Planning your podcasts and Content Strategy in 4 Easy Steps

(00:00): Hi, friend! It is quick tip Tuesday. I am so excited to be answering this amazing question from one of my faves, one of my interns, Brenda. And Brenda's really curious about how the heck to organize her podcast content and her episodes so that she doesn't feel like she's waking up with no vision of what to create a show about and throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping it's a good episode.

(00:22): Wondering how do you structure this, how do I know which episode goes where, and is there a way to keep all of this organized so that I know what I'm podcasting about days, weeks, even months in advance.

(00:35): So I'm so excited to help you guys get organized with my four steps on how to organize your podcast, content ideas, and build a podcast episode strategy. Let's do it!

(00:45): Hey, Stef! This is Arianna from The Ditch The Classroom Podcast, and I just had to come on for a minute and kind of toot your horn because you're amazing. So since joining P2P last fall, my podcast downloads have almost quadrupled and I'm set to hit 10,000 downloads within the next month. You also really helped me narrow down my messaging and just make sure I was speaking very clearly to my Lola, helped me optimize my workshop, which leads into my paid program.

(01:17): And now we have it set up where everything from my podcast to social media, to my email list, everything redirects them to that workshop. And I've only had it set up for two weeks and already had three people purchase my program. So that's been amazing. I've nearly tripled my income this month. I'm about to hire someone to help me in my business and all of this while being home with my two year old daughter and literally about to give birth any day to my son. So I just appreciate you so much and I wanted to come on and just tell you that I love you. I'm so grateful for you and just thank you so incredibly much.

(03:23): Did you hear Arianna's testimony, girl? I am so here for this. I'm so excited for you. I am just in awe of how God is working through you, to bless other people with your experiences, with the things you've walked through and that you just showed up for it. And girl, you went hard and I am so proud of you for doing it. Walking with God through the process, and really now experiencing that favor over your obedience, over your business, and just really helping people with what you do. I'm so excited for you!

(03:52): And friends, if you, like Ariana are ready to grow an incredible fruitful business from behind a mic, you want to grow with intention, you want your podcast to become your actual revenue driver, you want to organically get leads that come straight from your show and convert into your courses, your future workshops, your future coaching offers, then Podcast to Profit is for you.

(04:19): It's my 90 day immersion mastermind program. And it is for people who have started a show, but you wanna go from part-time from I'm playing in the podcast game to full-time potential. You wanna make money from your show. You wanna rank. You're like, I want it to become my full out business model. Then go to podcasttoprofitmastermind.com. Our next Podcast to Profit kicks off in August, which is gonna be here before you know it. And we do have a wait list and an application process that you have to go through.

(04:52): So if you have recently started your podcast, if you've been podcasting for a long time, it doesn't matter if you haven't started your show yet, but you're going to have one by August, podcasttoprofitmastermind.com. 90 days, we focus on how to grow your show, SEO, keyword growth, publicity, visibility. We create your coaching offer, your coach, your e-course offer. I teach you to pitch, sell. We optimize sales pages and sales strategy. I really teach you how to make it a legit business. It's so good. It's live. You're gonna love it. You have support from my team, accountability. It's legit. Okay.

(05:27): And if you haven't started a podcast, let's fix that podcastprouniversity.com. Let's get that podcast started, girl. It's time.

(05:35): Hi, Stef! It's Brenda Courtice here from Little Kingdom Warriors. And also one of your interns at the moment, I have a question around content mapping for podcasting, but in terms of like long term, how do you work out what content you're going to post instead of just sort of pulling it out a thin air every week, for example.

(05:59): So how do you work out like a theme that you're going to do when maybe even what tools do you use to do some content mapping would just be a good idea, cuz I feel at the moment, sometimes I'm going and I know this is an ideal going week to week, trying to work out what I'm going to be talking about and what my avatar needs. Thanks so much for your input! See you!

(06:22): Brenda, what's up, my love? I'm so here for this question, I cannot wait, let's do this. So you started a podcast. You know your niche, but you're struggling with planning podcasts. You feel like you're coming up with a random episode the night before, it feels overwhelming, disorganized. Brenda, I've been there. I actually was there like a couple months ago. And while I've gotten better and better and better about coming up with a strategy for organizing my podcast content, I really finally got it. And I think it's interesting that I chose your question right after I got all of this in order. Cause you actually submitted this question quite a while ago. So obviously God knew when I would be ready to teach it to you guys.

