Hey, what's up, everybody? Natalie here. And welcome back to the reality of winning.
I'm super excited to have you guys here today, and I have a really killer episode and I'm super excited about this.
We're gonna talk all about your social media content strategy today, and I just want to say I remember when I first started creating content and I honestly, I look back on it today and I have to laugh because what I thought was like, you know, just so great was just really subpar, super surface level. And, you know, it was hard and I really didn't know what good content was.
And I think it was really hard for me to, like, figure out exactly when I should be posting, what I should be posting, how much should I be posting, you know, was it me? Was it the algorithm? Like, I had no idea really how to measure whether or not I was adding any value to anyone's life.
I feel like it gets really tough sometimes too, when you're working really hard and no one likes your content. There's probably no worse feeling in the world than putting your heart and soul into something and just getting zero results.
Like, if no one double taps, you're sitting there and you're like, okay, what's going on?
And then if somebody does finally double tap on that and they like your stuff or they reshare it, you're sitting there and you're like, okay, well, how come I have no comments? And it's a really frustrating experience and it becomes really challenging to kind of like, show up consistently when that's happening.
It's tough to say, like, okay, nobody's showing up, nobody's liking, no one's engaging, and you have to put out another piece of content and you're like, I'm doing this and somebody's just going to scroll right past it. And I'm here to give you a harsh reality of winning. And I'm going to just say it.
The problem you're facing isn't your content or an algorithm problem. It's you. Yeah, you're the problem. You heard it right. You're the thing that is standing in the way of your own success.
And I can guarantee you that you probably don't have the right content strategy in place, and you probably don't even have a content strategy. And it's okay because I've been there too, and I totally get it. And we all have to start out sucking.
In today's episode, I'm gonna basically walk you through why you're the thing that's holding you back. I'M also gonna show you the exact content strategy that I've used to help scale companies to over $10 million annually.
And I'm gonna talk to you about the number one thing that you have to be doing to make sure that you actually grow without spending on ads.
But you're going to have to stick around to the end, and you're not going to want to miss this, because this is honestly the most important thing, and it's the number one thing that you have to know. Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Natalie, business and marketing consultant and personal branding expert.
I've helped scale and grow companies to over $10 million annually. And I'm here to walk you through everything you need to know to bridge the gap between where you are right now and where you want to go.
And this is the reality of winning.
The number one problem that I see, the biggest problem I see with clients is they're often just kind of like posting a post like they know it has to get done.
They scramble, they put things out at the last minute, they're inconsistent with the time that they're posting, and then they're wondering why they're not getting any results.
And the second thing I noticed is that when people are focusing more and worrying about the success of the content or how much engagement you're going to get out of it, you end up focusing on all the wrong things. So it's kind of like focusing on your future and worrying about your past at the same time.
So if you keep thinking like, I don't want to get 0 likes, I want more people to like this post. On my last post, I hope somebody reshares it. Maybe somebody with a lot of followers will engage with it and I'll be able to grow my impressions.
And this is why you are the problem. This is why the thing holding yourself back from achieving your desired outcome is you. In life, you have to focus on the present moment.
You have to focus on doing the thing rather than worrying about how that thing is going to turn out. So that could be anything from, you know, getting the right relationship to putting out the right content. It always is going to apply.
And the biggest mistake people are making in life or in the business world anyways is they don't take their content strategy. They don't take their email marketing, they don't take their ads. They keep focusing on the wrong metrics.
So ultimately, you like whatever piece of content you put out today. You have to know that it's helping you grow. You have to focus on doing the thing, not how the thing is going to turn out.
Every post that you make is going to help you become better and ultimately also stacking the evidence that you need to prove to yourself that you can actually do this. And I think the biggest problem, we get so caught up in the metrics that we forget about the process.
The first thing I always tell my clients is that you can't just post a post. You have to run your life and your business with intention. So what does that look like? How do we do it?
