Well thanks. And we’ve brought some great teacher on, too, like Pam. And so let’s talk about a calendar because you just said you do content and talk about the content marketing. Let’s talk about little bit about that editorial calendar I feel like maybe, I don’t want to put a number on it, but the majority business owners, entrepreneurs just wing it.
Honestly, that’s one problem I have. I have good intentions but I know I need to do something better. So a calendar I would love to hear about.
And yeah Kimmy you bring up a good word – intentions, right? So I know, I’m a small business owner. It doesn’t matter what size of clients I work with but I’m still a small business owner and I’m sure Janet you can attest to this it’s one of the challenges we have working in the space is we have to deliver for our clients but we also have to constantly create for ourselves, right? So it’s like constant Catch 22 of how do we use our time well, how do we prioritize and that’s where the systematization or the strategy piece of what, I happen to have this interesting left-right brain combination that comes to the table. And for me the foundation of a calendar and I actually separate them out. I have a content marketing editorial calendar and I also do a social media content calendar. Even though the concepts or themes might integrate and they should integrate, I still look at them as two separate elements because if I have to be blogging, for instance, that might be once a week or twice a week, if I’m doing social that’s really a daily experience, right, for us to do it effectively. So you can only fit so much on so I use a lot of Excel spreadsheet so you can always get so much on Excel spreadsheets so I started to create them separately. I am a big believer of bringing it down to the basics and just everything elaborate on this, of course Janet and Kimmy, but what I’d like to do is go 90 days out on my editorial calendar of concepts like blogging, ebooks, podcasts for example. And then when it comes to my social media content calendar I like to go 30 days out. So I actually have talked this to my clients and I’ve done it for myself where I can create 30 days of content in advance and get a lot of it automated and out on the inter web even before the month starts.
Oh that’s a great idea, that would really be helpful.
Yeah, wouldn’t it. And you know like any system you put a lot of work on the front end, right, to get it to reach out on the backend. I look at things like might be if I’m going to do something for 30 days, that means I have 4 weeks. And in those 4 weeks I have 7 days, right? So I start to create little bucket themes for my self and my audience. And I think about myself from someone as a content marketer. I have content marketing topics, I have podcasting topics, audio content topics and I start to create a theme for every single day of the week. And then I use the beautiful process of content curation and my Feedly and mp Pocket are the two favorite places in the world and now Linkedin Pulse is another favorite place for me to hang out in. And I pull information together and I create original content for my social channels. Now I actually created in advance and get it on my calendar and then start putting it through my Hootsuite or SproutSocial or whatever the case it’s going out.
Can we back up to talk about the things you mentioned – Feedly. Let’s talk about those a little bit details so that people can hear exactly what they were. Feedly.
Okay. Feedly. F-E-E-D-L-Y. About a year or so ago rss reader out of Google was eliminated and so Feedly is another rss feed, right? It’s a reader option and of course I have an iPad, I have an iPhone, all those things and it has an app which I tend to use the most. But I can put in some of my favorite blogs so we’ve got Social Media Examiner in there or Convert, whatever the cases I can put those in. And instead of going out obviously to those blogs every single day I just go to my Feedly and see what the updated blog posts are. I can do that in advance if I have certain themes. Let’s say every Monday I want to share something around Google+. I really want my audience to understand more about Google+ as a social media trainer. I’ll start looking for a great content that someone else has written on the web, but I do it on my Feedly, right? So it’s all organized and it comes to me versus me going out and having to look at new blog everyday. Of course as a content curator I am constantly looking for new blogs to add to my rss feed. But it’s an amazing, efficiency tool to have content come to you and you can categorize your content in there so I have video as a category, podcast as a category. I even have business leadership as a category because as a business owner I also work with other business owners, right? So they’re always interested in time management, efficiency and processes, as well. It’s an amazing tool – Feedly, highly recommended.
Yep, I have the app. I don’t use it enough though. Go ahead Kimmy.
Yeah that sounds like a great tool, I like that, kind of like a Buffer. Is it similar to Buffer?
