Tips for Creating Consistent Content & Ditching Perfection | 130
In business, a lot of people become paralyzed with perfection. They want every blog and email to be flawless, which means they struggle to create consistent content or are put off by the idea of creating content in the first place.
I want to help you challenge some of those perfectionist tendencies while showing you that consistent content is better than perfect content.
The Importance of Consistent Content
First, let me be clear on what consistency means. When I think of consistency, I think of the elements of holistic marketing: long-form content, email marketing, and community building. Being consistent means regularly creating content for each of these platforms.
When you are consistent, you help your audience become more aware and warm them up to your offers. For example, I can’t expect people to know I do Facebook Ads if I don’t show up and talk about it. And it’s definitely going to take more than one email or one Instagram post to get people to say, “Oh yeah, Jenzaia is the Facebook Ads gal!”
Content Creation Tips for Producing Consistent Content
If you’re all aboard the consistent content train now, then you might be wondering how you can actually create that content. There is only so much time in your day, so how do you get it done? Below are some content creation tips to help you out.
#1 Pick a Schedule that Works for You
Consistency doesn’t have to mean a new piece of content every day. It only means showing up on the schedule that you set. While I recommend having a new piece of long-form content and email each week, but if you may only have time for every other week that’s okay too! Quality is more important than quantity.
#2 Prioritize Your Marketing
A lot of times, marketing is at the bottom of our to-do list. You might put product creation or client work at the top, leaving no time for making your own content. But the reality is marketing has to be non-negotiable.
#3 Find Some Accountability
Alright, we’ve determined that it has to be a non-negotiable, so how can you stay accountable? To produce consistent content, you may need something holding the fire under you, if you will. Maybe this is a coach or co-working buddy. Maybe it’s setting aside a day in your calendar and only dedicating your time to content creation that day. Whatever you find works for you, DO IT!
#4 Batch Your Content
My last content creation tip is to batch. Batching is not new, you’ve probably heard it before, but there is a reason it’s so popular. The only way I can create consistent content is by knocking out my content pieces through batching. Maybe one day you sit down to word-vomit your blogs and emails. Then the next day, you edit. And then before you know it a month of content is done.
Want more tips and reasons to commit to consistent content? Check out episode 101 on how consistent marketing creates success in your business.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Hello and welcome back! This is a Saturday strategy session. Today we're gonna be talking about aiming for consistency and not perfection in your marketing. And before I really dive into it, I just wanna be clear. I'm not a current or recovering perfectionist. That's not part of my personality. That's not who I've ever been.
A lot of people will label me as type A, which I'm also not that. I am a firstborn and I am a teacher, and a lot of teachers who are firstborns are perfectionists. But I'm definitely much more laid back than that. I've always had the thought that done is better. Looking back, I've kind of always had that attitude of I'm gonna do the best that I can do at this moment. It's going to be done, it's gonna be done on time. But like I remember in university, sitting down to write essays and knowing that there were grammatical errors and conjugation errors and vocabulary errors. And that I turned in university level work, in my second language, knowing that there were gonna be mistakes.
And it wasn't like French is a second language level of courses. These were francophone, like French first language. Like sociology, psychology courses designed for francophone people. For me, I went to the University of Ottawa and every single class for every single thing, you always had the option to submit work in either French or English. You could request to have your exam in French or English because the university is a bilingual university, and despite the fact that Ottawa is an English speaking city, they do put French very high on the priority, and it's probably one of the most bilingual cities in all of Canada.
The University of Ottawa focuses so heavily on this bilingualism. When we got emails, at the top of the email, it would always say an English message follows, and we would get the email in French first, which is the reverse of pretty much everywhere else. You always get the English first and at the top it says the message will continue in French.
So anyway, in university I had the option of doing all of my papers, all of my exams, all of my everything in English. But I was choosing to improve my French, I was choosing to push myself and to do the work in French and to complete the essays and exams in French. And so I knew that because it was my second language, I wasn't going to be able to be perfect. And I was okay with that because it was the learning and I was doing the absolute best that I could.