And basically, I think the number one response that I have to that is, what is the goal of every piece of content that you wrote, every graphic that you made, was to actually try and make somebody's life better. What if it was to try and change somebody's life?
What if you decided that you weren't going to just do this to glorify yourself and focus on all these likes and shares, but to actually help someone?
No matter how many people like your post, how many people share your post, no matter how much engagement you get, it doesn't matter if you don't actually like yourself. And that's the hard reality of winning.
You have to really step away and look back and try and see if you're seeking external validation in your content strategy.
And, you know, you really have to get down to the root cause of why you're seeking that external validation and you have to do the internal work to move past it.
So I think knowing that if you continue to try and put your best foot forward and you show up and you can be the best version of yourself as you wrote that piece of content, that you had the power to change someone's life, that if you did something with so much integrity, so much heart, so much soul, that the only possible outcome would be that you not only become a better content creator, but you become a better version of yourself in that process. You learn to love yourself through that experience. Being a business owner or a content creator isn't just about checking tasks off a list.
Not when you have a strong why, when you know why you're putting out the content in the first place, when you know what type of difference that you actually want to make in the world. You know, when you understand your purpose, your gift, your passion, everything changes.
You know, that's when people stop, and I really want you to listen to this, when you figure out your purpose and your why people stop becoming a metric to you. That's when you start living your life with purpose. You find your truth. It's when you Figure out who you really are.
And the most, the most important lesson I can give you is to stop treating humans like a number and to seek external validation from the internal work that you haven't done yet. When you learn to actually love yourself, you can stand firm in your why and the external metrics disappear.
Just like you know when you're facing a really hard problem or you're trying to scale to a million dollars, you have to break that down into smaller, actionable steps that you can actually achieve.
And you know that even if one person out there can resonate with that piece of content today, if you were authentic, you showed up, you did the very best thing that you could, then no matter what today you got a little bit better.
So the first thing that you really have to do is stop standing in your own way, is to figure out your why and focus on making an impact and not an income. And ultimately you have to learn to love yourself. And the second thing, you need to have a strategy.
You can't hire new employees, you can't build, you can't actually scale a company effectively without breaking it down into those smaller tasks first. And it's a lot harder to go and hire help once you can afford it.
If you're scrambling all the time, you're doing things last minute, you don't have a strategy in place, it becomes really hard to scale and stream. It also becomes hard to kind of monitor and see where you're at. So everything in life needs the right routine, it needs the right system.
So number one, get a task management software. For me, I love Monday. Com, it's so easy to use and I love that you can kind of break down, you can put your metrics into it.
And basically I have a nine step process for creating my content and I'm going to share that with you today.
And you might want to take down a pen, you might want to take down a paper and you know, grab your keyboard, grab a Google document and start taking notes because this is critical and you're going to learn a lot from this. So the very first thing that I do, and again, I have this broken down into a Monday.com board. So number one, you need ideas.
And this is great because anytime you get like an inspired thought, you just go type it in and you leave it for later. You also kind of have a bunch of ideas to choose from, but you can't just get caught up on putting ideas down.
You have to continue moving through the process. And I've done that where, you know, you have all These ideas, you keep putting them there, but you keep doing your old strategy.
So you really have to, if you want to change, you have to do the things to change, right? You have to do what's required of you and you have to get a different result. So the second step inside of my process is research.
So why would you do research if you already know what you're going to talk about? Because you have to know whether or not the topic is worth posting about. Is it a good idea? Did other people post about it?
If they did post about it, what type of things that did they say? What kind of advice did they give?
How does your strategy or whatever it is that you're talking about in this post differ from what everybody else is currently saying? And does your target audience care about this topic?
It might be something that you're interested in, but your audience might not really care about that. So you have to do your research and you have to know who you're talking to.
The third step inside of my content creation process is writing the copy outline. So I think about what am I trying to say, who am I talking to? Why is it important for them to know?
And what is the call to action or the goal that I'm trying to achieve with this piece of content?