Buffer has some similar components, I think that might be a whole other topic.
Okay.
You know technology, right? There’s pieces that Buffer does that Feedly does as well. But then Feedly, even though you can’t push it out to your social channels, it is really designed the way a buffer is in terms of analytic tracking and things like that when it comes to pushing out links through the process of sending the curated piece of content out to your Twitter or your Google+, that kind of thing. So there are some similarities. What I’ve always wanted about Feedly is I don’t have to be connected to the internet once it’s in my feed. I could be in an airplane reading my Feedly.
Nice.
Oh good.
And my iPad. It’s just it’s great and I used it as a conjunction with another application it’s called Pocket and it’s actually getpocket.com. When I find that, let’s say Janet you wrote, you and Kimmy together wrote a really great blog on Google+ podcasting and I though it was great and my audience or I think they would benefit hearing it or seeing it, I can just take that in my Feedly, click the little pocket icon because it all connects. All the api’s. It pops into my pocket. Even though I might be in a situation where I’m not going to post right that second, I want to actually put some language around it or put some thought around it, I can now just go right over to my pocket later, pull it up and then share it with a little more intention, like what Kimmy had mentioned before. Feedly is right for bringing everything to you, Pocket then pulls out the pieces that you think would be important to come back to later.
I have both on my iPhone which is crazy but I don’t use them a lot. Now that you’re talking about it it makes you think don’t load up these apps at times and then suddenly. I use them sometimes, I don’t use them other times but the one on the computer though that I really like lately is Wayy, have you tried that one?
I have not.
W-A-Y-Y. That’s one really neat too. It brings the content that you want to see or the content that’s most shared that would interest you, that kind of thing. Someone’s been a good one, a newer one that I know of to. You mentioned a couple more. You mentioned Linedin Pulse.
Linkedin Pulse, about a year or year and a half ago Pulse was a separate content aggregation tool. It aggregated a lot of content on the web for you if you were a Pulse, if you have a Pulse account, you can go in. It’s something similar to sway, you could pick certain categories and information would come to you in that. Linkedin purchased Pulse and added it to their platform as they are growing and expanding in the content space. So I now also have my Pulse app on my iPad but also in Linkedin if you’ve noticed now you might be seeing at the top of your Linkedin profile different blog posts or articles that are coming out and that is really based on you as a person. If you have not gone into your post and set up your settings yet, it’s basically suggesting articles out through the Pulse network that might be of interest to you based on who you are, your profile, your summary, that type of thing. Really Linkedin become one of my top content curation areas where everything is becoming much more efficient. And of course with their new launch of the publishing piece in the last couple of weeks, we’re going to see more and more original content on Linkedin. For those of us said kind of eat this up off the spoon and then we can share that in our other social networks. And again I can see something today that perhaps Mari Smith wrote about Facebook and if it’s evergreen I could put that out anytime in the next 30 days. Maui’s looking for quality, evergreen content for my audience.
That’s awesome.
Yeah. Yes. And you mentioned the time, our biggest challenge as people who live in this space but then also attempt to use all these and stand on top of it I use east time and I am a big believer of carving out 15-30 minutes a day, whether you are a salon owner and you’ve got blogs to follow, really set it up in your calendar that from 7-7:30 every morning I’m going through my Feedly and see what I can find and pops it into Pocket. If you do that start to create that daily routine or even 3 or 4 times a week you will be amazed at the kind of information you’re able to actually ingest without it being a huge time piece for you doing it once a week for two hours or something.
That’s a great idea because I was telling Janet recently that I found myself constantly on my cellphone and not really getting anything done. So I needed to focus on my customers and I thought if I could only take 15 minutes and schedule it I’d probably be more productive, so you just reaffirmed that. Thank you.
You’re welcome. And set a timer when you’re doing it, right?
I do.
Set a timer. put that old timer that you use in your kitchen that’s covered with dust now because all of our appliances now are…
The egg timer, remember the egg?
Hey I got that because we color hair so we need a hat timer.
