Creating A Content Plan That Works - Live Coaching Session with Suzanne | 107
If you’ve ever felt like you’re absolutely drowning in your business or totally lost - you might be in need of a business strategy. (Also, if you’ve never felt that - consider yourself lucky! It’s super common.) Sometimes, though, you need to see how something is done in order to make it happen in your own life.
On this podcast episode, I sat down with Suzanne from Plain Speech for a strategy session, and she agreed to share her session to help others who might be struggling with a similar issue.
The Details
Before we jump into this business strategy example, I want to give you some background on Suzanne because it’ll help you understand her strategy session. Suzanne is the owner of Plain Speech, a full-time SLP, and a mother of three. AKA - she’s got a lot going on!
She came into the session looking to create a schedule for her content. In the past, her content strategy was a bit more “flying by the seat of my pants” (her words, not mine!). She posted content as she wanted and when there was time. She really just felt like she wasn’t doing enough.
The Key Takeaways
#1 Let Go of the Formulaic Schedule
It used to be really popular to post certain content on certain days. Monday you shared a tip. Tuesday you give a tip. Wednesday you went live. You get the point. This type of formulaic posting and content sharing is not performing as well anymore - and to be honest, it put a lot of unnecessary pressure on many business owners.
#2 Decide on Themes for the Month
Instead of having a formulaic content calendar or trying to force content pillars, we decided that she should go with monthly themes instead! Suzanne loved this idea as she had already mapped out topics for each month. Each month, she will be sharing books, resources, tips and strategies relating to the topic at hand.
#3 Have a Place to Collect Ideas
The term out of sight out of mind is super relevant when it comes to content. If you create a business strategy inside a Google Doc…and then never open it again, it won’t be very useful. Instead, have a place in your journal, planner, or wall where you can display your ideas and goals. This helps them stay top of mind!
#4 Repurpose
In the business strategy example call, Suzanne was really struggling to come up with ideas. So, we spent a lot of time talking about repurposing. If you create even just one blog a month, you can turn that into social media posts, weekly emails, video content, and more. Don’t work harder, work smarter.
#5 Pick a Plan that Works for You
Lastly, we spent the majority of our time in the strategy session getting realistic. As a busy mom, SLP, and business owner - Suzanne doesn’t have time to write four blogs a month - and that is totally okay. The best business plan is the one that is sustainable and functional for you.
I hope seeing this business strategy example helped you see how you can begin creating steps toward your goals. Interested in meeting for your own 1:1 business strategy session? Have business goals you need help planning? You can book a strategy session here!
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Episode Transcript:
Welcome to Market Scale Grow. My name's Jenzai and this is a very special Saturday Strategy Session because we are actually doing a live - well, recording - strategy session. And I have Suzanne with me. We're gonna be chatting through her marketing plan. And so first of all, Suzanne, do you want to introduce yourself and let us know a little bit about who you are, who you help, what you do in your business? Then we can dive into the strategy.
Suzanne: So I'm Suzanne. I am a pediatric speech language pathologist. So my nine to five is treating children with speech sound disorders. And then I also run a TPT store on the side where I sell materials related to treating speech and language disorders. I run a small Instagram account, Playing Speech, and blog, and do all of those other social media kind of things.
Jenzaia: Amazing. So how long have you been doing this for the TPT business side of it?
Suzanne: So I started it three years ago, but I didn't really start taking it seriously until about maybe the last year and a half. And I say seriously loosely because I'm trying to not stress myself with it, but still help it grow and become something bigger than a hobby.
Jenzaia: Yeah. That balance between consistency and doing all of the things. And you have a little one?
Suzanne: Three little ones!
Jenzaia: Three little ones! And a full-time job, and you're doing this as well. There's a lot of balancing going on. So before we hopped on the call, we chatted a little bit about what you'd like to talk through. Do you wanna share where you're at with your marketing and what your biggest struggle is right now?