Now this is important because a lot of people will post just a post and they have, you know, this inspired thought or this idea, or they're trying to provide value to somebody. But there's no clear call to action.
There's no growth strategy, there's no acquisition strategy, there's no clear intention on what you want to happen.
So a few different things you could do is maybe you want someone to book a call on your calendar, maybe you want someone to buy your product, maybe you're trying to increase engagement on your posts so that you ask them at that point to reshare the post so that you can have more impressions, more people can find you. You have to have a clear intention and goal. And you have to make sure that the copy outline is going to have a start, a beginning and a finish.
So step number three, write your outline. Figure out why you're doing this content in the first place. The fourth step in my strategy is always adjust the hook.
So that's why I start with the outline and then work into the hook, because the hook is going to really help understand. It's going to make sure that you have people who want to interact with your content. It's going to have people be intrigued.
You want the right emotion and you want to Pique their curiosity so that you can get them to click, read more, and then they dive deeper into your content. So your hook is really important. The first two lines of every piece of content that you put out are going to make or break your engagement.
So step number five goes into a graphic. So I basically say, does this post need a graphic or a video? What type of graphic will it be? Will I use a carousel? What's trending right now?
What does the algorithm for the specific platform where this is going to get published want me to post? What are the. What is the platform's goals right now and what are they trying to push?
So if, for example, not that long ago Instagram was pushing a video, or, sorry, they were putting a still image with a carousel scroll to a video, and they were really pushing that. So you got brownie points and extra impressions if you were able to tap into that. So what does the algorithm want?
What is the software trying to achieve? Then you have to go design it.
You want to make sure when you're using your graphics for your video content or your actual graphics that you're using your branding colors. And people need to recognize that, oh, this post is coming from Natalie. I know who's.
You know, when you see one of my posts, you know that it's from me because it's consistent, it's steady. I'm using my branding colors. I have the same fonts as my website, as my content.
Does those small things matter in differentiating yourself through the scroll? So does the graphic trigger emotion? Does the video trigger emotion? Does it have a scroll stopping feature in it? What makes this graphic good?
Are you just posting it to post or are you making it with any kind of intention behind it? You really got to focus in on making things with purpose. Step 6 in my content strategy is all about reviewing.
So you want to make sure you're looking at the graphic or the video. You want to look at your content and you need to make the appropriate changes and make sure that it kind of makes sense together.
Number seven is using the Hemingway app. So this app is great and it has a chatgpt built into it as well, which I really love.
So basically, it helps you check your readability, it helps you eliminate any words that are kind of useless within your content so that you can get straight to the point and it makes sure that everybody can understand it. So you never want to be talking at like, you know, a university level.
But like, yes, you want to sound smart and you will sound smart, but it's going to sound better and reach more people in a more effective way when it's easier to understand. So that's kind of the content creation.
Like you had your content outline and then you have the Hemingway app in step seven, where you're really building out the content in a purposeful way that your audience can understand. So number eight is the final review. And this is basically just one last look through to kind of make sure everything makes sense.
You're actually ready to publish. And step nine is the publish. So you're ready to publish your content.
You built it with intention, you had a purpose, you have a clear goal in mind, and now you just got to hit that publish. So basically the best method is to. I like to build out all of my content on a Monday. I don't know why, it just happens that way.
But every Monday I take a few hours and I create, you know, go through my process. And, you know, there's always content that are at different levels of the process flow that I'm working through.
So I basically just take a lot of the ones that are in the review stage. I start adding, you know, more content outlines and whatever is inside of the graphic or the final review stage. I basically love the Loomly app.
Loi Loomly. It's an amazing scheduling software. I really like it.
It's just super easy to use, really clear and, you know, they always give you really good tips and recommendations on it. If your content's too long, if it's too short, if you didn't have a clear call to action, they'll actually tell you those things.
So that's why I use Loomly and I think it's great. So number one thing is you never want to be in that scrambling mode for your content. So you always want to make sure.