I had francophone friends who would read my work and would help me and would try and teach me, and I learned so much, but I never, ever, ever once struggled handing in a paper being paralyzed in perfectionism. I just knew it wasn't, and I think that that is a great example of like my entire life. I just kind of accepted that I'm going to do the best that I absolutely possibly can. And so, I just wanna be clear that these are not tips or strategies if you are struggling with perfectionism, if you are paralyzed by needing to be perfect. I am not the right person for that. I cannot speak to that. And this episode, while I will be talking about going for consistency and not perfectionism, It's more because I want to give you some insight or inspiration for you to become more consistent. Because a lack of consistency is one of the biggest issues that I see out there, and I often hear people talking about feeling like they need to be perfect in what they're doing. But really, whatever the reason is that you're not being consistent, my tips are here for that. So we're not really gonna be addressing how to get out of the perfectionism cycle, but more how to be more consistent.
So with that said, one of the main reasons now as an adult that I just think that it's impossibly perfect is because I'm still constantly learning and growing. One time I saw this, I think it was a TED Talk, and they talked about how after year three of teaching almost all teachers plateau. We're growing, growing, growing, getting better, getting comfortable in our roles, and then teachers plateau. And that terrified me. The idea that I would only be growing and learning for three years was terrifying. And so what I did was make this conscious decision that if I ever felt like I was comfortable and had plateaued, that it was time for a switch. And so some of the switches I made were, teaching in Taiwan and I came home and I started teaching in Canada.
So that was a bit of a big switch. I've changed grade levels, I've changed schools. I've changed teaching partners, though sometimes that wasn't my choice. Sometimes it was someone else choosing to move on to like a different school themselves or a different grade level themselves. But switching that up has changed the dynamic in my classroom and forced me to continue to grow and change.
I've also left the classroom part-time. I am now running this business basically full-time, and so that has caused me to change and grow as well. And it's not that there isn't perfect right here in this moment because there is, but what is perfect today can't stay perfect forever or else we're stagnant and so we do the absolute best, or at least I do the absolute best I can in this moment.
And I think my podcast is probably actually a really, really great example of that because I've now been podcasting for just over two years. I started this podcast in April of 2021. So if you were to go back to the beginning of the podcast, back to April, 2021 and you were to listen to those episodes, I was a different person. I was at a different place. I knew different things. I had a different understanding of marketing and the digital online space. And so if we're not growing, changing and learning new things, then we're stagnant. And I don't wanna be stagnant. I want to be constantly growing. I wanna be better tomorrow than I am today. Better today than I was yesterday.
Another example of this that I had is one of my previous coaches and I were talking about my program, Dream List Essentials, and I made a comment about having to re-record the content for my course. She kind of pushed back and was like, well, you’ve had this program for a couple years so no need to re-record it now. A couple things. Number one, Facebook ads and the Facebook ad platform is constantly changing. So there is a need from a technology standpoint to update, so what my students are looking at matches what they're seeing on their screen as they are trying to work through it.
But also as I've been saying, my understanding of Facebook ads, the growth that I've made since I initially recorded the course, it's all changed. Like I've grown so much since that first time that I ran the program. I've a better understanding of marketing. We're also in a different marketing space than we were. There have been huge shifts over the past three or four years. The way that marketing is working online right now, and this is like an ebb and flow, a roller coaster or a pendulum swing, if you will, where some things are working right now and others aren't. Then in a couple of years, the pendulum will swing and those other things are working.
And what's working today just isn't working anymore. So I think that we get better at what we know how to do. We're able to do it faster. We're able to do more. What I'm saying right now is the absolute best understanding of what I have right now. If I were to re-record this exact same episode in three months, six months, 12 months from now, it would be a different episode completely because of the growth and change that I've made.
And so there could be perfect in this exact moment, but it just can't stay around forever. There's also more clarity. Sometimes the first time we talk about a topic, we're kind of stumbling over our words. As we interact with it more, as we involve ourselves with it more, we have more clarity and we're able to better explain it so that it's more clear for the person who's receiving it.
So there's also that. So those are my thoughts about perfection. Those are a couple of different little stories about my life and my anti perfectionism personality, if you will. So let's talk more about consistency. What exactly is consistency? How can you be more consistent? And just some other tips and strategies I have for you.
So number one, what does consistency mean? When I talk about consistency, I'm typically talking about your three elements of holistic marketing. So that would be number one, your long form content, your podcast, blog, video content. Number two, your email marketing, and number three, your community building or social media strategy.