Suzanne: Sure. So I always just feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. I don't have a plan. I don't have content pillars. There's no schedule. An idea pops in my head and then I make a post about it. Then I'll try to repurpose it into other channels, like a blog or an email. But everything is very sporadic
Jenzaia: So I think one of the big things that we wanna chat through is a schedule and figuring out your distribution schedule - like how often you're gonna be doing the frequency. Then also your content pillars so that it's not so much when inspiration strikes, but you have a bit more of a plan in place.
So if you were to just think very broad, big topics, what are some of the things that you currently create content on?
Suzanne: So I do a lot of tips for speech…useful resources that I find…therapy ideas. Those are kind of the big three.
Jenzaia: And would you say all of your ideas come from this or you're also pulling in other things? Would you say you only rotate through those topics?
Suzanne: So I might share like four therapy tips in a row and no resources for a while, and then I'll find a free resource. But there's no plan as to when those things would happen.
Jenzaia: I think that's a really important thing to mention here is you don't necessarily need to. It almost can be detrimental to be rotating through them in a formulaic kind of way. Like I always do tips for speech therapy on Mondays, and I always share resources on Wednesdays, and I always share the strategies on Friday.
Now there are pros and cons to it. The pro is you do have that schedule in place where you know what's coming. But the con is that the algorithm and people's user habits are pushing away from that kind of structure and that kind of formula, which is very fascinating.
But short videos are best for shorter attention spans - having a little bit more of an “organic and thrown together” feel can be better for your business. So that's interesting.
And I think this is definitely newer. This is in the last 6 to 12 months. The shift has been happening away from the formula of, like I said, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And so I think it's okay that you're not necessarily rotating through.
And then the other piece is, if you do more structured themes for four weeks, you're only sharing tips on one specific topic and then move to another one. That can be a really great way to promote a product that you have that relates to that. And so like in January, your focus is selling a big bundle that you have. And so all of your content relates to that big bundle, but then in February you move on to something else.
Suzanne: Yeah, and that is a kind of a way to structure it, I guess, without following that formulaic…Monday I do this, Wednesday I do this, Friday I do this. It's just like, oh, this month I'm always gonna share about minimal pairs or whatever. I really like that.
I actually typed out a little calendar of January through December of different approaches and then I never looked at it again. I had an outline of like, okay, January, I'm gonna do minimal pairs…February, I'll do cycles…and then I just never referred back to it. So that might be part of my problem too.
Jenzaia: So maybe you need to pull that up and print it out and put it somewhere where you can see it. And then throughout the year, if you come across a tip or a strategy or a resource that'd be really good for a month that's coming up, you can post-it so that you are not panicking during the month.
Suzanne: That's a good idea. Then I have to organize my post-it notes. There's a hundred just sitting in front of me.
Jenzaia: I started using a notebook and I found myself just opening to random pages and then not being able to find that random page. So now it doesn't matter if it's related or not to the thing that's before, I force myself to just use the next page of the notebook so that it's in sequential order. So that has really helped me. Everything's just in one notebook and it doesn't matter what the topic is. There's personal stuff and business stuff.
Jenzaia: You have a blog - how often are you currently posting to your blog?
Suzanne: This is gonna sound so terrible, but my goal is only once a month.
Jenzaia: That's not terrible at all. Are you succeeding at that goal?
Suzanne: 97% of the time. I think I might have missed a month maybe over the summer.
Jenzaia: I think ideally, the golden standard is once a week. But what is more important than hitting that golden standard is putting out consistent high-quality content. And if once a month is what you can do with high quality content and you're able to put it out every single month consistently - I highly recommend that it's like the 15th of the month or the 1st of the month, or whatever, so that your audience can come to expect when it's coming out - But the consistency is a lot more important.
Suzanne: I am kind of doing that. Which makes me feel good that at least I'm on that track because I'm also an overthinker. Like if I'm gonna put something into a blog post, it has gotta be good! I don't just throw together a weekly post just to have one - which I thought might be bad. But what you're saying, maybe it's just better that I'm putting more time and consideration into the one bigger blog post.
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Jenzaia: If you're only putting out the one piece, you're gonna wanna repurpose it a little bit more and spread the promotion of it throughout the month. What I do with my podcast is, I focus on it for a week and then the next episode comes, and then I like to look at the previous month and pull something from the best podcast episode from the previous month.
