to LinkedIn, and chopping it into small pieces and sharing it on Twitter, and Threads and Mastodon, or whatever. I'm going to share those three times a week. I'm going to write one long form content one time a week, and I'm gonna do that for six months and see how it works and see where my audience develops and what resonates, and then change it. If it's not working. 

Lauren:Yeah. 

Paul: if it's working, amp it up. So change it in the other direction. I don't know.

Lauren: Yeah. Before we do that I do want to talk just a little bit about a couple other things to keep in mind with why and how, and the value of doing this. One of the things that you will hear people talk about a lot, a lot when it comes to content that I don't actually believe in, 

Paul: Ooh. 

Lauren:is the idea that it matters when you send – 
Paul: oh yeah. I also think that’s nonsense. 

Lauren:– when you post it or schedule it or whatever. And now I don't mean that it's nonsense in the sense that you can just post whatever you want, whenever you want, and you shouldn't have a schedule like, oh yeah, this podcast comes out at the same time on the same day of the week, every single week. I'm not saying that we should just be like this week. It's going to come out on Tuesday at 10 p.m. and next week it's going to come out on Thursday at 1145.

Paul: Surprise.

Lauren: And we go like, it's just going to be a fun surprise when it's delivered into your inbox like that. I'm not saying that, but I don't know if I believe in the like, you know, you'll go online and you'll see people be like, the best time to put out a new YouTube video is at 12:00 on Friday.

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, if everybody's putting out a podcast video at 12:00 on Friday.

Paul: So I 100% agree. I think the whole posting time thing is mostly made up. Nonsense by SEO experts who want to sound like experts and can't figure out what to post on social media to grow their followers. What I do think is, what I would say is, one posting at the same time every week, or on your schedule is a good idea. I have posted blog posts at 9 a.m. on Thursdays for the last eight years consistently, and we'll post something how to order if we need it immediately. But what's more important is when you share i –.

Yes.

– and and not the when, but the consistency. So if, for example, your content is a blog and you're writing a new blog post every week, I don't care when you post it post at the same time for your own sanity or around the same time, whatever. But what matters is when you share it. If your audience knows that every Tuesday morning they're going to get an email saying there's a new blog post from you. Don't hold off until Wednesday or Thursday. They're going to forget. But if you're consistently in their inbox or showing up in their social around the same times, that's what matters.

Lauren: Yeah. Yes. 

Paul: So build consistency into it. But I don't think there's, don't chase some magical guru’s explanation of why 3:07 on Thursdays is the perfect time for your podcast to go live or something, because that's just nonsense.

Lauren: Yeah. And in fact, listen to your audience on that instead.

Paul: Oh yeah.

Lauren: And that's something, again, we'll get into like metric tracking. But if you notice, after experimenting for a little while, let's say you do try different days or you try one month, I'm going to set up my content calendar so that I'm posting the same content every Friday, but maybe next month I'm going to move it to Thursday instead. And you wind up seeing that there's one day of the week that it consistently performs better when it's shared on that day. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: That is more valuable than whatever somebody wrote in an article –

Paul: Yes.

Lauren: – five years ago about the best day to publish a podcast episode.

Paul: And once you learn that information, don't go write an article about how it's the best day to publish it at that time.

Lauren: Yeah, gatekeep that information.

Paul: Don't do that. That's for you. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: That's you and your audience. Yeah, gatekeep that – one nobody cares because it's just not interesting. And two, it's very personal to you and your audience that's important for you to track. Keep an eye on that.

Lauren: Right. Right. What I would pay attention to and this is where content strategy comes in, and understanding having like why it's valuable to have a high level look at your content strategy. What window of time matters within promoting a new piece of content? So they say that for podcasts, the first seventy-two hours are the like, prime window of time for promoting a new episode. And you should be posting most of the, if not all, of the promo that you're doing for a new episode should happen within seventy-two hours of a new episode being published. That is what's important to your content calendar, not what day of the week – 

Paul: Right. 

Lauren: – you put out that podcast episode, but how you use whatever that recommended window of time is. And making sure that you say, okay, if a new episode is coming out every Wednesday, I know what my content plan is for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: Of every single week. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And that's more important than arbitrary days of the week or times of the day that you're putting out content. 

Paul: Precisely. And that saves you from the scenario we discussed earlier, where you are sitting there staring at a blank screen, you don't know what to create because you've got these timestamped necessities of following up on that seventy-two hour time frame for your podcast, and making sure you make all of the right efforts in that time frame to get it out there to people. 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: So that then you can move on to the next piece of content, because that's the next part of your strategy is that it's never ending. 

Lauren: Right.

Paul: You don't get to stop making content if you want people to pay attention to your content, unfortunately. 

Lauren: It's never ending. But it is also, it is a cycle. It’s a content cycle. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: Content is not disposable unless it performs so poorly that you want to pretend that it never existed in the first place, which is understandable. It happens.

Paul: It happens to all of us.

Lauren: Absolutely it does. Hopefully not with this episode. But you know, definitely some episodes.