(07:03): So I've got four steps for you that we're gonna go through. These are gonna show you guys how to organize your content so that you know exactly what you're podcasting about each week, month, and quarter and how to strategically position your episodes and your content so that it's gonna convert.

(07:16): Cuz at the end of the day, that's what we're doing. We're here for impact and income. We're here to glorify God through our giftings and your gifting. You've chosen to bring to the world through your voice and you've been called to do it in a business capacity. So let's learn how we can do that more efficiently, effectively, and more organized.

(07:33): So number one, podcast planning should revolve around your pillars and content strategy. In Podcast Pro U I taught you how to create pillars. And I even taught this in CYC, in Clarify Your Calling as well. You've already learned that you have three specific things that you teach within your podcast umbrella that solve your person's problem. Three is ideal. I used to let you guys have four. We don't have four anymore. We are allowed to have three specific pillars.

(08:04): So for example, let's say that you teach macros for moms. Your three pillars might be macros and in the middle it might be specifically meal planning or meal prepping. And then your third pillar might be quick fitness. You wanna think about what are those solutions that my person needs? And those three pillars are gonna be these little mini umbrellas under the big umbrella that are going to solve your person's problem.

(08:31): If you have more than three or your pillars are really big, like mindset, it's just too big. You've gotta think under the umbrella. What kind of mindset? Why? Instead of me just saying nutrition or food, I said macros. So really get niche on creating your pillars and really making sure that they're super niche. So now what you're gonna do is you're gonna decide what's my podcast plan gonna look like based on these pillars.

(09:03): So here's where you wanna come up with your overall strategy. Do you have like a third, a third, a third? Do you have a 50% and then a 20% and then a whatever? You've gotta decide, are these pillars even, am I gonna be talking about them evenly or what's this strategy gonna look like?

(09:25): So when you guys look at my brand, for example, my three pillars are, I've got podcasting and business. So it's really podcasting and monetizing a podcast, if you wanna call it what it is. And then I have faith/calling purpose, that's this purpose calling bucket, who God says you are, but it's all one cohesive thing. And then the next pillar and I should have put these in order. Sorry.

(09:53): The next pillar is monetization. It's building a business. It's creating that revenue stream. It's having success God's way as it pertains to podcasting. So you're really looking at three simple buckets. And if you just wanna call 'em something super simple. You can say podcasting, you can say faith/clarity or calling. And that third one can be monetization slash business God's way.

(10:21): So, when you really look at this, you have to look at what is your person actually want here. If your person is like, Hey, calling and faith are great, but like I'm actually here to make money work from home and start a podcast. You have to really veer more towards what your avatar wants without losing the mission work that you have within your business. So for me, I definitely have a bigger weight on the podcasting and monetization pillars because that's what my audience wants.

(10:52): But that third pillar is so important to me. So I'm gonna bring that into the mix at least a third or a quarter of the time. So you come up with what your structure might look like based on what your person really wants. And I have a tip for you here.

(11:05): If you guys have been podcasting for a while, go into your analytics and take a look at your top downloaded episodes, the top 10 of all time, that's really gonna give you a big indication of like, what does your person actually wanna hear from you? Which pillar or pillars does that belong to? And then really let that lead. This does not have to be a third, a third, a third. It doesn't have to do that. It's based on your person and what they want.

(11:27): So once you've decided on your structure, what you're going to do next, number two is you're gonna organize your podcast content. So what I actually love, and this is so up to you, you have to do what works for your brain. I am obsessed with Google sheets. I'm just an Excel weirdo. Sorry. You can use whatever you wanna use for this purpose, but for me, it's just Google sheets. I'm so here for it. I absolutely love it.

(11:56): What I have is a podcast planning Google sheets spreadsheet. And what if you guys are in Podcast Pro University, I give this to you as you know, and also in Podcast to Profit. And what's super cool about this is I've actually grown the sheet to where you can see what theme airs on what day.

(12:18): So what's really cool about this is on Mondays. I'm really focused on my podcasting or my monetization pillars on Tuesday as y'all know, it's quick tip just like today where you guys get to pick the topic, what better way to let your avatar choose what you talk about than to let them ask the question. And then on Thursdays are my faith or calling bucket.

