Content Queen Mariah

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204: How to create a 12 month content plan

Mariah MacInnes

Do you want to do 2024 the same as this year?

OR do you want to struggle to work out what you are posting on social media and how it works to your sales?

Marketing and sales go together. Marketing is the awareness, sales in the conversion.

So... when you know what you are selling in your business then you can make a content plan and marketing campaigns to suit.

Saving time and energy.

You do this, you get organised. You create fun and exciting marketing campaigns off the back of this… let me share how you would do it.

So let me share with you 3 things you can do to get this started. 

All part of our new campaign - Around the World in 90 days - your ticket to good content marketing! 

Welcome aboard flight CQM222, I am your pilot, Mariah - you have your ticket to good content marketing in hand. 

While on this flight the flight attendants will be here to assist you to get off the content creation hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom-based lifestyle. 

Each week you will be given a new stamp in your passport and by the end of the 90 days, you will be on your way to explore the world of Content Marketing as a solo traveller. 

This is week four - get ready, it is going to be a wild ride! 

If you LOVED this part of your trip (the episode), make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.

✨ ⁠⁠⁠GET YOUR TICKET TO GOOD CONTENT MARKETING⁠⁠⁠ ✨

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

  • How to plan your 12 months of content

  • How to build the content plan

  • How to execute the content

  • How to create compelling marketing campaigns

  • Why you need a business and sales plan

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @contentqueenmariah!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is your pilot speaking. My name is Mariah and welcome to this special series of the content queen podcast. You have boarded flight CQM 222, and you have in your hand, your ticket to good content marketing. We hope you have a safe journey on this 90 day trip strap in and get ready to experience all the strategy and learning you need to enter 2024 with the direction on how to create content that is unique to you and your business while on board, you will have complimentary access to all the learning.

That will help you attract your own new passengers to grow and expand your own trip while on this flight the flight attendants will be here to assist you to get off the content Hamster wheel and onto a new way of Marketing to help you live a more freedom based lifestyle Each week you'll be given a new stamp of your passport And by the end of the 90 days, you will be on your way to experience the world of content marketing as a solo traveller.

Seatbelts on, we are ready to take off. Hello, gang! Okay, this part of our journey, we are in Colombia. More specifically, the Bogota area. So this is my first solo episode since I have travelled. And let me tell you, one of the things that before we left had happened was the agency grew. The agency grew to more clients than I had had in a long time.

And that meant obviously more workload. Now, obviously I can't say, yes, I work four hours a week and sit by the beach because that is not a reality. But I can tell you that having plan and strategy. is the thing that has allowed us to fly 12 hours offline. And don't get me wrong, obviously there is times where it feels overwhelming, but when I go back to the strategy, when I understand that, yes, the marketing is in place, that is when.

You know, I can focus, I can do what I need to do for my clients, I can do what I need to do for my business, and then I can enjoy my time. But not only that, I can still do it with a level of quality that I would have done if I was sitting at my desk. If not, with way more inspiration. So, Basically, when I have the strategy, it's out of my brain.

It's documented that I go back to it every time I use it with my clients. Whenever we have a call, we know what we're looking at. We know what we're doing and we just move forward from there. So I wanted to give you a little bit of an insight because I think that has really helped me with my travels.

But this time, obviously having more clients than I did in Europe, I really had to go back to the strategy. But today we're going to talk about how to plan out 12 months. And this is not knowing everything you're doing. If you're like, Oh my God, that sounds awful because that's not how my brain works.

This is just a really high level plan. So you can work out what you're selling in 2024, what marketing campaigns you can do. So this really ties into the themes that I talk about in my content strategy. So if you want really, um, To be focused next year than this episode is really going to help you because I imagine maybe you don't want to do 2024 the same as you did this year.

Maybe you don't want to struggle with trying to work out what to post on social media and how it actually ties in with sales because. Sales and marketing really go together. Marketing is this awareness piece. It is the eyes of your business and sales is the conversion. So you really need them to work together.