Paul: And I mean, if you went into our blog dashboard, you would see a little graveyard of posts that have failed and become hidden. And now they just live there so I can stay close to my shame. 

Lauren: RIP. But yes, when you do reach a point where you want to be recycling older content, repurposing content, reposting content – which you should do, absolutely. It is good to know where and when you last shared it and what you shared about it. So if you know these podcast episodes, sorry, I'm going to keep using my own channel as an example, I create like five or six pieces of social video promo for every episode that comes out, and we use maybe one or two of them. But I still keep creating those pieces, because eventually we're going to come around to a place where I'm going to be like, hey, I'd love to give this episode…like, this episode is relevant to something that we're talking about in an email this week. 

Paul: Sure. 

Lauren: Or is relevant to something else that's going on. Here is a brand new, fresh piece of content that you could share that is technically repurposing this older podcast episode, but it is still new to the channel content.

Paul: Yeah.

Lauren: A lot easier to do that when you know what you've already shared and used and created.

Paul: Exactly. The part of the strategy is that organization that gives you the ability to quickly understand what you have done, and that is going to give you the opportunity to find gaps in the content you've created or to learn from your audience. You know, if you posted a video about how to properly wax your skis, and someone is in the comments is like, that's great, I'd really love to know how to make my boots not fall off when I'm skiing. That sounds horrifying, but I don't know why – you didn't like the Furby one, so I'm going to a different example. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Paul: It gives you a sense of what more content you might want. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: So you're, you're then able to build on that. And then as you write that, or you make that video about how to properly attach your boots to your skis, you can then reference back to if your ski waxing video, and – I don't like the ski one either. I just, I should have really thought of better examples before I rolled up in here today. 

Lauren: I'm sorry. 

Paul: You're going to cut all this anyway, it’s fine. 

Lauren: No I'm not. This episode's going to be two hours long.

Paul: Sorry, folks.

Lauren: Unedited. 

Paul: I’m so sorry. So sorry. 

Lauren: I'm not.

Paul: You will be.

Lauren: Which…which is actually a really great segue into the final point that I wanted to make – we are only on part two of this outline, and we've been recording for 45 minutes.

Paul: Holy shit. 

Lauren: And that is time management. And that is understanding… I think a lot of people that are at a stage in their content business or brand or content channel that like, this advice is valuable to them, they are probably solopreneurs. They are probably solo content creators, not not using any personal help, professional help, and maybe not even any like paid software help at this point. So if you are somebody who is doing all of this on your own, from scratch daily content creation is rough.

Paul: It's really rough. 

Lauren: It's so hard and it's so taxing. And it is – We all know that it takes so much more time than you think it's going to.

Paul: Every time.

Lauren: Every time. I – every single time I trick myself into being like, I can bang out this blog post in two hours. Or I can create this thirty second video in forty five minutes. And that's never true.

Paul: No.

Lauren: Never.

Paul: But having these kind of time management things built into your strategy is a way to help guide you with that. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: So it lets you block out some time or it lets you say, you know, let's say you're an Instagram creator. And so you're making a lot of short form video and photography content. Then you know how much content you need for the month. You know, you – I'm going to post every single day, Monday to Friday. I'm gonna take weekends off. So now I need twenty pieces of content for the month. And then you can say, well, I'm going to take this one day, or maybe a couple of days. I don't actually know how long it takes to make some of this stuff because I just write. But you're going to say, this is how much time I need to create it, and you're going to batch create a bunch of that stuff and have it kind of ready to go. And then you'll have your time to prep and edit it and schedule and all of that, all of the tertiary pieces that go around that. But you can't determine how much time you need to do that until you have that calendar and that strategy, the calendar as part of your strategy, so that you are – it's all mapped.

Lauren: Yes. Yeah. I said at the beginning that I wanted to talk a little bit about batch creating content. And we kind of have, but there is another element of that that I want to talk about that I think is actually really important and doesn't often get talked about. Well, in the context of batch creating content, I think that a lot of people, when they hear that, like when they hear somebody saying, oh, you should set aside time to batch create content.

Paul: Right. 

Lauren: I think the two things that come to mind are either creating a week's worth of content in one day and just scheduling it out, or doing like that. I'm going to do a photoshoot and get all twenty of my photos for the month done. 

Paul: Yep.

Lauren: But I also want to throw out there that when we're talking about batch creating content, batch creating the content that you're going to use for one single piece of content.

Paul: Yes. Oh yeah, yeah. 

Lauren: So going–yeah–going back to the beginning, who knows, eighty-seven years ago, when we talked about how you have your primary channel and then your secondary channels to support it. If your primary piece of content is a blog post, you still need promo content for or delivery content for that. 

Paul: Right, yeah.
Lauren: If the secondary channels that you are using to deliver that blog post are a newsletter, Instagram and LinkedIn, create that content at the same time –

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: – that you're creating the blog post.

Paul: I agree, absolutely. 

Lauren: It's so much easier. 

