Welcome to another episode of the podcast that teaches you how to be a ridiculously good virtual assistant.
Today we are talking about making the best of your time to market your business, by creating an editorial calendar.
Today’s Quote: Give your audience enough variety that they won’t get bored, with an emphasis on what they really want most. – Dustin W. Stout
Click the play button above to tune in, or choose your favourite podcast player below:
Connect with Tracey D’Aviero, VA Coach and Trainer
Episode Notes:
Getting the word out about your Virtual Assistant business takes time.
But it shouldn’t take all of your time.
And yet a lot of VAs I talk to are spending hours and hours preparing their marketing stuff.
There are a few reasons for this.
First, we often struggle with what to put out there. So it takes more time to come up with ideas for content. We spend too much time making lists and finding inspiration.
Second, we are perfectionists. Yes I’m looking at you, but I also have my hand up here so don’t worry! So we work hours on graphics or content before we ever post them.
And third, we try to ‘be’ everywhere. All of the marketing professionals will tell you to master one channel before moving to others. But we have FOMO so we do ‘t listen to that advice.
So all that to say, it takes us a lot of time.
When you don’t have a lot of clients you have a lot more free time, but you should not be filling it with marketing.
Networking, yes, but not content.
To do this part efficiently takes planning and strategy … and that’s where an editorial calendar can be extremely helpful.
It is your planning tool to help you decide what to put where, and when.
Content marketing is much more than just posting stuff.
You have to know why you are there, who you want to see it, and what you want them to do after seeing it.
To create an editorial calendar, you need to know what you are promoting.
Are you looking for more visibility and exposure for your VA business?
Are you looking for clients?
Are you looking to introduce a new service?
When you know what you want to talk about, then the calendar comes into play
I suggest doing your editorial calendar for one month.
That is a repeatable task you can do every month and you can change things as necessary to make sure your strategy is working well for you.
You also want to be sure that you set goals for your content, like the ones I mentioned above.
If you want more visibility, how will you measure that? Likes, comments and shares? Interactions?
If you are looking for clients, how many? Who are they? Where are they? How will your content help you get them?
When you know your goal you can work better with your content.
You can build your content into your schedule every day or every week.
The idea if you do it daily is to do it in very small buckets of time, like 15 or 20 minutes.
A lot of people prefer to schedule their regular stuff and then use that 15 minutes a day to do some interacting which is what I highly recommend.
You don’t have to hit publish live to do social media well. The live or daily interaction is the important part.
And that’s why an editorial calendar can help take the guesswork out of what you are posting regularly.
Decide on four main topics you will create content around.
These should have to do with your services.
Actually let me state right here that your content should 100% be for your audience. It should be what they are interested in reading about.
And I need to be totally honest with you: they do NOT care about you.
I mean, they want you to be a nice and trustworthy person if they work with you, but all they really want to know is two things: what you can do for them and how much it will cost them.
Your marketing content is for them. And it should speak to them.
So park the posts about ‘I’,and start thinking ‘you’.
It will go miles further for you when you create content from that perspective.
Okay so let’s back up to where I was.
Decide on four main topics that have to do with your services.
For a lot of VAs, those could be: email management, time management, organization, client care/customer service.
With those four topics in mind, start to collect ideas and dump them into folders to use to create content.
With four main topics your content will be cohesive and you will be able to showcase your expertise.
Why four? Because there are four weeks in a month, and you can rotate through them one week at a time, then continue the next month.
Now decide where you will post and how often.
Again this will determine what content you create.
Platforms like Tiktok, Pinterest and YouTube are for outreach, to get people to see you and to get your VA business in front of your audience.
Instagram and Facebook are for nurturing and sales. LinkedIn too. What that means is that if you are creating content for the other channels, that content should be driving people to where you want to nurture them and get to know them.
Your editorial calendar and the planning you do there will also help you set realistic goals about how often you will publish content as well as determine deadlines for the content.
So decide what you will do each day and slot it in.
There is no ‘right’ way, you will find what works for you – in terms of what you will create and what it will look like.
You do want to create templates to help you work as efficiently as possible though.
If you are writing a weekly blog post (which you really should be), use a template so that you can get that done easily. If you look at my blog you will see that for my podcast episodes, I have a quote for each of them, I come up with 3 points of discussion for the article, and I have a call to action at the end. In my template I also include graphics ideas, and formatting information for my blog, as well as category, keywords, and other seo information.
That helps me think about all of those things when I create that blog post, and I never forget to include it.
When you are blogging weekly, your website will get indexed more often by the search engines – especially if you are putting good keywords in there, but you will also have the basis to create the other pieces of content that you can use the remainder of the week.
Remember, we are setting up four main topics so that we can create content on one this week, another next week, and so on.
So take that blog post and pull out your quotations, or statistics, and 3 bullet points, and expand those or use those as images, or social media captions.
With one blog post you can easily create 20 other pieces of content. Want to do an Instagram reel? You can do several by using those 3 bullet points, or by doing a carousel or a short form video listing them.