When I worked in corporate marketing, sales and marketing were meant to align. And there were times where it didn't and that's when we saw You know, impacts on social media because we're having like one team in sales, one of these, the other team wanted that. And this is where you get the power because you are your own boss.

So there was an episode earlier this year with Angela Sanchez. And let me find that episode. So that was episode 170. If you go to contentqueenmaria. com forward slash podcast forward slash 170, I'll put the link in the show notes. But one thing that she really explored in this episode to help small business owners with social media, especially was, and this is what she does in the beauty industry, is mapping out five.

key campaigns throughout the year and obviously in product that is really centered around gifting times, Christmas, Valentine's day. And she said, you know, map out five and in between you kind of in between these campaigns, that's when you sprinkle sort of that top of funnel content. Now, this is really the idea of mapping out a sales plan and then your marketing to that.

So you can do this, you can get organized and you can have fun and exciting marketing campaigns off the back of this. I'm going to show you how you can do this in this episode because when you know what you're selling in your business, then you can make the content plan and the marketing campaigns to suit, saving you time and energy.

And this is what we want when we're getting off this content hamster wheel in 2024. We want to be strategic. We want to be intentional. We want everything to work together. This is where this like connection and conversion element comes in. So I'm going to share three things that can help you get started off the back of this episode to really start building on this sales and marketing plan for 2024.

Now it can be rough. It can be And you can dive into it more each quarter, each month, whatever works for you. This is about aligning to your energy as well. Okay. So the first thing is to plan to build out 2024 and roughly add in times that you want to promote. Now, this is something that I. Offering content bootcamp is like this sales plan, right?

It's just very high level because obviously we want to dive into the marketing This is where if you really need to get intentional with your planning. I recommend you reach out to some kind of business mentor or supporter in the past I've mentioned my support network, which is Leticia Andrak from Essential Shift.

I can pop her link in the show notes. I actually, leading into this week, will be doing her abundant vision to really help me map out what I want to do in my business high level. So then I can dive into the marketing things. So you probably really do need to sit down and plan out 2024 from a business perspective.

You might want to save this into the new year because it doesn't mean you have to do it right now. But it is something that you want to think about. So for example, for myself, what I would do is I will sit down and I'll look at. January to December. Now, when I actually mapped out this current campaign, obviously it ran into 2024.

So I know up into at least February, I have a campaign, which is around the world in 90 days. So what I wanted to do with content bootcamp was, and this is actually, um, sharing insights because I haven't announced this yet, but what I want to do with Content Precamp is run a live component to it. So obviously there's a passive option where you can work through it yourself, but I want to do a bit of a live component to really answer people's questions live, even though there is an element in Content Precamp where you can.

Answer people's questions and really dive into the plan, strategy, and process that I teach the three stages in content bootcamp. So, I knew I wanted to run that at least twice in 2024. So, if I know this around the world, in 90 days, campaign runs for 90 days. Then that is like six months of the year already done in campaign work.

So I know that that's kind of mapped out for me. So that's sort of what I've done. Okay, I know. And then in between, what am I going to do? In between, I personally want to run this really strong brand awareness campaign. And that's the I am content queen one that I ran. In September, like yeah, August, September, October, and that was really successful for me.

So I want to run that a couple of times next year as well. So basically that is it. They're the four campaigns that I'm going to run around the world in 90 days twice. And I am content queen probably twice, maybe once. I need to obviously sit down and look at that when I'm doing my abundant vision, which will be this week as you listen to this episode.

And then in between, I can sprinkle in more top of funnel, more educational stuff, and really, you know, build kind of the audience off the back of that. So that's basically the plan looking at January through to December, where do you want to sell your offerings? What offerings do you want to launch next year?

High level and roughly, because actually when you do this, you work out that probably you might be a little bit ambitious with how many things you want to launch because launching anything or any kind of campaign. takes energy. So this is where you can be very intentional. And then in between those fillers, that's when you maybe You might even have less content in those times.

You might scale back your content and work more on networking, collaborations. That's when you can focus more on outreach and maybe doing like teachings or workshops or developing your own learnings. So this is where you can be strategic with your business as well. But from a marketing perspective, this is where you can say, okay, well, these are the times where I'm going to be running marketing campaigns and I'm going to be launching.

