GS #18: Content Consistency, Clear Calls-to-Action, and Embracing "Easy"

Hey friends! Last week was incredibly productive around here!

We finished our newest free resource called the Calm Creator Business Plan which is a Canva whiteboard template that helps you visually plan every aspect of your creator business in one place. In case you missed that email last week, you can get your hands on it here.

We ALSO completed a new lead magnet for Teachery, along with our new Style Files blog to help our users customize their courses. These were two big projects hanging out there, so it feels fantastic to have them complete.

We're diving back into content creation with renewed energy and can't wait to share more insights with you as we get back to posting in the next week or two. Now let's get to the goods!

- Jason and Caroline

predictable 🔄

The importance of designing a content creation SYSTEM

👩🏻‍🦰 👋: We all know that consistent content is the key to growing an organic audience online in 2024.

But content feels more saturated and crowded than ever, which can suck all of the motivation out of wanting to create.

That’s why we’ve found the most important thing you can do for consistent creation is to design a SYSTEM for yourself.

Having a system that you can repeat again and again allows you to create, even when you're not feeling particularly inspired. It can take whatever overwhelm or comparison you're feeling and refocus that energy on simply repeating the steps you've already laid out for yourself.

This system can evolve over time and should be highly unique to YOUR life and the kind of content you create. Here are three things to get you started:

1. Schedule and Batch Your Creation Time: Decide when and how far ahead you want to create your content. Right now we're batch creating one month’s worth of content at a time because being ahead of our publishing schedule makes us feel much more calm.
2. A System for Idea Generation: Determine where and how often you’ll brainstorm ideas. Keeping a running list of ideas that you add to daily or weekly helps ensure the well never runs dry. When it’s time to plan content, you’ll have plenty to work with.
3. Catch-Up Time: Okay, this last one is the SECRET! Leave room for "catch up" days because there will be times when life gets in the way, and the last thing you want is for you to get backed up, which only leads to more overwhelm. We leave the last week of each month open so we can catch up on any content that didn’t get made from the weeks prior.

If you want to see more about our current content creation system and how we’re managing content across WAIM and Teachery, check out our latest YouTube video where we give you a tour of our "Calm Content Factory" in Notion.

​- Caroline 👩🏻‍🦰​

Profitable 🤑

Are you including a CLEAR next step for your customer?

👨🏻‍🦲👋: Over the years, we’ve reviewed a ton of solopreneur's marketing efforts. In viewing countless pieces of content and landing pages, one common mistake we see is simply forgetting to add a clear call-to-action.

Now, before you roll your eyes and think I’m stating something obvious that you don’t do, I’d like to issue a 2-part challenge to you:

#1 - Evaluate the last 5 pieces of content you’ve published, and see if ALL 5 of them have a clear next step you’re encouraging a potential customer to take (downloading a lead magnet, signing up for your email list, using a discount code, engaging with your content, etc). 👀

#2 - Evaluate the 3 pages on your website that get the MOST daily traffic, and see if there is a very obvious action you’re telling someone to take (lead magnet, discovery call, signup form, buy button, etc). 👀

I would be willing to wager a solid amount of my monthly cinnamon roll budget 😅 that you don’t always have a clear call to action and a next step you want someone to take.

Ps... I don’t want you to feel bad about this; I want you to see it as a quick and easy opportunity for improvement!

As a smart business owner, it’s your job to maximize the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Every piece of content you share should be working on your behalf to increase profitability. Every amount of effort you’ve put in previously that’s generating traffic is a chance to increase conversions and generate additional revenue.

Then, on all content and new articles/pages you create moving forward, remember to always have a call to action that is working on your business’ behalf.

​- Jason 👨🏻‍🦲​

Peaceful 🧘

What would "easy" content creation look like?

👩🏻‍🦰 👋: To continue with the theme of content creation, here's a little lesson that revealed itself to me last week as I was trying to batch record our Teachery YouTube videos. I had my scripts and storyboards all planned out, yet I found myself encountering a LOT of resistance around recording.

For two days, I kept pushing back our recording schedule, until I finally took a pause to investigate further where this procrastination was was coming from.

Turns out the answer was pretty simple: I did NOT feel like being on camera at all. Energetically, I was just in a place where I was happy to be pecking away at my keyboard and getting things done, but the last thing I wanted to do was talk to a camera and have to fake my energy.

That's when I remembered a quote from Tim Ferriss that I come back to often in these situations.

When I've built up a task in my head and it's overwhelming me to the point of procrastination, this question helps me give myself permission to take a more natural and less forced route.

So what did I do? I let myself do a voiceover video instead of the "talking head" video I had planned. It was a relief to reconfigure the video to better match the state of my energy. Will it be as engaging as having me on camera the whole time? Probably not. But the alternative was no video at all, so I think it's a win.

By experimenting with what feels natural to you, you may stumble upon a format that’s not only easier for you to record sustainably, but also more engaging for your audience.

So the next time you feel stuck thinking your content has to be one way, pause and ask yourself if that’s actually true. Can you try something new? Can you make NEW rules for yourself?

Publishing something helpful, even if it’s not “perfectly optimized,” is better than publishing nothing at all, because at least you'll be putting in those reps of creation. At the very least, you will learn something, and that's always a worthy endeavor.

​- Caroline 👩🏻‍🦰​

SECRET HANDSHAKE OF THE WEEK

It's weird. It's nonsensical. It's fun. What will we do next week?

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