But really, I only focus on that content for that week because I then move on to another one. But with you only having one blog post, you can stretch it out the entire month. And if you're having a theme of the month and that post goes with your theme, then everything will nicely circle together.
Like, if it was the minimal pairs month, then every post on Instagram talks about minimal pairs and can kind of mention,”if you want more, read this blog” kind of thing. And then the blog is related. If you had like five different resources that went with minimal pairs, then you can kind of pull those out at random. And then you can promote the blog post on a different day. And carousel posts are really good with educational content - where you're pulling the key points or the tips from your blog, and you could do a different spin or you could just do one point each week.
So there's some really great ways that you can break up that blog post.
What are you currently doing? I know you said you have the Instagram post that will sometimes inspire your blog post. And then how else are you repurposing right now?
Suzanne: I'll take that and also sometimes do an email.
Janzaia: How often are you emailing your list?
Suzanne: Maybe every 7 to 10 days. I think that's the thing I'm most consistent with.
Jenzaia: That's great! What kind of things are you emailing about?
Suzanne: I'll try to do informative emails that relate to a blog or Instagram post. And then sometimes there are sales emails that go out too - I guess hard sales?
But I try to balance both of those.
Jenzaia: And then with these themes that we've been talking about with the months, do you have products that go with some of those?
Suzanne: Some of them.
Jenzaia: The great thing about teaching - and I'm not a hundred percent sure about SLPs and speech therapy - but with teaching, we will cycle through the same topics in the curriculum throughout the year. So a lot of teachers are focusing on similar themes in September and in December and in March.
Like throughout the year there's very specific themes that teachers are interested in. Are SLPs the same or is it a little bit more random, based on your client?
Suzanne: The goals that you're addressing will be random, but we do a lot of themes throughout the year. I just don't always have a lot of themed materials myself. I make more evergreen stuff, which is good because people can buy it all year, but it doesn't follow a schedule like that.
Jenzaia: But that's okay because like you said, they're gonna be using it throughout the year and so I wouldn't necessarily try to force yourself into themes. If what you prefer to create and what works better for you and yourself and your business is the evergreen content, then do that.
Suzanne: Yeah. I mean, in my case, I could definitely branch into themes. I think it's a big area for speech therapists. People are always looking for themed speech therapy materials. It just hasn't been something that I personally love, so it feels daunting.
Jenzaia: Yep. My husband said for months, “you need to make Christmas themed word searches and Valentine's Day word searches and St. Patrick's Day word searches.” I was like, no, I'm not doing it! And then finally I did it for Remembrance Day and it was huge! And I was like, okay, fine, I'll do it.
So I feel the exact same way. I don't want you to feel like you need to push yourself into something you hate, but if you are ever inspired, then it wouldn't hurt.
Suzanne: Right. I don't hate it. It's just not my first thought. But I think I'm gonna have to start incorporating a lot more of that.
Jenzaia: Do you like the flow of Instagram posts to blog, to email?
Suzanne: That just seems to be what works organically for me. My first thought is always an Instagram post, and I don't know why. That seems like where my brain goes. So when I get an idea, I'm like, okay, Instagram post is the first thing I go to, and then after a minute or so I'm like, oh wait, I could turn this into a blog, or I could turn this into an email. So yeah, I guess I like it because it's what comes naturally to me, but I don't know if it's the best.
Jenzaia: I think the best is, again, what you're going to do consistently and what works well for you, and that you're repurposing. You're not trying to come up with an Instagram post and coming up with a different blog and coming up with a different email. Because then you're doing three different things.
But if you are taking any of those and then using them again for something else, then you're strategically using what you've created and you're not trying to reinvent the wheel. And we have to remember, like on Instagram, it's something like one to 4% of people actually see our content. And in your emails somewhere from 25 to 50% of people open them. And I have no stats for you about blogs at this point. I remember back in the olden days of blogs, people would find a blog, go back to day one and read everything. But now there's a little bit more of that, searching for what I need, finding the single blog I need, reading that, and then moving on.