So in between, this is where I can do other intentional marketing efforts with my business. Things that will also move the needle. Maybe this is where you experiment and learn Facebook ads, or this is where you go out and network more, or this is where you pitch more podcasts. So this is where we can be more strategic.

So the first one is plan. Once you know, basically where you're going to be selling your offerings and when you're going to run certain campaigns, then you want to work out a six to eight timeframe to build out your themes and your campaign ideas. So basically if you know that you want to open the doors to your offerings once a quarter, then you have to actually work out the timeframe.

So like a marketing campaign could run anywhere from six to eight weeks. Mine, I'm doing a little bit longer. I'm doing nine weeks. Or 12 weeks even. Um, that's just how I roll. I like to really run a brand awareness piece before I run any kind of lead generation and conversion. So basically a brand awareness piece is just getting my name out there.

That is when I do more top of funnel content. So more fun, engaging, entertaining, controversial, opinionated. And then I'll run into more of getting people to join a workshop, which is more lead gen, and then obviously converting, which is selling. So they say on average you can take, yeah, anywhere from six to eight weeks from when someone enters the top of your funnel that they've never known you to actually converting.

And it can be longer for lots of different people. So this is when you want to start building out, okay, six to eight weeks. So maybe you've got two weeks before, um, Or even four weeks before launching and then two weeks of launching, um, and actually selling it, it really does depend. So I highly recommend if you want to learn more about marketing campaigns to check out Mia Fileman from Campaign Del Mar.

Love to get her on the podcast. It's something that I'll try and do in the new year, but essentially this is where she really teaches you how to create these brand awareness conversion and lead generation campaigns. But basically what you want to do is, yeah, map out that timeframe. So then you can start going, okay, well, if I'm going to launch a certain offering, what kind of campaign idea can I have around this?

What kind of theme can I have around this? So for example, my two themes, um, and what Mia talks about in her campaign dharma is like big idea is I am content queen and I piggyback all the different queens. I've got four queens, the queen of chess. The queen, so the she's strategic, the queen in cards, she works together with the other cards to make, you know, a royal flush.

So that talks about, you know, content being one element in your business. Then we've got queen, the. Band who was very unique in what they did and that's how they stood out and that's that like storytelling element And then we have the Queen Bee, the repurposing. She spreads her eggs So that's all about repurposing and I talk about these four elements and that's my brand awareness campaign Then I have my around the world in 90 days because obviously travel is huge for me And obviously this strategy piece really helps me with time freedom So with that I have brand awareness at the moment or it's sort of Brand awareness leading into more lead generation.

And that's like really high value quality content with my podcasts and really good guests really working around this theme. And then leading into January, I'm going to have an event, which is my lead generation element. And then of course, the conversion selling content bootcamp, I've got a really cool video coming out for that.

So that's my like three month campaign. That's a big campaign though, but that is actually encompassing all elements of the funnel, brand awareness, getting the eyes. Consideration, getting people to think about me, join my event, and then conversion, buying content, bootcamp. So, they're my two big ideas in my campaigns.

And I run two per year, but I run them multiple different times. So you can think about that with your offerings. What's a cool, fun idea that I can have that can help me promote this offering? And, and you don't have to build that out right now, but that's where you, when you do sit down to plan out that launch or that campaign, that is what you want to be thinking about.

And as I said, check out campaign Del Mar, if you really want to dive into it, it's very, very good. So. And that is when you work out your six to eight week timeframe. And again, this is what helps you be a little bit more realistic with what you can actually do with your marketing and your sales next year.

So that's the build elements. We've got plan, we've got build, and the last one is execute. So each month off the back of this campaign, or whether you're running one or not, then you can get an idea of what you're going to post. On social media, on your podcast, on your blog, whatever channels you're using to execute from a content perspective.

Obviously there's all different in the marketing game, you know, ads and everything, but obviously we're here to talk about content. So then if you know, okay, well, these are the months that I'm promoting things and I'm in campaign. And then these are the kind of ideas. Now the ideas of your content will basically be.

