Content Pillars Once You’ve Hit 6-Figures | 73
In this Saturday's Strategy Session, we are talking about the importance of staying consistent with your content pillars. It can be easy once you hit a certain amount of success to get shiny object syndrome and be all over the place but showing up and staying consistent will help you keep showing up for your customers.
In this episode, we'll chat about…
The 3 content pillars or buckets that you can use when you hit 6-figures
When you should reevaluate your content pillars and pivot
Some exercises that you can utilize to make your content pillars clear in your marketing
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:
Jenzaia: 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. Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just want to remind you to download my free guide to Facebook targeting audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners, and I go through the warm look alike and cold interest-based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram ads. There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know it, you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15-minute zoom call with me, and you'll get my eyes on your audiences. So that you can make sure not only you have all the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to marketscalegrow.com/audienceaudit to book your free audience audit call today. Okay, now into the episode.
Jenzaia: Hello, and welcome back to Market Scale Grow. My name is Jenzaia and this is a Saturday strategies session. Today we are going to be talking about content pillars, once you've hit six figures. So I think there's a lot of information out there for businesses who are just getting started, what content pillars are, why you need them, how you figure them out. And if you're like me, you might have spent some time obsessing about your content pillars, when you first got started, potentially, again, like me, you may have spun in indecision, trying to decide exactly what your content pillars were. And if they were the right content, pillars, and yada, yada, yada, when instead, when you're first getting started, it's a really good idea to just jump in messy, and to maybe pick some content pillars, and try them out and see how you feel talking about these things, how your audience responds to these different things. And really just Yeah, do it messy. Now, I do just want to, like hit th brakes for a second. Content pillars are often called Content buckets. Or, yeah, I think those are the only two actually content. I was like, I had two more my mind just slipped, I guess. But yeah, so content pillars or content buckets. And just as a quick overview of what I mean by this, it will be three to five different topics that you repeatedly talk about in your business, that are I don't want to say the framework, but the the foundation or the support, really the foundation of your content. And these are the topics that you come back to again, and again. And I don't mean just regurgitating the exact same information, but that you talk about frequently asked questions or tips, or how you accomplish this, or stories that relate to these things. And you just take different angles again and again, about these topics, and you group them together. And sometimes you'll have topics that are exclusively business related. Sometimes there'll be more personal, and then other times they might overlap and talk about both. So it really depends on your business and what makes the most sense. But that's what I mean, when I talk about content pillars. It's those big foundational topics that you talk about again, and again and again, in your business. And there are definitely some benefits to having content pillars like it makes it really easy when you're thinking about what to talk about. You have your three topics. And you can just go back to that. Go back to that go back to that. Now, I don't have the same content pillars as I did when I started. If you go back to the beginning of this podcast, I talk about data deep dives, which I don't really do anymore. I talked about plan with me, which I haven't done a plan with me in ages. I do still talk about some of the same pieces that I used to, but there's definitely a spin on it. And so I think that as your business evolves from that baby starter business to an established six figure business, there's definitely been some changes. And so today what I really, really want to talk about is content pillars once you've hit six figures, specifically, do you still need them? Do you even need content once you've hit six figures, and the most important thing consistency at six figures. So consistency, this is so so, so important, it can be really easy to have shiny object syndrome and to bounce around from idea to idea, idea, and topic to topic to topic and to kind of like just be all over the place where what you really need to be doing, or what I have found with myself and with my clients is that those who are consistent in their content in their messaging in their products and services, whatever that they're offering, consistently pushing the same one again, and again, I found them to be the most successful in the long run, that consistency builds over time. It's like a snowball, it can be really hard at the beginning. But then one day will realize you're not even pushing it is just rolling down the hill by itself. And so these content pillars or buckets help you to be more consistent, because you know, these are the three topics that you stay within and that you talk about again, and again. And again, it can be really hard when you want to like throw your business out the window and just burn it to the ground. But I promise you that those are like the moments that you need to be even more consistent, and you need to stay with it. And you need to stay through and don't not burn your business to the ground, if you really hate it, and it really isn't bringing you joy, and there are no moments of happiness, then it's time for a pivot, it's definitely time for change, do not take it that you have to like hate your business. And because this is the business you started, but just when those hard moments are coming, and when you're sitting in them, don't be afraid to sit in the hard moment and to be consistent through the hard moment. And to really see is this just a hard moment? Or really is a time to pivot and change? That's my personal opinion. Take it or leave it as with everything taken or leave it. Okay, so first I want you to check in. Are you still crystal clear on your content pillars? Like you were at the beginning? Could you list off your three to five content pillars that you talk about again, and again and again, again, it pause. And if you need a little bit more time, you can actually pause the podcast but that's what I want you to think about.