Suzanne: That also makes me feel better because I'm always like, oh, am I just being redundant? But like you said, hardly anybody's gonna see that Instagram post, so I might as well repurpose it and hope to reach more of an audience.
Jenzaia: And I might even cautiously say, if you don't feel like you're being redundant, you don't feel like you're repeating yourself, then you're doing it wrong. If you're always talking about those same things, then people start to recognize you as the expert in pediatric speech therapy. Does that make sense?
Suzanne: Absolutely. I think it's just a mindset shift because at first you're like, I have to be creating all these new things all the time, and new ideas and new posts, and really it makes more sense to repurpose and reuse.
Jenzaia: And to go back to your Instagram, look at those insights and find the posts that did well organically, and then take that to create new posts for Instagram. But then also if you already know that they did well organically in the past, pull those for your blogs and your emails.
How often are you posting to social media?
Suzanne: Just when I feel like posting something! So I'd say at least once a week, but in my stories, probably every day. I try to get a reel once a week and maybe a static post once a week, but it may trickle into closer to 10 days sometimes.
Jenzaia: Does that feel good or do you want it to be more frequent?
Suzanne: I think it feels sustainable. I just never put the pressure on myself to get another post out there. When I put something out, it's something that I'm passionate about at that moment or something that's relevant at that moment for my caseload. So I never force anything. So I guess it feels good in that sense. I'm not sure it's best practice because it seems not that consistent.
Jenzaia: Well, so first of all, according to Instagram, stories are the most consumed and have the most engagement. So stories and then reels would be the next piece of content that's being consumed because reels are starting to become our new tv, right? Like we're sitting there scrolling and just watching these videos.
And then the last piece of content that is being consumed is the static or carousel type posts. And I wouldn't discount them because they can be really great for saving and sharing, and as educational pieces. Even though reels can still be educational, I would place them more on the entertainment side.
And if somebody's gonna sit and read your carousel, then they're a little bit more engaged than just scrolling through a reel. But I would prioritize them in the order.
Getting on stories every single day is important. And when I say every day, I mean five days a week. Giving yourself a couple days off is totally fine, but consistently getting on stories. And then one reel a week is a great target to hit. And then the static post, same thing. And if you're going to add like a third thing in there, another reel or another static post, whatever feels sustainable. And that could be part of not being formulaic that could be part of you. Just like whatever inspiration hits.
Suzanne: That's good because then I feel like I can stay with that kind of schedule and not burn myself out.
Jenzaia: It's crazy because we went from you feeling like you didn't really have anything in place, but we've really talked through everything you have in place. Especially, like I said, taking into consideration your full-time job, your three kids. You have a lot of pieces in place. It's not, it's not a disaster at all!
Suzanne: Yeah. I feel like when you told me to pick a theme for the month, that almost seems like something I could do rather than like, content pillars. If I pick a topic per month and then throw in resources, activities, and tips related to that topic each month, that to me seems easier to wrap my head around. So I feel good about that.
Jenzaia: I love the way that twisted things and shifted the idea of content pillars for you. Content themes instead of content pillars. And I think that another key point is when we have these plans, it's really important to put them somewhere where we're going to see them on a regular basis. Because having a Google Doc that you made and then never look at again, doesn't really help. But having it out there to keep you on track is the biggest first step.
Suzanne: Right. That's what I'm gonna do when we are done. Print it out and stick it right there on that wall!
Jenzaia: Yay. I love that! So, from our little strategy section, what would you say are the three biggest takeaways?
Suzanne: The content themes. Being consistent. Repurposing.
Jenzaia: Yay. Do you have any other questions for me?
Suzanne: No, I think that was awesome.
Jenzaia: Amazing. So, I know you said it at the beginning, but if any listeners want to check out your TPT store and your Instagram, can you just share again where they can do that?
Suzanne: Sure. So my Instagram and my TPT are both Playing Speech. On TPT, it's one word. I find that that affects your search if you don't type it in as one.
Jenzaia: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for doing this with me.
Suzanne: Yeah, thanks for having me.
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