Paul: Yep. And you name the right number of channels too, because that's one main channel, two to four secondary channels. Don't do more than that, or you’re going to overwhelm yourself.  Maybe one day you build up to a point where you can do more than that, or you have a team working with you that can help you with some of that. But you're absolutely right. If you can kind of merge all of the content creation process together for all of the channels, both the primary one and the secondary ones, that's going to make it much easier for you to do this in one go, or in kind of framed up way that doesn't feel like you're sitting down the morning of you need to post something and writing it out, because that's just stressful. And the biggest thing your strategy should do is help relieve you of the stress so that you can actually enjoy creating the content.

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: And enjoy getting to know your audience or capturing new email subscribers or whatever it is your goal is. That's one of the things the strategy really has to do.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah. I think that that's really too often overlooked. And like exactly what you just said with the idea of like, oh, use this to free up time so that you can spend more time speaking to your audience on social media. 

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: If you, if you're spending your whole day coming up with what content you're going to post on social, you don't have any time to reply to the comments that people leave on that post once you've posted it.

Paul: Yeah, or go find peers and respond to their posts. 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: So you're showing up in other places as well, 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: One thing I will say about batch creating. If you're a WordPress user and you post your blogs on WordPress, you might notice that it gives you a Facebook and a Twitter. Next thing and a little email newsletter thing that just automatically populate with some content. Don't use any of that crap. Just don't do it. I mean, maybe if you're very, very new and you're just writing posts to kind of bankroll something, like you were saying, you know, year one podcast, no metrics. Yeah, sure, that's fine because you're putting it out there, but it's not authentic. And so it's much better to write the post, write the Facebook post, write the X post, write the email news content all in tandem, and send them out individually using your different tools, rather than just using the kind of built in blogging tools or YouTube sharing tools. They're going to auto do that for you. It's going to be some crappy AI generated stuff, or it's going to just pull your meta description and use that. It's not authentic. So unless like, you're really, really strapped for time and you're just trying to get some content out there, I'll give you a little pass there, but avoid using the automated stuff as much as possible.

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, you want to be able to control the content that you're putting out there. You can't control it when you're doing it that way. 

[37:54] - Metric Tracking

Lauren: But I also think that's kind of a really good segue into the metric tracking. 

Paul: Oh, I’ve been waiting for this part.

Lauren: Me too. 

Paul: Let's get some spreadsheets going.

Lauren: Love a good spreadsheet. We're all big fans of spreadsheets on this team. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: One of the things that, that is really important when it comes to metric tracking is how you can help you understand how different types of content are performing, and how different delivery methods are performing. And I think that if you don't want to take Paul's word for that, where he's saying like, don't share straight from WordPress, but actually like, create the post 

organically yourself, try it out. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: Go. Go try it, test – do it – 

Paul: Test it and track it. Prove me wrong. 

Lauren: Yeah, test it out for a couple weeks.

Paul: I don't think you can, but you should try.

Lauren: And then tell us if you do. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: Please do. That is something that is such… Sometimes it is such a minor change in your strategy. This was another thing that I did for social media, and I did this for a year, which was maybe, maybe excessive. I tagged posts whether they had a clickable thumbnail graphic, or if the graphic was a static image and the link was in the copy.

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And I wanted to see if there was a difference in click through rates on the same content. So if it was the same blog post that I shared twice, but one was, the link was in the copy and the other was the graphic itself was the clickable link. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And there absolutely was a difference in performance in this.

Paul: Clickable graphics worked better, didn’t they?

Lauren: A hundred percent. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: Like, significantly.

Paul: So what you're talking about is a form of AB testing. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: And I don't want to dial too deep into that. But it's essentially you share the same thing twice with one difference. So it's a different headline, a different graphic, a different clickable link, that sort of thing. And then you look to see which one performed better if one did.

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: I think that's absolutely vital. It's something you can be doing at all stages. Maybe it's like not quite beginner level. So you need to, you know, have a little bit of an audience. You're getting some true data around, you know, if you only got like your mom and your two cousins reading your blog posts, AB testing some social graphics is maybe not important, but…

Lauren: Well Yeah, because you need a baseline – 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: – of what your, your metrics are in general in order to – 

Paul: But it is how you – 

Lauren: – see the difference.

Paul: That's part of your content strategy. That is kind of like tier two. 

Lauren: Yes.  

Paul: But it's a vital one because it's how you continue to grow. It is you figure out what's actually working and resonating with your audience because as I said earlier, just like those marketing nerds that are going to tell you that this specific time, in this specific day is the best day to post a blog post on LinkedIn, because that's for reasons, blah, blah, blah. All that's nonsense because it's always going to be relevant to you. The kind of content you create and the kind of audience you have. The way you actually figure out what works is that sort of testing.

Lauren: I think we've actually referenced AB testing several times throughout this episode and just haven't really acknowledged that. 