Perfect. Set a timer for 15 minutes and however I want to frame that so it’s easier to focus on one clean chunk at a time and if you break it into 30 minutes or 40 minutes, something that seems realistic to spend some time on it instead of saying I’m going to spend half a day developing 30 days, you’ve now developed a system. If I’m going to do Monday and Tuesday content, then I’m going to do the Wednesday and Thursday content. And my goal, personal goal and the goal I have is my clients is to get next month’s content curated and organized by the 15th of the month prior.
Wow.
Good. I like that.
I know. I’m crazy system-lady, I’m telling you.
I can learn a lot from you.
I do the 30 days I have but…
And here’s why I do that partly because we can get burnt out if we do all 30 at once, right? When you say the 15th, you got technically 2 weeks of wiggle room. And use that quotation marks. If you hit the 18th or the 23rd you still have plenty of room left to be ready for the next month. I always give myself a tight timeframe knowing that life happens and Kimmy, I know you know systems because when you color hair it’s a system.
Yes absolutely.
And the first time you did it or the first time that any of your co-workers did it it might take a little longer. Eventually if it becomes tighter and tighter and if it comes as a rhythmic part of your routine. So everyday you’re touching you content around social media in some way and it doesn’t feel as daunting, it’s amazing how you give yourself… it takes about a quarter, a good 90 days to feel like you’re finally on a rhythm. But if you can give yourself that opportunity you will be so grateful because Janet, I know that you write about this, you talk about this. The algorithms of our social media channels are beyond our control. One of the first key pieces is daily content. How does someone like Kimmy do that when she’s caring for all of her clients?
Right.
Right? So that is why I came up with this system because the first thing is if you don’t have a foundation of consistency then people are not going to find you anyway. You’re doing work every so often for very little reward.
Yep.
Build that, think of next. What are we in January, February March so we’re kind of in the middle of quarter 1. We can start ramping up and testing this for quarter 2 and by summer I think you’ll be amazed at what you’ll be able to accomplish when it comes to content on your social channels.
And would you say maybe set your goals also that you’re talking about quarter 1, quarter 2, that kind of thing. Let’s say you want to launch a product, you have a new product coming out or something like that 90 days from now, do you want to go out 90 days and go backwards would you say from when you want to launch that specific product or have a new product or whatever it may be, what depended on the business?
Absolutely. Another reason why I love calendars is because it really does provide you with so much information if you just stop and take a look. Absolutely. Let’s say you are looking to launch something on September 1st and you’ve got a nice 90-day window to do some ramp up. Some content around that concept, curate content, maybe partnership content. And you know what’s beautiful about that Janet is your calendar starts to fill in on it’s own, it’s almost magical. It’s like oh my gosh this isn’t the nearly the work I thought it was because you go backwards. The other piece to that is just seasonal content or stuff that happens, right? Like in the salon industry we all know for example something that just happened a couple of weeks ago were the Oscars. And what do we have – you got the red carpet conversation. Anyone in fashion, hair, design, any type of really creative element that has to do with that, if you knew that was happening at the beginning of March you can start the conversation in February. What designer are you looking forward to? Or what new hair do is going to, will show itself at the Oscars this year? You can start to prepare that ahead of time and still engage your audience. But you don’t have to feel like you’re sitting there with a blank slate the morning of the Oscars I should talk about the Oscars, does that make sense?
Makes great sense, that’s a good idea. Hey by the way Pamela, did you see my selfie with Ellen at the Oscars?
I did not.
You should see it. It’s on Twitter, it’s just a riot.
That’s awesome.
Yes, she was part of the selfie.
That’s fantastic! And of course it all went to a good cause, as well, I heard that Sam donated a lot of money for that selfie so very good, very nice.
Yeah, yeah. That’s what I said. I said it helped that they brought the hottest guys in Hollywood into it.
Now I wish Ellen would invite Kimmy on her show! That would really be awesome!
You never know, you never know, it can surprise you.