Jenzaia: So for me, it was very interesting because I feel like I have a cognate pillars I talk all the time about foundational things, the marketing pieces before running Facebook ads, customer journey, holistic marketing, strategy, messaging, I feel like I talk about these things a lot. Even this episode itself would fall into that bucket of content pillars would be a marketing foundation that you need in place prior to running Facebook ads. My other two content pillars are build and expand. So build is what I'm talking about building your email list tackling the tech that can be so overwhelming and really building that first ad. It's anything to do with that first ad campaign. And often I buoyed list building campaigns as part of my second content pillar, which I don't think I talked about enough, I don't think it comes up often enough. I don't think I do enough podcast episodes about it. So I'm definitely looking at the schedule that I've created for this quarter because of this episode, and I'm going to try and incorporate more of that content pillar. And then my third content pillars expand. So talking about scaling and sparking your interest growing your audience bigger, and the ad campaigns around selling. And I think I hit on that one more than the build. But I also could do more. And I have recently we pulled in more of those types of ads into this quarter. So I do have some planned already. And this is something that I think you should be reevaluating on a quarterly basis. Are you still hitting your topics, your content pillars? Or is it time to shift your content pillars to something that more fits your current business and the current model that you have. And going back to like burning your business to the ground. When I say pivot and changing, I don't necessarily mean you actually have to burn your business to the ground, it can be as small as tweaking one of those content pillars of maybe it's no longer bring you joy, and you want to bring in some different topics and keep two of the same, but you move into a new third pillar, and that's totally fine. And those are the kinds of changes that you're going to make as your business grows, changes and evolves. Now, when you did your check in, it's possible that you realize your content pillars have gone completely fuzzy, and you're just randomly talking about anything, whenever this can be on your blog, or your podcast or even in your social media. But your content pillar should be something that if you were to poll your audience, they could tell you what you talk about on a regular basis. That's something that one of my previous coaches actually had us do as one of like our weekly challenges. I think it was she said right now go on Instagram on your stories and put one of those question boxes where people can put in any answer that they want and say like what are my content pillars? If you feel like your content, pillars are still in place, you're still rocking them and that you're still talking about the same things repeatedly, I highly recommend that you do that exercise, go into your stories, and ask your audience and see what they say are there are your content pillars as crystal clear to them as they are to you. And if not, we're going to do the same activities as if they're fuzzy to you. So the first thing I want you to do is to try and visualize or create a visualization of your content pillar. Sometimes this is going to be like a three circle Venn diagram, mine is three boxes that are stacked on top of each other with an arrow from one to the next, the next because, for me, mine are solidify, build and expand. And so first, you need to solidify your marketing foundation, then I want you to start building your first ad campaign. And then you're going to expand your reach expand your business with Facebook ads, right. And so they kind of naturally lead from one to the next to the next, I've seen really great visualizations using either a right side up or an upside-down pyramid, similar to like a traffic funnel, where you're talking about leads who become subscribers, you become buyers, and how there's an upside-down pyramid that people are filtering through. So just trying to visualize these buckets of content, and how they interact and relate to each other. Another really good visualization that I've seen, is like a tree. And so the content pillar itself is the trunk. And then you have branches and leaves that come off of it, that are like the the micro angles or the smaller pieces of content. So you have like the trunk is that base pillar. Another good visualization could be a house and how you're building the foundation, and then the walls and the roof. And each one of these are different pieces of your content. So figuring out a good visualization that works for your content pillars and shows how they work together and interact can be really helpful to making it more clear for you.