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: I think that is something that is interesting because I'm a nerd, and I think it's interesting to see that and see that difference. But I think that's also something that people kind of like... It kind of sometimes seems like why? Like, what difference does it make? Do I really have to go through this effort to do this? But you don't know what's, what a little tweak could do. Like I did see a significant increase in clickthroughs – 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: – on content when I said, okay, I'm only sharing clickable links now.

Paul: Well, and you build on that. So let's say you're a blogger and you're sharing posts on Facebook and X, and you've tested out clickable links on Facebook versus clickable graphics, and you found that clickable graphics get 20% more clicks, which if you're not someone who deals with metrics a lot, is insane and not normal. So let's do that. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: All of my graphics are clickable now. Now you've done that. All of your Facebook posts have clickable graphics. Now start messing with those headlines. Does a declarative statement versus a question work better in the headline? Ooh, questions bumped me up another 5% in their clicks. Woohoo, what do we do next? And you just keep iterating on those tests until literally every post you post is getting clicked 100% of the time, which is obviously never gonna happen, but. Unless it does, in which case, tell us because we want to steal that strategy.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul: But no, that's how you build on it is you find a thing that works and it gives you a little bit of a bump, and then you, you make that the new norm, and then you find another thing to test, and you figure out what gives you a little bump, and you make that new norm, and maybe you discover that clickable graphic links with questions as the headlines and two sentence descriptions and a quote from a famous author are the gold standard, and you don't want to iterate anymore, you're happy with the traffic you're getting from there…work on something else. This is – you adapt your strategy to the next phase. That's how you really, really grow.

Lauren: Yeah. And it's also something that is constantly changing on a lot of platforms. We –

Paul: Everything.

Lauren: I mean, every – it doesn't matter what channel you're, we're tracking social or any of the other content delivery channels, the algorithms, the things that they prioritize and the arbitrary rules that they have, the things that help your content get visibility or get suppressed. It's changing every day. It's almost impossible to keep up with that stuff. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And if that is something that you're just going to say, all right, you know, I'm going to stick with my tried and true strategy and hope that it eventually swings back around my way. Sure. That it is a thing you can do and it might work in your favor. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: But if it is something that you're saying, okay, like I want to kind of stay on top of this, I'm noticing a dip in my–because I am paying attention to my metrics–and I've noticed a pretty consistent drop off in them in the last few weeks or the last few months. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: Something isn't working anymore. Something that used to be working isn't working anymore. And now I have to go figure out what that was and figure out how to change it. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And that's where that comes in. We did kind of jump straight to the end of of metric tracking though – 

Paul: Oh, my bad. 

Lauren: So we should back up now. No that was my bad. I took us – 

Paul: What are we talking about first? 

Lauren – straight to the end of how to use metric tracking to inform your content strategy. But I want to talk a little bit about not necessarily what metrics you should be looking at, but the different types of metrics that you should be paying attention to. 

Paul: Okay. 

Lauren: Matt and I did an episode about a year ago that was a dive into metrics for authors and creators.

Paul: Very good.

Lauren: Thanks. I'll link that in the show notes. We’re, you know, we're not going to go too, too deep into this, but there's a couple of different types of metrics that you could be looking at, and they all tie back to what your goals are for whatever your channel is. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: So I would consider looking at engagement metrics, conversion metrics, and growth metrics. 

Paul: Okay. 

Lauren: And it's going to be… I think the example that we used earlier was podcast channel is the primary channel. And I'm using two social channels and an email newsletter to drive traffic to that podcast channel. So the podcast metrics that I want to look at are growth metrics. 

Paul: Yep.

Lauren: I want to look at, are people subscribing to it? Are they listening? How far into every episode are they getting? Are they dropping off or are they sticking around for most of it? Are they engaged listeners? There are different – 

Paul: You're looking at growth and engagement – 

Lauren: Well, yes. 

Paul: – in that sense. 

Lauren: Yes. But I mean it's going to vary, from those – I'm not really looking at how many people liked this episode or something. I'm looking more for like actually engaging with it in a way that isn't necessarily a vanity metric.

Paul: Yeah, I think that's an important point to make because a decade ago, people really thought that likes and followers were the most important metric, especially on social media. 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: And engagement, especially as tracking tools have gotten better at this. And we can see how long people listen to things or how far they scroll into a post or something like that. It becomes much more important to think about an engagement as like actual engagement and not just mashing that like button.

Lauren: Right, right. So in the, in the sense of looking at that primary podcast channel of these are the metrics that I'm looking at here, on those other channels, if my goal is I want to get people to open my email newsletter and then click on the link that's in here to go to my podcast page. The metrics that I'm looking at in that email are conversion metrics. 

Paul: Correct. 

Lauren: I'm looking for click through rate. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: So, or link clicks or whatever the specific channel calls them.

Paul: And a conversion metric is showing that they have done it doesn't necessarily like because I think a lot of times when you hear conversion, you think they bought something. They did the final step in the chain of actions that you're hoping they'll take, but it's anything that gets them to the next step is a conversion metric.