(12:42): So I'm having two of my episodes are really focused on podcasting, business, marketing, sales, all of the monetization stuff. And then one is faith/calling. And then in my spreadsheet, I actually have it color coded. It says the day of the week it airs, the theme or the bucket, the content pillar, whatever you wanna call that. And then all of my podcasting ones are green. My quick tip, I guess you could call it my Lola's choice is blue. And then my faith and calling episodes are purple. And so I know when I'm in this sheet planning and this sheet actually goes all the way out until the end of the year. So I can see six months at a time what is coming up as far as planning my podcast. Now, do I have it planned out that far? No, but at least I know the stuff that's coming up so that I can plan backwards.

(13:36): I know, which gets us into number three. This is tip number three is to look a few months ahead when planning your podcast to focus on promotion. So tip number three is to know what's coming up. So in my Google spreadsheet, I actually have stuff that's coming up, when are our next promotions coming up? When is the next Podcast to Profit gonna launch? When is my 500 episode celebration? Spoiler. What's happening for the rest of the year? And there's actually a column for promotion focus in my podcast planning spreadsheet. That way, as I'm coming up with my episode content, I know if we're gonna be coming into a flash sale or a promotion of some kind, I'm obviously gonna be focusing my content around whatever it is I'm selling or promoting.

(14:28): If we're doing a big fun giveaway, what are those episodes gonna look like? And when you have promotion weeks or months, you may not go in order, right of pillar one, pillar two, pillar three, cuz maybe you're selling something that's only specific to pillar one. Great. You need to be focused on pillar one content for a couple of weeks and that's okay. But when you have this really beautiful podcast planning spreadsheet that goes out that far, you can do that and you can do it with ease.

(14:58): And then the fourth and final tip is to create a content strategy with your avatar's keywords and pain points in mind. So I actually have a second tab here in my podcast planning spreadsheet, which says podcast brainstorming and SEO keywords. So this has lots and lots of brain dump ideas and podcast content ideas based on my three pillars.

(15:21): I can pop over here at any time and pull from this. We actually have an intern who sits and scrubs all of your language. And I pull over everything you guys say to me and I pop it here into the podcast brainstorming sheet. So I have, oh my gosh, hundreds of episode ideas in here based on your language, what you want, your keywords.

(15:46): And then I've put them into my three pillar buckets so that I can make sure that I'm populating my podcast spreadsheet in order. That I'm not doing six podcasting episodes in a row or six clarity episodes in a row. I really wanna make sure that I'm touching each of my pillars in some type of strategic way.

(16:06): And then bonus tip for you guys today, podcast planning allows you to feel confident in your podcast and helps you to grow faster. So you wanna grow faster, you wanna get more downloads, you wanna convert, you really wanna go big. You've gotta treat your podcast like a business. Your podcast is the business. Your podcast is the catalyst. It's the driver to everything. It's the driver to leads. It's the driver to ultimately having a blog.

(16:34): It's the driver to getting people on an email list. It's what actually sells. What's insane, it's 90% of my sales in this business, a very successful business, is 100% from me marketing directly to you from the show. If that is not crazy, I don't know what it is. I don't need to have super crazy things and opt-ins and lead gen and conversion strat, I do have some of that stuff, which is really cool that we can start experimenting with that now. But the point is, 90% of the revenue for the entire company comes directly from this podcast.

(17:09): So that proves to you that if I can do this, so can you. And inside of Podcast Pro University and Podcast to Profit, I give you guys every single thing that I know how to do when it comes to making a podcast your full time thing, your actual business.

(17:26): So those are my four steps for you guys to plan your podcast, create content in super strategic ways so that you can build a podcast episode strategy so you can grow, so you can feel super organized. If you guys wanna snag a copy of my podcast planning template, along with my podcast brainstorming tab, you guys can grab that inside of my course, Podcast Pro University, which is at podcastprouniversity.com. If you wanna start and launch a podcast in under 30 days, you wanna know how to edit, record, grow, and scale your show.

(18:02): Or, I also have a copy of this for you guys inside of Podcast to Profit, if you already have a podcast and you wanna grow your show, you wanna scale, you wanna become visible, you wanna go full time with your thing. You wanna monetize and create an amazing successful business partnered with God with a coaching or course offer that is at podcasttoprofitmastermind.com and our next live group coaching mastermind kicks off in August.

(18:28): God bless you, guys. I pray that your podcast can be a vessel for the kingdom of God, that you can use your gifts for His glory. And you can show up every day reminded that He has laid the path beneath your feet. That God is with you in your journey, that he has called you to this for a time such as this, you are equipped. You are anointed and you are enough. In Jesus' mighty name. Amen. I'll see you, guys, back real soon.