Are you struggling to come up with new and engaging content to share on your podcast? Not to mention content that strategically markets your business, products, or services. Today’s episode is going to help you nail down your initial content pillars, and potentially plan your next three months of content (or even a full year if you’re ready!)
Clocking In with Haylee Gaffin is produced and brought to you by Gaffin Creative, a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. Learn more about our services at Gaffincreative.com, plus you’ll also find resources, show notes, and more for the Clocking In Podcast.
Brainstorming Content Marketing (2:20)
Plan Content 2-3 Months (2:30)
How To Make this Work For Your Business (3:00)
Primary Topics (3:15)
3-5 Buckets
Give, Give, Give
4 Separate Sections
Consider Your Offers (4:19)
Optimize Website Service Pages
Build Out Episodes That Serve Your Business
Potential Topics for Your Pillars (5:56)
Most Frequently Asked Questions
Take The Steps Further (7:06)
Tie in Services or Products
Add in Guests or Ads
Get Creative
Repurpose Content (08:12)
Links
gaffincreative.com
gaffincreative.com/shop
Chasing Simple: The Summit – Grab Your Free Ticket!
Review the transcript:
I think the biggest hurdle most podcast hosts face once they’ve launched their podcast is coming up with new and engaging content they can discuss on their podcast. Not only that, for business owners, many face the need to create content that strategically markets their business, products, or services. After all, if you are a business owner with a podcast, you should be using your podcast as a marketing tool.
Hey friends, I’m beyond excited to jump into today’s episode, but before we do, I want to share about a FREE virtual summit that you will want to register for that I’ll be speaking at in just a few weeks. Especially if the topic of content creation and marketing fits your business needs right now. coming up
Chasing Simple: The Summit, hosted by my friend Amanda Warfield. There are 20 different experts coming together to help course creators (and future course creators!) learn how to leverage their content marketing and build an engaged audience (without taking up all of your time and energy!)
For 5 days, October 11 – 15, 2021, Amanda Warfield is bringing you presentations from 20 industry experts who have found ways to build engaged audiences through content marketing. You’ll hear about everything from getting over your fear of video, using Reels, SEO, and more.
For example, I’m going to be talking all about Building a Content Plan that Optimizes Your Search Results!
The best part? It’s totally free! Head over to gaffincreative.com/029 to grab your free ticket, as I’ll include it in my show notes!
Now, let’s dive into what I consider a really important step in creating a really powerful podcast plan.
Content planning and brainstorming… I think it’s really easy for us to think of I can talk about anything, but then get stuck when it comes to actually creating valuable content.
So one thing I like to encourage my clients to do, especially those who don’t already have a plan in place…. I like to push them to brainstorm 2-3 months of content at once. Now this content does not have to be set in stone or ever even come to life.. The idea is that you have a library of content to pull from when you’re planning out what you’ll be pushing out on your podcast each week. BUt before all of the non-podcasters jump off of this episode, I also want you to consider this tactical approach for your blog content and your social media content..
Let’s talk through how to approach this list, where the ideas should come from, and how to make them work for your business.
Today’s episode is going to be a little hands on so grab yourself a pen and paper if you can and let’s get started.
The first thing I want you to consider is your primary topics… you may also refer to these as pillars or categories.. But the idea is to have 3- 5 buckets to focus on. If you’re podcast is primarily a marketing tool for your business, then these buckets will be related to the industry you’re in and serve.
Keep in mind that every business and podcast are different and I also don’t believe that every single piece of your content needs to drive listeners to convert into a paying client, because honestly it can feel a little salesy.
I personally love to mix in a random topic about money or finances into my episodes that doesn’t lead to any product or service I offer…. These topics fall into my passion/for me category.
Now if you’ve thought through those primary categories, make sure you write them out into four separate sections on your piece of paper. These are going to represent the content pillars.
Next, I want you to consider your offers. And I want you to think about these offers for two different reasons:
- We’re going to optimize your website service pages to include episodes categorized based on these offers.. For example, my podcast is primarily about podcasting, therefore if you head to the podcast production page of my website, you’ll find my podcast episodes linked towards the bottom as a resource.
- The second reason is you’re going to want to build out podcast episodes that serve your business and guide listeners to your products or services. I try to do this with as many of my episodes as possible, because I love serving my audience with valuable content that helps guide them in the right direction to solve a problem, but then I follow through with a resource, offering, or service that will get them there faster. For example, if you wanted a full quarterly episode planner that guides you through this content pillar process and planning your episodes, and reminding you of all the tasks you need to complete with your podcast production, I have a resource to guide you through all of that in my podcast shop. If you head over to gaffincreative.com/shop, you’ll find my quarterly podcast episode planner.
After you’ve considered potential offers, I want you to write down 3-4 potential topics for each of your pillars.
If you’re struggling to come up with a few topics for each pillar, here are a few questions you can consider:
- On your initial consult calls, what are some frequent questions your clients are asking?
If you want to pause this episode for a few to really focus on brainstorming these topics, go for it! I’ll be here waiting to walk you through the next steps.
Now that you’ve answered those questions and built out somewhere between 12-16 potential podcast episodes, you’ve essentially created a whole quarter of content! THat’s three months of weekly episodes! Congrats!
Let’s take it a step further, because that was just your first brainstorm…. What if you created a monthly series per pillar? Take each of those potential podcast episode topics and let’s see if we can come up with 2-3 more episodes that expand on those topics.
Now, if you do this right, you can come up with a full year of potential podcast episodes!
Now for the fun part… let’s look at each episode and tie in a service, offer, or product… ONLY if it fits. This will allow you to organically share it in the content without any ads breaking up the episodes.
If you have topics that can’t tie directly in with a product, that’s totally ok! You can look at the potential of adding a guest to that episode OR placing an advertisement in there, either for your brand or for a sponsor.
I think this is also where you can get creative and pitch sponsors based on the topics you’re sharing! I know I personally would much rather sponsor a podcast episode that encourages listeners to start a podcast than one that encourages listeners to start a youtube channel for example.
Now, if at any time you are struggling with content creation, but you’ve actively created content in the past, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Every so often, I actually go through my blog content to see what blog posts I can repurpose into podcast episodes by expanding on the content. You can actually check out episode 25, where I did just that. I took a blog post that is still live on my blog about the structural components of a podcast and I expanded it into a longer podcast episode.
I’ve also done this with social media content, IG Lives I’ve done, and more!
You don’t have to start from scratch with every single piece of content. You can also take old episodes and create updated content that builds off of the original.
Now that you’ve brainstormed a bit of content for your podcast, I’d love it if you’d share and tag me in your brainstorm worksheet over on Instagram!
I really can’t wait to see the content you create!
Now, if you’re a course creator or educator, I have to remind you one more time to head to the show notes and sign up for Chasing Simple: The Summit, October 11-15 2021. In this virtual summit, you’ll hear from 20 industry experts sharing all about content marketing…. Including me! I’m sharing all about Building a Content Plan that Optimizes Your Search Results on October 15th! It’ll be the perfect addition to this exercise!
I can’t wait to see you there, and you sign up at gaffincreative.com/029.