Lauren: Yeah. And these different types of metrics can…they're all useful in different ways. Like, I'm not saying that you don't ever need to pay attention to something like likes –

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: – or comments even or whatever. But if your goal on Instagram is to grow your Instagram followers, likes are fine, likes are great, shares are way better.

Paul: Sure, that makes sense. 

Lauren: You know?

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And you know, the algorithm changes. Sometimes these days, if your friends like stuff, it'll show up on your feed. Sometimes that's not necessarily the case in how they work, but if you have a post that has ten likes but a hundred shares. 

Paul You're winning. 

Lauren: That's good. You did it.

Paul: Yeah. Good work. You got the Instagram crown for the day.

Lauren: Unless they're all sharing it because they're saying what a bad post it is, in which case you're like...

Paul: Okay, yeah, but the only thing I think I would pay attention to for something like likes, which I do agree is a very much a vanity metric, is outliers. You know, if you normally get between, you know, seven and ten likes on a post and suddenly you get 500, look a little closer at that post. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: Otherwise, yes. I don't really think they're that important. It's much more important to look at conversions and engagement.

Lauren: Yes. And pay attention to whenever possible what it is that makes that happen.

Paul: Yes, this is the biggest reason to track metrics. 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: Is to look for those outliers, to look at the things that are standing out from the norm. And then you can say, why? Why did it happen? Why did the post, this post get so many clicks on that one didn't? It's because it's got an inline link versus a clickable graphic, or is it because of the way you phrased it? Did you just have a different tone? Is it the style of graphic you used? Is it the blog post or podcast that it led to. And you won't always know. Sometimes you have to guess, but use that information to make an educated guess at the very least. 

Lauren: Right. Right. I mean, also keep in mind that none of this content exists in a vacuum, so you can use your other experiences and your other pieces of content to inform your understanding and interpretation of what maybe happened here and what didn't.

Paul: And this is, we've kind of moved from the, the part of your content strategy that is around crafting content and delivering it to knowledge, to now refining it. So you, you've kind of got a strategy of, here's my calendar, here's the channels I'm operating on, here's my main channel, here's my secondary channels that are going to help deliver that primary content. Here's my calendar of when I'm going to post stuff so that I can, you know, batch create. I can create content in groups so that everything is kind of harmonized. Now that you've got some of it out there and you're looking at how it's getting shared and how it's getting engaged with, you refine, you refine that strategy so that the second phase of the content creation strategy part becomes winnowing that down to the things that work, discarding the things that don't. Maybe, you know, you're sharing on Facebook and X and Instagram and X is getting no traffic. Cut it out. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: Focus on the other ones for a bit. Try a different one. Let's, let's head over to TikTok and make some videos or something. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: Free yourself up so that you're not wasting time on things that aren't effective. That's one of the big things that metrics are going to teach you. And so don't look at them and be looking for those big spikes. And, you know, obviously seeing that chart scale up is very pleasing. But don't look for that. Look for the things that are helping inform you what is working so that you can incrementally improve it.

Lauren: All of this is designed with the intention of helping you simplify your content creation, your business management, your strategy. It maybe sounds counterintuitive because it sounds like a lot of work. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: And if this is something that you're not already doing, you're probably like, dude, what are you talking about? This sounds like twice as much work as just kind of like winging it and going, but I'm telling you, it's not. 

Paul: Right. 

Lauren: It's one of those… It's one of those things that it is like, you are investing time now to save infinite time later.

Paul: I'm going to make a sports analogy. 

Lauren: Do it. 

Paul: But it's sort of like, I don't know sports well. So I apologize to the sports fans if I butchered this one. But let's say you're a professional basketball player. You don't just play basketball to get good at basketball. You, you do other exercises, you strategize. You watch tapes of how games went so you can see how other people play and strategize your moves and your dribbling and your stuff like that. There's all of these things that happen behind the scenes that go into making the main thing look good and be effective, and that's kind of the key thing that the strategy does. Like you said, it seems like a lot of work, but it makes what you actually want to be doing more effective and easier. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: And especially once you kind of lock in a strategy and you get your and this takes a while to get that sorted out. But once you do it becomes second nature and then you're just working through this. And the creative part kind of comes back into focus.

Lauren: Absolutely. Absolutely it does. It makes it so much easier in the long run to be creative, to be…what was what was the thing you said at the beginning? Creativity with –

Paul: Refurbished Furbies?

Lauren: Yes. Creativity within confines? What was the – 

Paul: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly that.

Lauren: Okay.

Paul: It’s, you know, restrictions and confines and constraints force you to be more creative to work within them. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: And so by self imposing some you just force yourself to be more creative.

Lauren: I don't even know if I would call it restrictions, necessarily. 

Paul: No, it’s more constraints, I think.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul: Or guardrails even.

Lauren: Perhaps niche.

Paul: Or niche. Niche, niche. For sure niche. 

Lauren: Did it hurt to say that? 

Paul: It did. 

Lauren: Okay.