So for me, with, um, my around the world in 90 days, all the content is around content execution, content creation in 2024, and I really tied into this like travel element. But for example, if you were going to sell something. The content you would create are sort of those high level educational pieces that help people understand why they need what you're offering.

So this is where you can be opinionated, you can be controversial, you can be aspirational, you can share the dream life. And I know, you know, we talk about pain points here and I saw someone the other day mention how pain points is old school and we want to create the ideal life. But you still need to address the pain that someone is experiencing.

You don't need to say that, Oh my God, this, you know, you are like, you don't create this scarcity. You just identify that this is the problem that someone is having. And then you create the dream life, the aspirational life through your content to show them where they could be if they engage in not just necessarily you, but the topic that you are talking about.

So then you want to go the next level deeper and put all your months in and then maybe break it down to weekly or every two weeks. Some people do every two weeks, they, they introduce a new concept or. Our topic. Some people do it monthly. I do it weekly, but of course it encompasses the campaign that I'm running and usually sometimes it's an overarching monthly theme.

So maybe in, if I'm not running a campaign in a certain month, I might really want to dive into that time element or the content idea element or minimalist. I had this month where we talked all about minimal and trying to do the minimum and then you can sort of map out what sort of high level topic on talk about each week in that given month.

So for example, one week. You might address the, the, you know, and this is where you can dive into the who, what, when, where, and why. You know, one, one week you could be talking about what, so what is XYZ? And it's not necessarily what is your product. It's what is the, the, the theme or the concept that your niche sits under.

So for example, if you are a product based business that specializes in sustainability, you might really talk about that and show yourself as an expert. In that sustainability field, and you might dive into all different elements of sustainability under that. So as I mentioned for me in these, I could map out basically three months of my campaign and ideas.

And then I knew what guests I needed to come on based on the theme of around the world in 90 days and leading into this 2024. So I mapped out, okay, I want. To talk about different content channels in 2024. So I've got someone from Instagram, I have Facebook, we've got design, we've got content marketing as a whole.

You know, there's so many elements that I could go down, but they were the ones I decided and then I could find my guests. The fortunate thing is having a podcast is you get a lot of people that pitch you. So I had a lot of pictures in my inbox, so then I could also tailor my content weeks and my podcast weeks into what?

I had been pitched and that made it really easy and I could reach out to them and get them on the podcast. I could then even do some interviews in advance before I left for Columbia. And the good thing was on the plane, I got to edit them. So I was able to get a little bit ahead in my content planning, but you don't have to do this.

It's just helping you understand what kind of topics am I going to talk about in any given week? And this is something we dive a lot deeper into in content bootcamp. And I'll be talking about throughout this campaign. So basically, I've given you a little bit of an explanation of how I've been able to plan, build, and execute my marketing campaigns for 2024.

It's very rough, and I just need to slot in my dates, my months, and then of course I can build out topics. But I don't like to get too far ahead, because what if, you know, this amazing guest pitches me, or what if I get connected with someone, or what if a, you know, something changes in the industry? But it's a really high level plan that can help you based off your sales.

Work out what you're going to market and from what you're going to market, what content you're going to create off the back of that. I'd love to know if you have any questions around this. If you're listening to it on Spotify, you can leave a comment or you can come over to Instagram and just ask me what questions that you might have.

Now I'm going to loop this back and talk about a couple of clients that I've done this with. Um, so I have a product based, kind of service based business that I work with. They do sell products, but they can sort of offer a service around this. So what we did is we mapped out, obviously, a lot of big events throughout the year.

We were able to plan out 12 months when we did a strategy together. And then we also, we realized, okay, we're going to pick four different elements. So we picked Christmas, there's Valentine's, there's, um, So, um, I think that's it for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I'll see you guys next time. Bye.

And then, um, she's really wants to be known in a certain area. So we could also map out a bit of a campaign around that as well. So we are going to run them more monthly, like so four, maybe five weeks, um, because she is promoting the same product all the time. So if you are a product based business, it is.

