On today’s episode I have Amanda Warfield to talk to us about a content plan vs content strategies and which one you should focus on depending on where your business is on the timeline.
IE 275: Content Plan vs Strategy & Which You Should Focus on with Amanda Warfield
Our guest’s name today is Amanda Warfield, Amanda is a content marketing strategist and her goal is to simplify your content creation process so that you can put out strategic content that isn’t going to take up all of your time.
What is the purpose of a content plan?
A content plan and a content strategy are often used interchangeably in the marketing space. But they are not the same at all.
A content plan is simply just you sitting down and saying “I’m going to post this thing on this day and this place.”
What is a content strategy?
A strategy is taking your plan to the next level, it is your intention behind what you’re creating.
So you’re not just pulling ideas randomly out of thin air and saying “Okay I am a mommy blogger and I’m going to post about this routine”.
Without having any way for someone to take the next step with you. Without having some way to monetize that and get paid.
What are examples of a content strategy?
For example, if you were wanting to post about bedtime routines, you want to create a blog post about it.
That’s something that your audience is asking about and you have to think to yourself about how you can monetize that and create it with more intention.
Whether that means you are working with a brand to get ads or sponsorships or you have products of your own.
You have to have strategic ideas and a strategic intention as to how you’re going to monetize that strategy.
You want to reach out to the creator of the sound maker that you use to help put your child to bed and say that you want to get a sponsor for your post because it’s not something you can monetize.
Or vice versa, maybe you say that you want to create my own digital product about routines and how I craft our bedtime routines with my children.
Then you just have to craft an offer, a pdf, audio training, etc. that you can monetize, but it’s going into creating the actual piece of content in knowing what the next step is going to be.
Not just throwing content out there for the sake of throwing content out there.
Do you have any recommendations to get people from free content to paid content with the in between of the email?
The simplest way to do this is with more free content through an email list.
An email list is SO important to any kind of content marketing strategy you have.
Mostly because people show up on your website and they’re just probably starting to get to know you because they are finding your Pinterest or your Google SEO. They are very very cold to you.
We have to move them to warm or hot before they’re going to decide to work with you one on one.
Or decide to buy some kind of product that you’re selling.
They’re not going to do it right from the jump so you have to get them to your email list and nurture them.
And I know so many people are like “Listen, I can nurture people on social media”, and that’s true BUT social media can disappear at any given time.
You do not own social media, think about what was happening in 2020 on Tik Tok where there were all kinds of threats that it was going to be shut down in the US.
I saw so many people on Tik Tok freaking out and telling everyone to go follow their Instagram because they were going to lose all of their followers.
And it was because they had only built their platform on Tik Tok.
You can not use one platform as the main form of bringing people into your business.
You need to have your own website and then you need to have an email list because those two things, you own them, you host them, you pay for them, they are yours.
The best thing you can do is have an email list and offer some kind of free content that is the step before your paid content.
Which will then get people on your email list, people that are interested in what your paid content is going to be and then you have people that you can sell to when the time comes.
Which should we focus on? Our content plan or strategy?
Being totally honest, it all depends on where you are because if you are at the point where you’re just getting started, you’re not consistent with your content, and you’re focusing on mainly audience building.
Then you should focus on your content plan for right now, if that’s where you are in your journey feel free to throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
But once you start becoming known for something, once you find what it is that sticks with your people, you have to focus on your content strategy more.
You have a gift for my listeners that dives deeper into content marketing. Can you walk us through what we’ll learn from it?
It is the first initial training in Amanda’s overarchy membership that is completely free, no 7 day free trials or anything like that.
It is the basics of content marketing, all the basics of what you need to know to get started with your content marketing and your content marketing creation process.
Where are the best places to connect with you?
You can find Amanda on Instagram @MrsAmandaWarfield and her podcast Chasing Simple.
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