Paul: It hurt, Matt. I didn't like it. Can I say one more thing about metrics before we move on?

Lauren: Oh, please do. 

Paul: UTM tags.

Lauren: Oh, yeah. 

Paul: That's it. Go look them up. We don't need to dig into them. Just go look them up. Use them. That's all there is.

Lauren: I think we talked about them in the Metrics that Matter episode, it was episode number 47. And if not, I'm pretty sure we have a blog post about –

Paul: We do. 

Lauren: – about it, so I'll link that in the show notes.

Paul: It's actually a really nice one. Breaks them down bit by bit. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: So you can understand how – because I honestly, I'm not great with them. I rely on the rest of my team to remind me to use them. But don't be like me. Use them. What's next?

[51:07] - Tools to Help You Plan and Execute Your Content Strategy

Lauren: I promise we're winding down, but I do want to kind of share some tools that we like for this.

Paul: Yeah. Get your wallets out.

Lauren: I'm actually –  

Paul: No, I'm actually kidding. 

Lauren: I'm actually going to say that my number one most reliable tool for content strategy and content creation, and the thing if I had nothing else in my pocket, this would be sufficient, is Google suite.

Paul: She's right. And it's free.

Lauren: Because the number one piece of advice that we could give you about content creation and content strategy, if you take one thing away from this episode, it is having a content hub.

Paul: Yep.

Lauren: Or a content repository. Whatever it is, whatever you want to call it, having all of your stuff live in one place. 

Paul: Yep.

Lauren: And I mean your high level calendar, the copy, all of the different content pieces that you have created for it, everything – 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: – living in one place makes it so much easier for you to have a high level look at this is what content I have available to me. This is the promotional content that I have created for that, here are my metrics for it. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: Here's when I've shared it in the past, and the easiest tool on the planet that will support you doing all of that in the same place or free is Google. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: This is not an ad.

Paul: No it's not. I mean, you want spreadsheets for organizing your calendars and being able to sort data. You want docs for being able to write content and copy so that you have an organized place to do that. And you want folders that you can have subfolders in to get stuff sorted. 

Lauren: Right. 

Paul: And I 100% agree Google is the easiest one to use. And that's where I would start. And the only thing I would say about it is don't get hung up too much on the structure of your drive and the content in there. At first, just create some stuff and then maybe come back and organize it in ways that make sense once you've got into it a little bit. Or you know you're starting a new strategy for a new channel and just create a folder and dump stuff in there for a while and then sort it in a way that makes sense, only so you don't get too bogged down in, like, the structure, and you'd actually move forward with you creating your strategy and creating your content.

Lauren: Yep. I also want to encourage people to think about using some of the tools within Google outside of their intended purpose. Like I use Google Calendar for my work meetings and also for personal use, but I do not use the calendar tool as a content planning tool.

Paul: Agreed.

Lauren: I build a calendar in sheets. 

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: I turn those cells in sheets into a calendar because then I can customize the content within there, I can customize the formatting. I color code, especially when I was doing social media. I color code my calendars so that I can literally at a glance, look at it and say, okay, blog content is blue and I've got one week that has no blue in it, so I have to put a blog in that week. Lauren: You know? 

Paul: I agree with that. 

Lauren: And you can do that a lot easier. And you can also link to things in Sheets and you can leave comments. We are very, our whole team uses Google. That's how we review each other’s content and that's how we collaborate is just leaving comments, track changes, all that kind of stuff in there. You can plan and schedule all your social content –

Paul: Yeah.

Lauren: – in the individual platforms, that's fine. But if you have a spreadsheet, a Google spreadsheet where you've got all your stuff planned out, and then all you have to do is go to Facebook every morning and –

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: – bang those posts out. It makes it that much easier.

Paul: I 100% agree.

Lauren: Yeah. All right, I'm done. 

Paul: All right. 

Lauren: That's my pitch.

Paul: So I'm going to talk about the elephant in every room in the last couple of years. And that's AI. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Paul: And I will say it's great for creating some templates for your sheets, creating some ideation sheets for brainstorming. Obviously you don't want to use it to create your content. I think that's a mistake that we're moving away from now. So I think we can kind of just quickly go through the app. But don't be afraid to let ChatGPT help you with strategizing, with developing kind of outlines of, you know, feed it into it. This is the primary channel. This is how many times I want to post content on it. These are the secondary channels. This is how many times I want to share that content on those channels. This is the goal. I have to tell it all those things and ask it to write you up a strategy, and then just let that be your baseline that you refine from. It's a great way to just avoid that blinking cursor on the blank screen sort of feeling and keep moving forward. So a big advocate of using AI in smart and ethical ways like that, where it's, it's assisting you in doing some really tedious stuff that you don't want to do.

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: Also a great way to like, have it go find some templates for these. Maybe you don't want to go in and make a calendar the same way Lauren does, where you meticulously color code and size and organize and lock down your cells, have ChatGPT make you a template and have it make another one. If you didn't like the first one until it makes one you like.

Lauren: Or have it either generate or source the formulas that are going to help you do this.