And so being consistent means regularly creating content for all of those platforms. Now, if you've ever heard me talk about holistic marketing and the holistic marketing elements, you know that I don't recommend you just do all three of them all at once. I recommend that you build one out and then once you're comfortable and confident, have systems and procedures in place for that, then you can build the other ones out one at a time.
You want to be consistently creating content, regular content, so having content pillars or predictable theme structure so that people actually know what you're known for. And if you were to ask one of my other coaches, one of the things that she has people do on a regular basis is to ask on social media. Put out those question boxes and be like, hey, what do I talk about?
Or what are my content pillars? What do I talk about the most? Those kind of questions so that you can see what your audience knows you for? And if in your head you're like, well, I am known for Facebook ads and holistic marketing, and then people are sitting back, well, you're known for your dog Fluffy. There's a mismatch completely there, right?
Number two is a regular cadence within that. So emailing on a regular basis, sending out that email every single week or every other week or once a month, whatever the cadence is that you've decided works for your business, works for your schedule, and your marketing plan. Making sure that you are consistent with that cadence.
And there's a couple of different options that I recommend. The first one, and I would say that this is probably the best, is at least one piece of long form content and one email every single week with three or four social media posts. The next option would be alternating between email and long form content each week. And so one week you send out an email and one week you do your long form content and then email and then long form content. And so each week it's kind of flipping back and forth. And then you can still do what I do. I record my podcast, it comes out on Saturdays, and then I email my list about the podcast on Mondays. And so that happens every single week.
But what you could do instead is you would put out your podcast on Monday, and then a week later on Monday, you send out an email about the podcast. And then a week later, so this is week three, a new podcast comes out, and week four, an email. And then you could also do just once a month you send out one email. You create one piece of long form content each month. No matter what cadence of emails and long form content you're putting out, I still recommend three to four at minimum social media posts every single week, just so that you have that presence, that you're building your relationships, building your community on social media.
There is definitely an importance of quality over quantity, and that's why I've given some options. If you cannot put out a high quality, valuable piece of long form content every single week, it's more important that you put out a high valuable piece of quality content every other week or once a month than pushing out garbage content every single week.
I don't want you to feel like, well, I have to push out content. I have to push out content, I have to push out content. It doesn't matter how good it is, quality is more important, and so you need to find that cadence and those topics that you can talk about consistently on a regular basis, every single blank amount of time with that quality.
Now that we kind of have an idea of what consistency means, let's talk about how you can become more consistent. Number one is to actually prioritize marketing, making it a non-negotiable. It is non-negotiable in my business that a podcast goes out every single week. It is non-negotiable in my business that an email goes out every single week. It is negotiable in my business that a second email goes out. Sometimes I have that second email, sometimes I don't. It is negotiable if I have stories every single day. It is negotiable if I post on social media on the weekends, but it is non-negotiable that I have some specific pieces of content, like my Tuesday tips.
Now, it doesn't always go out on Tuesday, but I still call it Tuesday Tip, where I do a reel that's a, Hey, let's talk about this thing. Non-negotiable. In my business every single week, I try to make that one happen. It's non-negotiable that on Wednesdays or Thursdays I put out social media stories like an Instagram story. Making these pieces non-negotiable will help you to actually do them and be more consistent.
And going back to your cadence, maybe for you, it's non-negotiable that you put out one blog post every single month, and that when there's time, when there's energy, when there's ideas flowing, you could put out an additional piece of content. You could send out a second email every month when it makes sense, but that non-negotiable will help to make it a priority.
Number two is accountability. So this could be someone else that you are working with, like a coach or a mentor of some sort that's helping you to keep you accountable. It could be some sort of accountability that you have with yourself, or it could be, and this is really, really helped me, once you're to the point where you're hiring people to help you, they're gonna help keep you accountable. My podcast editor is expecting a podcast episode from me, like a recording every single week.
When she gets into Google Drive, if she doesn't see the next one, and I bet you as she's listening to this, editing this and she's gonna laugh, but she's expecting that. So I'm accountable to her. Same with my copywriter. I'm accountable to getting the podcast episodes to my copywriter so that I have the emails and I have the blog posts to go out. Shout out to Brittany. Shout out to Branda. Those two lovely humans, I'm accountable to them, and so that helps me to be more consistent.