Like, I like to be published at least like four to six weeks in advance at all times. And this just allows me to refine my content, make sure I'm always kind of learning and growing from the system.
And you're never running against the clock, you're never chasing the gun. You always feel prepared and confident and it reduces any stress or anxiety.
And I always used to manage like two to five social media platforms or sorry, accounts times, every platform. So for a long time I was putting out over 1200 pieces of content every single month.
And this allowed me to just make sure that I was always prepared for any possible outcome. It's just really important to always make sure, like Murphy's law, you're prepared. You know it. If you get Sick for a week, you're out.
Like, you know, you're not going to hurt your algorithm rating, you're not going to hurt your audience. You're going to still show up consistently. And that's really important.
So, okay, remember I talked about that number one thing that I told you about earlier? So this is so important and so valuable, you guys. And nothing matters unless you grow and learn through the process.
You can use this, you know, nine step process. You can put any system, any process, but it's not actually going to be effective unless you do something about it.
And you need to know what works and what doesn't. What, who clicks and who didn't. You know, you have to set a goal with your post and you have to ask if you ever achieved it.
It's not enough to just like put it out there. You have to actually track your results, right?
So this is like, basically like, what is the sentiment on your post and did your audience have any feedback? And I think that's the most crucial part. Like, are the people who are commenting on your post actually your customers?
Do they, are they posting to increase their own engagement or did they actually find value in your content? And that's a really big thing.
And when you're, you know, focused on the right things and not just looking at, you know, I'll say like shiny object syndrome and focusing on the wrong things and you're working with intention, strategy and goals, then you can really figure out the sentiment. And this is just so crucial. So, like, let me put it to you like this.
You don't start a diet and, you know, eat a bunch of stuff and just hope that it works out right. Like, you want to make sure you're on the right track.
You set a clear goal weight and then you take inventory of how you're doing with that goal when you step on the scale. So the same thing goes for your content strategy.
So here are some of the things that I look at to evaluate my progress and my performance, to make sure that I'm serving my community and my audience in the best possible way.
So I basically have a spreadsheet and I track these metrics and I implement them into Monday.com and there is, you know, there's enough stuff in here, so maybe, you know, if you still have that pen, get it ready. So the first thing I do is I post the link to the piece of content. I have my next column where I'm looking at my post topic.
Then I just quickly jot down the purpose of that post and then the next column is the call to action. Then I have the date that it was posted, the time that it was posted, and for the date.
Guys, I'm not talking about like January 29th, I'm talking about the actual day of the week. Was it Monday, was it Tuesday, was it Wednesday? That kind of thing. And then what time during that day was it posted? What was the follower growth?
What were the total impressions? How many likes, how many comments, how many reposts or shares did it get?
And then I calculate my engagement rate and then I look at the average engagement rate from all of my content and then the next column I have is my click through rate. If I did have a clear call to action and in the comment section I left a link, I want to know how many people went.
So using a utm, which is a unique tracking mechanism to make sure that you're actually being able to find those metrics is really crucial and important. I recommend Wicked Reports for the best utm. Honestly, I've used so many of them and they're just, they, they track the whole customer journey.
There's nothing else like it out there. So the next thing that I look at is my profile views.
This is more important for like LinkedIn I think, but also just, you know, who's looking at my profile.
And then you would want to go and kind of add anybody who's not already following you send them a connection request and just, you know, they're familiar with you and the likelihood of you increasing your followers and your connections at that point are a lot higher. So then I look at the overall con comment sentiment analysis, which is something I just touched on a little bit earlier.
And then the last thing I have on there is did I reach my goal with this post? So you can kind of see and understand that when you're not just posting to post, you do things with a process, with a system, with intention.
You're able to track and see what's working and what isn't. I usually wait seven days, so I post everything on a Monday and schedule it on Fridays.