Paul: Oh gosh. Yeah. And this is, we were talking earlier about how, you know, it can seem like a lot of work that isn't content creation to spend as much time on strategy. But as you learn these tricks and you refine it, the strategy becomes second nature. It becomes just the basic routine that you're using to get that content created. And you kind of shift back to the content focus. 

Lauren: Yes.

Paul: So it's, it's so worth it. Those are kind of the main tools I think actually. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: You could do all this for free. So I think that's that would be where I would start. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: If we want to talk about some kind of additional things that are helpful, if you're really into task management, there a couple of good options like Asana and Trello or, you know, we use Clickup here. There's lots of tools that are out there that help you just create tasks, set due dates, track that you're working on, stuff. I personally hate them. I'm more of a like, sit down, write out my to do list for the day and work through it. But if that's the kind of thing you're into, there are free options or somewhat limited. But they do work for what you're trying to do. Trello is a great one for kind of simple workflow cards to keep moving forward.

Lauren: I think that they're really helpful for reminder tasks –

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: – more than anything else, and that is something. If you are somebody like me, who has the memory of the flea and the attention span of somebody who went 36 years with undiagnosed ADHD, when you're creating content in advance, when you're scheduling content in advance, there might be some manual elements to it – 

Paul: Yup. 

Lauren: – that because you're not going through the motions of doing it day of, you would forget about.

Paul: A hundred percent. 

Lauren: So… 

Paul: Those tracking tools help you kind of offload some of that mental load. 

Lauren: Yep. 

Paul: And that's what they're useful for. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: One other one that I'm going to shout out is for audience research, SparkToro. You get a limited number of searches for free. They're not terribly expensive. But I don't want to like, push for paid services. But especially if you're already creating content, you've already got a bit of an audience, but you're looking to branch out to reach some new folks. SparkToro lets you kind of connect interests with the other content the people who are interested in that topic or product or something are searching for, so you can get a sense of if you are…doing custom shoe designs on people's Nike's and you want to branch into doing custom designs for their hats, you might go research what people who buy custom hats are looking at, and you go find the social profiles for some people that are doing this and you see how they're posting, do they have a weirdly sporty sort of tone or is it very like cool or bougie, or what kind of tone are they using? What kind of language are they using? What kind of graphics are they using? SparkToro is a really cool way to kind of see what other people in your space are doing, so you can either emulate them or know how to differentiate yourself.

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: There are lots of other tools that do this as well. That's just one that I like. So I want to call that one out.

Lauren: Yeah, I also like SparkToro. 

Paul: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, definitely. I don't think that we need to get into really the different individual content channels.

Paul: I think it's just worth mentioning that you need to figure out how you're going to create, host, and deliver content on each of your channels. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: And start like that should be the first step of your strategy is, you know, establish what kind of content you want to create and what the goal of it is. Then how do you want to deliver it? How do you want to host and deliver it? If it's a blog or you go into WordPress or you try and something different, is it going to be a blog type content that's heavily leaning on newsletters? Well, Substack literally does that, that kind of thing.

Lauren: Yeah. And you want to think about just how the pieces all fit together. 

Paul: Yes.

Lauren: And you want to think about that with longevity too. 

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: Even if you are like if you're taking kind of a staggered approach to building out a new channel or building up your existing channel and you're saying, okay, right now I just want to launch a podcast. But I do think that about six months from now, I might supplement it with blog posts. So maybe right now I don't need a website for my podcast to host it, and I will just post them to the individual platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify and whatever. But I do eventually want to have it in a place where I can also host the blog content and the podcast content on the same page.

Paul: Yep. 

Lauren: So, you know, that's something that you do kind of want to think into the future at least a little bit.

Paul: Yeah. And I think you need to get that as part of your initial strategy too. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: Like what is your goal? Is part of that goal to expand the channels that you're using to reach the audience, to achieve whatever that goal is, then try to build that in from the get go, so at least you're prepared for it.

Lauren: I think it's also, I think when it comes to those different delivery methods, it's also good to understand what kind of metric tracking. 

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: Because they all have.

Paul: They all have their.

Lauren: Own, they all have their own. And like I was saying earlier with Sprout, the only platform that I've seen more robust metric tracking than sprout is Google Analytics.

Paul: And Google Analytics is not a lot of fun to work with, so.

Lauren: No. So that is something, you know, that's something that you need to kind of think about how you want to prioritize that. Maybe the really, really meticulous metric tracking is important to you. So you want a tool that will help you with that or maybe not so much. You're okay with just like the platform specific metrics.

Paul: Yup.

Lauren: But you would really like an aggregate social scheduling tool instead of having to go manually on every channel. So kind of decide what matters to you. 

Paul: Yup. 

Lauren: Yeah, you can always upgrade later in time. 

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: But it's good to know. And the way to answer that question is probably going all the way back to the beginning and saying, what are my goals for this channel?