That is one person if you have a shot Kimmy, it’s with Ellen. Where she has 2 or 3 people full time to scout the internet for interesting stuff.
She does, yeah, she does, that’s awesome. Well and then back to content so you’re basically one of the things you’re saying also, like for the salon owners, to look at further out what events are coming up. What things are going to be out there that you can predict in the news that is going to be talked about and bring it. Like if you know Kim Kardashian’s getting married or you know down the road people are going to be talking about, well that’s just throwing out an example, that something you can pre-work on ahead of time in your content.
Absolutely. And one of the push facts we often get isn’t social media supposed to be real time? How can you prepare all these stuff ahead of time and still work real-time. I’m a big believer of rules so the 80-20 rule is something I live a lot in my business – the Pareto principle. And so how I use the 80-20 rule in my content is that if I can get a good 80% of my content pre-conceptualized and prepared then I can still engage real time at least 20%. What I mean by that perhaps on Oscar day you prepared somethings ahead of time so that you’re integrated in the conversation without having to sit at your computer all day. But maybe during the Oscars you pop on real time and retweet something or talk about hey did you see Jennifer Lawrence’s beautiful gown or whatever the case is. It’s not about doing one over the other. It’s about finding that balance knowing that now every business owner can have a full time social media strategist that implementer or if the owner is trying to accomplish all this how can they create systems to work it into their business so they get a return on that investment.
Excellent.
Love it. Now we could talk all day about this but it’s about time to get it. First off we’re learning a lot, all of us are. And secondly it’s just such an important piece because I am a believer that people – business owners nowadays have to create content. Social media, blogging, all that to stay in business. I mean it’s just the way it is. And so I think this is just such a such an important topic so I’d love to continue on but let’s go ahead and talk a little about what you’re doing now and tell us about your website.
Well Next Stage Media Group is the consulting company name that I have so nextstagemediagroup.com. Like I mentioned I really focus, it’s a double-edged sword, I call myself a content marketing strategist, which is probably be the most unsexy thing to call yourself because a strategist is, like what do you do – people think military all over the board. But really what I just shared with you is a process, a system. It’s about developing foundation and strategy. So what I’d love to do is getting into work with marketing organizations to be able to do that to help. They already got great content creators usually or even in a salon case, you have content. You just don’t realize it, right? So if I can help create strategy around it or the systematic process, you’ll get it out better, smarter and be able to analyze it. So the measurement piece is also a big piece what I bring to the table. And then of course my podcast content marketing 360. You mentioned Janet that there are a handful of social media podcast out there. I’ve done a lot of searching, there are only 5 content marketing podcast out on the web that I can find and I have a list on listly. And I was the first in 2011 to put content marketing into the title of a podcast.
That’s awesome.
I claim to fame and work for 5 years and stick with my friends over at Content Marketing Institute and Content Marketing World. Joe Pulizzi and Pam Kozelka and Robert Rosenthal, those guys. Talk to all the speakers that come to these conferences and share the interviews out on my website in the Next Stage Media Group and then we also share it on the inter web, as well, on all social platforms – Twitter, Google+, Linkedin, and Facebook.
Can’t miss Facebook. Wow! Tell us again the name of your podcast so that people can subscribe if they’d like to.
Yes, Content Marketing 360 is the name of the podcast and I also am on a few other. I’m on breaker.com Soundcloud, BlogTalk radio. I push out my podcast, not just on my website but on multiple podcasting platforms and of course iTunes, as well. Yeah, it’s just been the best, best. It was really a passion project that something I really enjoyed and have a great experience and I have met some of the most amazing, smartest people in the world. It’s been a lot of fun.
That’s terrific!
Awesome! Well thank you so much for your time. We appreciate your coming and teaching us all about content and it’s making me go ahead and better start working on my next month’s stuff.
I know. I’m already thinking on what kind of calendar I need to start.
Mark to pass the 15th.
Yeah, we have the “wiggle” word, remember?
Thanks a lot Pam.
Thank you, ba-bye!
Thanks Kimmy.