Fill in the Blank Content
Have you ever started the month with a content or social media calendar that looks something like this?
Admit it or not, we've all been there. Even as an expert in content and social media marketing, I've been here. However, 2022 is the year we stand up and say NO MORE! In this blog post, I'm going to share how to use cornerstone content to fill in the blanks on your social media calendar.
It's so easy to get caught in a cycle of:
Not knowing what to post
Feeling overwhelmed
Move onto the next thing
Post a photo of your morning coffee with a cheesy quote or random rant that has nothing to do with your business goals.
Ooof, that escalated quickly, didn't it?
Maybe you're on the other side of the coin in this.
Maybe you're planning and creating like a mad person. Running yourself ragged to try to beat the algorithms and keep up with trends. You're burning the candle at both ends and even worse, you're not seeing many rewards from all of this effort you're putting in.
Okay here's your roadmap to a fill in the blank content calendar
Remember the blank content calendar from the beginning of this post? Here it is again, look how sad it looks...
Let's add our cornerstone content for this month.
Remember our cornerstone content is the high-quality content you can center your marketing efforts around. This could be a blog post, podcast, YouTube Video, Live, or any other long-form content piece you're creating for your community to explain something you hold authority on in great detail, lead your audience to a solution or generally give an incredible amount of value.
My cornerstone content pieces this month are:
Blog Post: Creating a Content Strategy
Blog Post: Fill in the Blank Content (what you're reading right now)
Content Bootcamp Challenge
Download: 2022 Content Strategy Freebie
To sum this list up, 2 blog posts, a free challenge, and a downloadable freebie. When I break this down even further:
The downloadable freebie is something I'll pull out of the free challenge to create FOMO for those who didn't attend.
The 2 blog posts this month are components of Content Bootcamp. I'll go into MUCH great detail at BootCamp and attendees will also have the added bonus of being able to as questions as well but these two blog posts give you a taste of what's to come while also giving you educational value to take on your way.
Do you see how all of my content this month is stacking on top of each other to work towards one common goal?
"Wait, Brit, what's your goal? You never told us...."
Right right right, my goal this month is to build my newsletter list and to launch my membership at the end of Content Bootcamp.
I'm getting off track, back to filling in the blanks...
Our cornerstone content is planned now we take that content and we chop it up into more bite-size pieces for our audience. It's only the kind thing to do since our cornerstone content pieces will often be pretty juicy.
Now it's time to get strategic!
So for my first blog post this month I'm going:
Announce the post on all platforms using the first paragraph as my caption
Add it to my next newsletter using the meta description as the hook
Pull a quote from the post and make a canvas graphic with it
Make a carousel post sharing SOME BUT NOT ALL of the tips shared
Create a single slide infographic
Turn it into a reel
That's 6 posts to fill in and now my calendar looks like this.
Things are happening from just ONE blog post.
I would just rinse and repeat for my second blog post of the month and my calendar looks like this:
Now I just get to plug in all of my hard promo for Content Bootcamp. Don't forget though, all of the content I created for this month is to push people to sign up for Content Bootcamp. So my blog posts and promoting those blog posts are softly promoting Bootcamp.
Here's what the calendar looks like with my Content Bootcamp promo plugged in.
Now the only thing that would be left to do is add in any personal posts, engagement content, or community-focused content I want to include for the month.
Of course, you might be thinking...
"Well, THAT escalated quickly! How am I going to make all of this content happen?!"
Fear not friend I have a few things to say about that:
YOU GET TO PICK YOUR POSTING/CREATING CADENCE.
I really can't stress this enough. You're driving this ship, forget what people are saying about keeping up with algorithms and all that bullshit. Consistency matters WAY more than all that. So instead of 6 posts per blog post maybe you only do 2-3? That's OKAY! We're looking for quality over quantity here.
Templates are your friend.
I mentioned announcing your blog posts and pulling a quote from each blog post. Make templates for these! Of course, you can freshen your templates from time to time but overall this is good for a few reasons. A) Branding, using templates allows you to keep your branding consistent. B) Templates save you TIME.
It's OKAY to outsource some of your content.
Yep, and I can help. Most of my clients only get 6-12 graphics/content pieces from me a month. Meaning the rest are on them. BUTTTTTT, when we break this down here's what it could look like. Let's use an 8 graphic a month client, for example:
Now it's up to you to decide how much cornerstone content you can commit to fill in the rest of the month as you see it. Maybe that means you release a podcast weekly and fill in the blanks with your podcast content twice a week for 2 posts a week. However, you also want to make sure you're taking advantage of new features like Reels, so you decide to throw one of those in each week; boom now you're posting five days a week.
Your homework (this is obviously optional)
Pull out a calendar and a notebook and start brainstorming.
What could your cornerstone content pieces look like for Q1?
How do those content pieces relate to your Q1 goals?
How can you break down your cornerstone content pieces into bite-sized nuggets for your audience?
What are you promoting in Q1? (Read: What are your offers?)
I can't wait to see what you come up with! As always, feel free to tag me in your content so I can HYPE YOU UP IN THE COMMENTS.