When it was just me recording my podcast, I would record the Saturday session on Friday, like the day before, probably after eight o'clock at night, and then I would edit it and then I would get everything done so that this podcast would go live on Saturday. I gave myself like three or four hours if I got sick. If I just wasn't feeling like it, if my kids were sick, like if anything happened, then I jeopardize the podcast episode going out. And so with these two people who are keeping me accountable, and also the fact that I've prioritized this, and this is one of the most important pieces of my business, there's now systems and procedures in place where I record podcast episodes in advance.
And that brings me to my last piece of advice for being more consistent, and that is batching. Finding a way that you can batch record podcast episodes, or batch write blog posts, whatever it might be. Batching really, really helps because then instead of sitting down every single week and having to find that time every week, you can find one time each month to just get in the right headspace, knock them all out, and then you don't have to think about it. For me, I don't have to think about it for another month.
That works really, really well for me. But like I said, this did not happen overnight. This took two years to kind of get to this point where I have the system in place. And if you were really, really curious, I'm almost a hundred percent positive I’ve said things along the lines of like, I can't imagine batching, I don't believe in batching. But I just wasn't at the point. I didn't have the systems in place. I didn't have the accountability in place, and so batching was just like not a thing I wanted to be part of or wanted anything to do with, and I very much pushed away. But now batching is like a pillar, a cornerstone of my business.
Like it is definitely what helps me ensure that the podcast and the email go out every single week without fail. One of the things that I said before about being consistent was having regular content with content pillars. And so for me, my content pillars are marketing foundations. They are growth strategies. And like Facebook ads, when I say growth strategies, I really meant holistic marketing strategies to grow your business and then Facebook ads and paid marketing strategies.
But maybe content pillars don't work for you and your business. And I found this to be very true with teachers' SLPs. People who work in a bit more seasonal theme based businesses were niches, if you will. So an alternative to content pillars or content buckets that you've probably heard so much about is going with a theme structure. And so each month or each quarter, you have a specific theme that you are focusing on. And then within each of those themes, you have a specific structure. So let's just talk about my T P T business for a second.
On T P T I sell math resources for French immersion teachers. So for me, in September, I could be talking about math, like September Math concepts. A lot of teachers at my school do patterning and they do very basic number sense activities just to get an idea of where their students are at. And so I could, in September, say, I'm gonna talk about number sense. Those beginning foundation pieces and then I would share my structure. So I would share a number sense activity for the beginning of the year. I would share a resource. I have a number of the day activity that goes really, really well. At the beginning of the year, I would share a blog post of how I implement our number of the day routine, and I could share a book.
For example, I really love number talks, so I could share that number Talks book. And so each week of September I have like the one week is my blog post, one week is the book, one week is the activity, one week is the resource. And then in October I could start talking about patterning and I could say, do a patterning activity, a patterning resource, a blog post about how I teach patterning in my class. A book that I could share. And so each month you have a theme and your content pillars are an activity, a resource, a blog post and a book.
Those are your pillars in the more traditional sense. But what pulls it all together is that theme. And so what you are doing is creating a library of, if you need a patterning thing, you can go here. And then you repeat. And over time you're building up that library so that if someone's looking for patterning, then after two years you have four different patterning months that they can go to. So content themes with a structure, like a very specific structure that repeats month after month could be a great strategy.
If you just don't feel like content pillars would work for your business and for how your brain functions, it's a great way to add that consistency and add that layer of regularity to your business when it feels really hard. I hope that this was really helpful and that it's given you some ideas for becoming more consistent and just given a different spin on the perfection piece.
Especially like thinking, well, it might be perfect now, but do you wanna be stagnant or do you wanna be constantly learning, growing, getting better, getting faster, having more clarity on different pieces. You wanna be sharing those new learnings, new strategies, new clarity. And I really hope, like when you really break it down to that, that it helps to shift towards being consistent and getting that message, getting that piece of content out on that consistent basis so that your audience can rely on you and they can build that trust and they can get to know you and see you as the expert.
And just knowing that is really, really important in marketing today. Being consistent, being reliable, and building those relationships with your audience. I hope you have a wonderful day, and I'll be back in your ear with another Saturday strategy session next week!
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!