[1:00:26] - Wrap Up

Paul: Yeah, I think this is a good spot to like, stop and kind of recap it. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: Start with what you have. Any audience, any content creation you’re already doing define the goal that you want to achieve. Is it grow that audience? Is it create more of that content? Is it to create content or add a new channel? Is it to promote a product? Sit down and write it out real broadly in a Google doc, make a bullet list of what you're trying to do, what your goal is, then figure out what the primary channel is and what your secondary channels are, and start making a calendar so that you can track when you have to create things. When can you batch create things to efficiently get stuff into that next step? When can you schedule and build the stuff on these channels? When do you deliver it? When do you track the metrics? And then do it again. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Paul: And that's your ten second strategy. 

Lauren: There you go. 

Paul: All right, I have two questions. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: One, what do your bracelets say? Because I know Matt's not here to ask.

Lauren: Oh, they say The 118. That's Showbiz Baby. And It Was Rare, I Was There.

Paul: Ooh, that one rhymes. I like that one. What is The 118?

Lauren: The firehouse from 911.

Paul: Ohh, emergency. 

Lauren: Like the firefighter station.

Paul: Okay. All right. I have one other question. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Paul: I want your thirty second unfiltered review of this new Taylor Swift album.

Lauren: Okay, I love it. I recognize that it's not for everybody, and I think that's part of what I love about it. I think it's the first time in her entire career that she decided to write an album that was for her, but I think that it is a millennial woman in her prime who has reached full. Like, I don't care if you like me, I don't care if I can't make everybody happy. I just want to have a good time and dance and have fun and talk about how cool my boyfriend is and how much I love him. And I am here for that.

Paul: And selling vinyls.

Lauren: Okay. But listen. 

Paul: I'm just messing with you. 

Lauren: No, no, you, I gotta – These are the prettiest vinyls. I have ever seen. 

Paul: Okay. 

Lauren: They are beautiful and, like, even like, the actual, like, cardboard sleeves that they're coming in are the highest quality of any. And I own every single one of her vinyls and a whole bunch of other ones too. These are the prettiest and most well done vinyls I have ever owned.

Paul: Wild. Alright. 

Lauren: Yes, I did order three of them.

Paul: Love it. Go Swiftie on.

Lauren: Thanks.

Paul: Keeps swifting. No, I don't like either of those. You can cut those. Okay. 

Lauren: No, I'm leaving them. Well, Paul, thank you so much for joining me today.

Paul: Hey, thank you for letting me yap at you for an hour.

Lauren: Anytime, literally anytime.

Paul: I love talking strategy.

Lauren: I do too. This is definitely something – I know, I'm pretty sure I said this with the last one, too, when it came to writing something that we could talk about for hours. 

Paul: Oh yeah. 

Lauren: But this, I think even more. I mean, this is literally our job. So – 

Paul: Yeah, and –  

Lauren: – this is what we do.

Paul: We really took a really high level of this. So like there's some piece of this that you want dug down into more. Send Lauren an email at…

Lauren: Podcast@lulu.com.

Paul: And we'll either do another podcast or write a blog post or ignore you. No, we won’t ignore you. 

Lauren: Yeah. No no no. 

Paul: I promise we won’t ignore you. 

Lauren: But definitely if this is content that you'd be interested in in us niching down into a little bit more – 

Paul: We’re going to reach into that niche. 

Lauren: – whether it's a specific channel – 

Paul: I keep hating it. 

Lauren: Yeah. Let us know. We'd love to talk more about it and create more content about it, because we can find fun, new ways to deliver this content to you.

Paul: If Matt's going to let us pull back the curtain, we're going to do it.

Lauren: Sounds good to me. You can always leave us a comment on any of Lulu’s social media channels to let us know what you want to hear more about on here, or send me an email, like and subscribe and leave reviews on all of the major podcast networks and on YouTube and.

Paul: Read my blog.

Lauren: Read Paul's blog. Please do. It is the most robust piece of educational content that we have out there. Or the most like, incredibly thorough educational channel.

Paul: I did go this whole episode without plugging myself too, so I gotta slide one in there in the end.

Lauren: No no no, you absolutely did. There are blog posts linked in every single episode of, of the show.

Paul: I know.

Lauren: So, highly recommend it. Definitely for sure. I'll link some good ones in here, and I will also drop some links to some of the tools that we recommended if you want to go check any of those out.

Paul: All right. Let's get out of here. 

Lauren: Yeah, let's get out of here. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for listening. And I'm also going to plug a teaser for next week's episode is our two year anniversary episode. So Matt and I have actually already recorded it and – 

Paul: It's going to be a banger.

Lauren: We talked a lot about what we've learned over the last two years of podcasting, so if you're interested in a little more behind the scenes and pulling back the curtain, go listen to it.

Paul: Yes, cause this was them talking into like two cell phones at first, and now it's this whole thing.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, we really, leveled up. 

Paul: Yes. 

Lauren: In here. Tune in next week and let us know what you think.

Paul: Excellent. 

Lauren: Thanks. 

Paul: Bye.