I take the time to go through, set up all my, you know, analytics and tracking and I look at everything and then I see all of the posts from the previous week that I put out and I track the progress on the performance of those pieces of content.
So this helps give me insight into knowing where I need to improve and what kind of call to actions I want to include in my next piece of the content that come out. So for example, if I'm getting a lot of comments, but my impressions are low.
I might start asking people to reshare the content content to increase the impressions that I'm getting. If I have a lot of impressions but not a lot of comments, I might want to reframe my copy and have a call to action.
That's asking people to put in a comment and engage below somehow to increase that, which is just going to overall help your performance and increase every metric across the board.
So when you know, sorry, when you know what's happening, you're able to kind of say, here is where I'm at and this is the desired outcome that I actually want. So let's take the actions required to move us along that journey and bridge that gap. So you know, it also like this just helps you grow with purpose.
It helps me to not stand in the way of my own progress.
It helps me know what types of moves I have to make, what topics my audience are interested in, what the algorithm likes, impression wise, if there is a certain topic, it also just kind of like, you know, sets a tone from where I'm at and allows me to see where I want to go and then I take it one step further. Hey guys, by the way, if you're finding value in this podcast today, please hit the subscribe button. Like it drop a review and help me grow.
This is the only way to help me reach more people and help them too. So if you found value, please hit that subscribe, drop a review. And I can't thank you enough for helping my podcast grow.
So I actually look at my five worst performing posts and my five best posts for the week and I try to see what was in common. Was it the time? Did the graphics suck? Was I not making my point well enough in the copy? What did the worst piece of the content have in common?
And then I asked myself the same questions about my best performing pieces. It's looking at why these ones did well, what topics were covered? What did the community say about it?
Were the people commenting on my post potential buyers or am I attracting the wrong people into my life? And I think that's so crucial because a lot of times, again, we're treating people as metrics and we're, you know, posting to post.
We're trying to increase. But are we really, you know, attracting the right people?
And if you're not attracting the right people or potential buyers, if, you know, you can tell by the comments that these people are just putting comments out because they're trying to increase their own personal engagement or impressions or views, it's really crucial because you want to actually kind of the goal is to build a community of people who are like minded, attracted to the things that you have to say and you know, those are going to be the ones that can convert into customers.
So it's really, really important to track the sentiment on any, on every single post that you put out and really be humble and ask yourself, are you attracting the wrong people into your life? So I think overall there is just a lot of time and energy that goes into my content strategy.
And I think it's just like I'm, you know, just at a point where I'm willing to put in the time and energy that it requires of me to kind of make my dreams happen. And again, I've used this strategy for the last, I would say eight years probably.
And it's been really effective and growing, you know, to over $10 million annually. We've been able to, you know, build communities of over 20,000 people.
And I think most people want to take the easy road, but if you really, really want to make it happen, if you want to make things grow, you can't grow if you don't know where you're going. You can't grow if you have no idea why something is working or why it isn't working in order to actually win, you have the people to put in the work.
There's just no way to get around it. And if you don't take your content seriously, why would somebody else take you seriously?
So ultimately, guys, and thank you again so much for being here, but the major three things that you have to leave with today's episode is you're the thing standing in your way. You have to figure out your why, you have to stop treating people like a metric, and you have to do things with intention and purpose.
I said three things, but there's four. And ultimately build out a workflow in a system.
You don't have to copy my system, but you do need a system that's going to work for you and help you move with more intention. So you really have to break down the task of I want to get a million followers into smaller, more achievable goals.
And that's why the strategy is so effective and really shifts your focus from worrying on the past or the present and brings you back into the now. So check your progress too, guys.
Check your progress and just be humble enough to know where you fall short in life and business and want it bad enough to put in the time to get better. And just remember, we all start out sucking, but with consistent study output, we can get results. And again, guys, thank you so much for joining me.
I really value and appreciate you spending this time with me. And I will see you on Thursday in my next episode, where I dive into becoming the person that you need to be to run your business.
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