Jenzaia: The second thing I want you to do, or that an activity that you could do that might be really helpful to take your content pillars from fuzzy to clear, is to either create a journal entry or a Google Doc or a spreadsheet, where you just sit down and at the top, you would write the overarching topic. So for me, that would be like solidification, or I guess, solidify, I don't need to because I feel like I do a really good job with that one. But let's say build. So build your list or build your business, build your first ad campaign, whatever it might be that I'm going to go with, I really need to do this, obviously. But then the next thing you can do is just in point form, bullet out all of the possible options for different topics that I could cover all my podcasts, social media, ones that I could use our social media posts, I could create whatever it might be to just list out as many as I can. And I really like to go with at least 20. Because I feel like the first five that come out are really easy ones. And then you kind of start to get more creative, and you can dig deeper. And the really, really, really good ones come out somewhere between like 12 and 19. And then 19 and 20 are just kind of like, okay, I have to wait two more, and I'm sick of this activity. But I found writing out 20 A list of at least 20 is a good number to really get those creative juices flowing and to really think of different angles and different views that you could go in different ways you could approach the topic. And then my third piece of advice, or my third activity that you could try to take your content pillars from fuzzy to crystal clear is to and you're not going to like this. Maybe you will, but most people don't love doing this. But it's a market research. poll your audience? I don't mean that poll that I'm talking about before. I mean, asking them specific questions, getting on coffee chats and talking to them, asking them what their pain points are asking them what they're struggling with asking them what solutions they're looking for what they've tried already asking them those really big questions, and just finding their answers and looking out for their answers and seeing what your audience wants from you. And that might help you to become more clear on what you should be talking about. Also, what does your audience come to you for? I recently stumbled upon a new account on Instagram, and she talks about email marketing and something else. But she sent me a hello after I followed her she sent me a hello and I love that. Not enough to start doing it for my own business. But I did love that she sent me hello because I could respond back and be like, I'm so happy I found you. I am going to like stalk your Instagram account in the coming days to get all of your dubsado tips. So I know she talks about other things because I did scroll through but all I really cared about was her dubsado And I was like, I just can't wait to get all of your dubsado tips, tricks, strategies, everything because I have my dubsado setup. And it's great and it works for me. But I feel like it could be better. And so that's what you want is you want people coming to me like, Oh, I'm here for this, you I'm sure you do other things. And maybe as I'm absorbing your tips all about topic X, I might also start to like, look at topic as well. But that's what you want is people to be able to identify you. And maybe it's not for what you think like maybe this girl that I found is like, Oh, I'm an email expert. But if people keep going to her be like, Oh, dubsado tips, dubsado tips, dubsado tips, dubsado tip, she might, and you should to listen to that and lean into that that is a form of data form of information that you should be soaking in. And you should definitely be leaning in to what people are coming to you for and what information they're really wanting from you and really taking from you. So again, three little activities, pick one, pick one, to help you go from fuzzy content pillars to crystal clear again, because even once you've hit six figures, you still need to be putting out consistent content on a consistent basis, to continue to grow your audience to continue to nurture your audience and continue to sell to your audience and you need that consistency and your content pillars are going to help you so don't think that just because now you're a quote-unquote, established business, you can stop blogging, or stop podcasting or stop putting out social media content, likely. And not. I'm not 100% of the time, but likely you can't. So here are just a quick recap, pick one of these three activities to help recrystallize your content pillars. So activity number one is to create a visualization. activity number two is to brainstorm at least twenty different topic ideas that you could for each of your content pillars. And then activity number three is to do market research and find out exactly what your audience wants from you.
Jenzaia: I would love to know which one of these activities you've chosen to do and how it's impacted your content pillars. So send me a DM on Instagram. I'm at @heyitsjenzaia. Thank you so much for listening. I will you back in your ear next Saturday with an exciting interview. Have a great week.
Jenzaia: Thank you so much for listening to Market Scale Grow. If you're ready to build your email list and generate consistent leads on autopilot, then we would love to partner with you. Our growth package is perfect. For course creators, service providers, and coaches looking to inject their list with fresh leads so that they can amplify their amazing program and get it out to new people. This six-week package is perfect for you. If you have a proven lead magnet that you're ready to turn into an established lead generation machine. To get started today, head to marketscalegrowth.com/worktogether fill out the application and someone from my team will be in contact with you to schedule a free strategy session to ensure that it's a good fit and to get you on the path to consistent lead generation with Team JD. Thank you again for listening and I look forward to working with you