You're not introducing a new product all the time, like, whereas service based course creators are probably introducing something all the time. So you might need a little bit more of a lead way, but for product it's a bit shorter from when someone introduced, like, is known about you to buying from you because it's less of an investment than a service or a course most of the time.

So basically 12 months and then from there, when we then have our monthly sessions, we can dive in deeper. Okay, what? You know, actual pieces of content we're going to create. So right now you might do super high level, then each quarter, you might map it out a little bit deeper. And then each month you might go really focused and then weekly create.

And I always create a week ahead. So I'm always a little bit ahead. You could do the whole month if you want. It's totally up to you. Now have two other clients in the service industry that are building a lot on these marketing campaigns. They have worked with me and very closely. And they are building out these campaigns and off the back of those campaigns, we were able to, in between, do those, you know, and I'm not going to call it filler content because it's absolutely not, it's still very educational, it's still very, you know, um, value, but it's more about Just general topics that make up their business.

So we were able to create high level plan for next year based off. And one of my clients just, you know, obviously she's very strategic. She went and did it all. And then, then we can, we're going to sit down and we're going to plan out all the marketing off the back of that, which is amazing. Right? So the first step, obviously, in this is building that business strategy.

And if you don't have one, again, I have my own mentor, but find one that's going to work for you. Once you have that business plan, you have your sales plan, you can then build out the marketing. And this will really help build out repurposing, key messages, and it makes it fun because we're not on the hamster wheel.

We're being more creative with what we can do. And then of course you might look at it and go, well, this is where I need help in my business. These are the gaps and this is where you can learn, work out where you're going to outsource. Where you're going to invest in the new year. So, as I said with clients, we've been able to do it and it's so good because we know what we're doing, we're super focused, we can, you know, do the work, and then we have more space to measure, improve, optimise.

Make it better for the next campaign because a lot of these campaigns we use over and over again So then we can just keep optimizing. We're not always creating new we're using the core messages the core design elements the core concepts the core videos the core content and Then we're going to make it better for the next one, which is super super powerful so I'd love to know what you're gonna do and how this is gonna help you and Really?

What it is about is just? Being a little bit more organized and a little bit more intentional. And this is what will happen with So if you really want to see this unfold, we're only five weeks into the around the world campaign. You can check out some of the things that I've done. You can ask me any questions about what I've done in this campaign, but essentially how it's starting out is this sort of brand awareness element where I've got the landing page.

You can sign up to the email list. You'll be getting weekly emails that are. You know, really value added, and then you can listen to podcast is transcribed and really be immersed in this. We give you your, your passport and your stamp so you can share it on socials. You can really join in on the fun. And then I'll have an event in January, which you can absolutely join and stay tuned for more on that.

And then of course, I will be promoting content bootcamp and the live component of it. Which if you really want to, um, join that, you can reach out to me, I'm more than happy to, you know, we can get the process started so you make sure you have your spot and you're committed. But basically, this is what I'm doing in this campaign.

As I said, I'm going to run it another time. Um, I think it's going to be in the middle of this year. And then off the back of that, I'm going to have an I Am Content Queen campaign, one or two. And then in between, just business as usual, but really high value added content based on questions I get from my audience.

Questions I get from my clients, people that have pitched to come on my podcast, because obviously, as you know, my podcast is my core topic, or any collaborations that I do. So, enjoy the journey. The link is in the show notes to sign up and be part of the content and be part of Around the World in 90 Days, your ticket to good content marketing.

But be a content queen or king and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business. Thank you so much for joining this flight. Stamp your passport and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. Your travel buddies, basically. You could do this by adding it to your insta stories and tagging me at contentqueenmariah or just tell them about it.

If you do take a minute to rate and review, this does help me get more guests on the show. Helps me build and strengthen this content, which is a huge benefit to you. If you're on Spotify, you can leave a comment on this episode, you can leave five stars. If you're on Apple, you can leave a review and a rating and follow us on Instagram and TikTok.

Let me know any topics you want me to talk about in the future. This will be my BAU content, my business as usual stuff that's in between my campaigns and will help me map out my plan for 2024 and I'll talk to you next week. Bye!

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