The calendar is important to tell you what to post when – and you can even expand it so that you put the actual content into the calendar (many people do this).
Whatever will help you get your marketing done efficiently is what you are shooting for.
And using templates for graphics can make things very easy.
It shouldn’t take you hours to create graphics for your social media content – in fact, it should only take you 30 seconds – by setting up a template, or a series of templates, you just need to plunk your content in and you are ready to go.
Brand recognition is also important for your marketing, and creating templates that you can use that are branded with your colours and your fonts is a great way to make sure that people who see your stuff will begin to recognize you.
And in terms of captions, as I said before, get the I right out of it. You want the content to speak to your client. It’s okay to put your image on stuff, I like that actually – but the words must speak to your audience.
So, not ‘I am a VA, I can help you get things done’, but ‘Overwhelmed? Here are 3 ways you can get more done every day.’
You see how one speaks to them directly – and will get their attention because it’s about a problem they are having. The other gives the same information, but coming from your perspective, and sounds salesy, even, because it just sounds like you want them to hire you.
And just while we are on the topic, no motivational quotes either. Well, unless they are branded to your company, anyway. Or quote yourself! You want to be seen as the expert in what the client needs help with – not someone else.
The same kind of goes for sharing other people’s events. While networking and sharing is a really good way to nurture relationships with your clients and potential clients, there is really only one rule with sharing other expert’s stuff (in my opinion) – and that is, if you are sharing their stuff, then you have to create more of your own stuff to cushion around it.
There aren’t a lot of rules, but you need to remember two things:
Your perspective must be from your clients POV.
What they are struggling with, and what they need help with, and you need them to know that you can help them with what is troubling them – not what you think they need help with, but what they think they need help with.
So make sure your marketing covers those two things, and then just get doing it every week.
And then for next week, change topics. And the third and fourth. Then next month in week 1 you’ll be back with your week 1 topic and I can guarantee that this cycle will start to make things really efficient for you. Because when you are doing your normal surfing, you’ll be able to find stuff you want to share, and add it to your calendar or folder. Really relevant stuff because your topics are focused on your clients.
Marketing well takes practice, but you can do it! And you might even need to learn a little more than you know now, but you can start with an editorial calendar. And only do what you need to do right now.
One thing I’ve been guilty of is putting too much into the calendar and then not getting it done.
I don’t want you to do that too. Plan for less, and then do more if you have time or if you get really productive.
And set up the templates. If you do a blog post, how many pieces of content will you create from that (that are not going to take you hours to create each week)?
I say shoot for 10 piece of content – so that’s 2 per day you can post. One image and one caption. Easy with templates and a routine.
And if you are expanding to another platform, then you can create more, but as our recommendation is to master one first, 10 pieces of content (where one is the blog post) is really manageable.
Let’s circle back to today’s quote from Dustin Stout: Give your audience enough variety that they won’t get bored, with an emphasis on what they really want most.
When we talk about what to post, I can’t stress enough that your content needs to be about your clients. Needs to be FOR your clients. And like Dustin says, give them enough variety (ie four topics) that they wont’ get bored, and an emphasis on what they really want most (it your help).
The editorial calendar as a tool helps you with time management, but as you can see if also helps you with focused content, creation process, simpler research, and helps your audience to see that you are really an expert in these things, because you’re not all over the place every single day.
Oh and as a completely random note, you can also reuse content! Just because you posted an image last month doesn’t mean you can never use it again. Content is not one and done. Just be careful of posting the same thing to different platforms at the same time.
If people are connected to you in more than one place, they don’t need to see the same thing posted everywhere. Strive to keep things different in different platforms.
Set your calendar up in Google Drive, or a project management system, or a content marketing system. I use Metricool and I simply love it.
Take 15 minutes or so a day to connect with the people in your groups or social media platforms – ask questions, answer questions, like, comment and share.
That goes a long way in building trust with your community.
And remember those goals – what are you looking to do with this month’s content?
If content marketing is something you have a lot of trouble with, get some help with it. I can help.
What You Need to Do Next:
I am here to help. It’s the only reason I’m here at all, as you know. To help you become a ridiculously good VA.
I’ve helped hundreds of VAs through challenges just like yours, and got them on their way to growing their business and the lifestyle that they dream of. That you dream of.
I’d love to do the same for you.
Let’s work together privately to get you to your really big goal. It’s the fastest way to get results and we can start right away. Learn more about private coaching here.
The Virtual Circle (TVC) is a monthly mastermind group for Virtual Assistants just like you. We get together 3 times a month for group Zoom sessions to talk about what you are struggling with, working on, or celebrating. It’s a close knit community of your VA colleagues that provides the best kind of support for your VA business. Learn more about TVC here.
My self study program Getting Started as a VA can help you get your VA business started easily and quickly too. You can sign up right away and be on your way to getting clients by the end of the program, with all the right foundations in place. Check out the program here.
Reach out to me if you need to talk about where you are stuck and what the right option might be to get you moving. It’s literally all I’m here to do is help you get to where you want to go. Book a complimentary Cut to the Chase call with me here.