Ep 40. Campaigns over Calendars: How to plan content with purpose

Hello and a very warm welcome to Quiet Confidence with myself, Anita Popat. If you’re listening to this in real time, we are just coming into Q2 and in the UK the sun is shining and I have genuinely got a spring in my step!

I don’t know about you, but Q1 is always a bit of a warm up for me. I don’t have all that, Oh, I’m smashing Q1 energy, because according to nature we’re still supposed to be wintering.

So if you’ve been quietly thinking, why don’t I feel that fired up yet? This episode is for you because, we’re not behind.

I saw a really good post by a lady called Alice Benham on my feed this week who said that if the year was a working day, it would be 10:32am right now, which means we’re only just getting started. That really resonated with me because 10:32am is not behind.

It’s actually the time of day I properly get into my work and start thinking more clearly!

When the sun’s shining and Spring starts to creep in I get this real growth energy as well and this actually feels like the start of my new year.

So if you’re tuning in feeling like you missed a boat you really haven’t. You are right on time.

Today I want to talk about creating content planning as campaigns, and not just one-off bits and pieces of content here and there.

This is how I used to plan my content when I was a marketing manager, and also how I work with clients to achieve the goals they’re setting with their content marketing.

We’re all about using our energy with intention, so we’re not just going to throw content into the void and hope something sticks, right?

What I see happening all the time, and I say this with so much love because I’ve done it too, is that a new quarter rolls round, you feel that fresh start energy, and then you’ll sit down with a content calendar.

Maybe you’ve got a template or a spreadsheet, and then you just start filling in boxes like Monday’s, the educational post, Wednesday’s is a personal story, Friday, something promotional maybe, and you might do this for a few weeks, sometimes longer if you’ve got a good run and then life happens, or your inspiration dries up or you get bored of posting into what feels like an absolute void, and then the whole thing falls apart.

Does that sound familiar?

And it’s bound to, right? If you’re putting all this effort in and you’re not getting anything back, then, it’s not that you’ve got a problem with content ideas or even your posting schedule. It’s that the content you’re posting hasn’t got a destination.

It’s just a list of mismatched things you created when you’ve been in the zone, but they don’t quite fit together.

When you’re creating without a destination in mind, you’re essentially just keeping yourself busy, which takes energy and it doesn’t necessarily move your business forward.

For us introverts especially, we don’t want to spend our energy on things that don’t matter. I don’t want you to be a content machine. We care about depth and meaning and connection. So when content starts to feel like just another thing on your to-do list, you’re gonna check out (which makes complete sense by the way).

So I want you to shift that perspective to this: Instead of planning what to post, what if you planned what you want your content to do?

This is a campaign focused mindset and it’s gonna change everything. let me just explain what I mean by campaign, because I’m not talking about anything complicated or corporate sounding here.

A campaign is simply a focused amount of content within a certain timeframe that’s got a clear intention behind it.

That’s it.

Before you start your campaign, it’s up to you to decide, what do you want to happen by the end of the quarter? Maybe you wanna fill a program or you wanna grow your email list, grow your audience in socials. Or maybe you wanna be known for a specific thing so you can get more speaking gigs, or maybe you wanna launch something new.

Whatever that goal is, that becomes a filter for every piece of content you create. So you’re not just posting to stay visible, you’re posting with purpose. each piece of content has a job to do and it’s working towards something.

This is where it gets really interesting for introverts, because when your content’s got a clear destination, you actually need less of it.

You’re not just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks. You’re being precise and intentional, which is literally what we’re good at.

Our natural strength as introverts is that we don’t just say things for the sake of saying them. We like to think before we speak, and we choose depth rather than the surface level stuff, which means that working to a campaign framework just gives our natural tendencies somewhere useful to go.

When you know what you’re building towards, you stop second guessing every post because you already know what people need to hear to get to that destination. You just have to find your way of saying it.

But before you plan forward, I want you to take a moment to look back, because your last quarter, however it went, is full of information. A lot of people don’t look at their analytics at all, which I find mind boggling.

Because it means you’re gonna keep making the same content decisions over and over again without really knowing what’s working.

If you’ve got no idea what to look for, here are a few questions that you can sit with. You don’t need to look at any fancy analytics, just the basic ones you get with the platforms will be enough.

1. I want you to think about what kind of content actually got a response. I’m not talking about likes, I mean the stuff that made people DM you or reply to an email or the posts that got a lot of saves.

The posts that got shared a lot. They’re signals. That type of content has moved people.

2. Look at things like what kind of content did you avoid creating and why? Because the things you keep putting off often tell you something important, right? Let’s see if we can get over that this quarter.

3. What content surprised you? Maybe you posted something really quickly with no expectations and got a really big response, but then the thing you spent ages on just got nothing. That’s always the case, right? But either way, it is still really useful data.

I’ll be honest with you, my Q1 was very much a behind the scenes quarter, I’ve been refining my offers, sorting out my funnel, running ads to build my list and doing lots of deep work with clients. It hasn’t been the most visible quarter from the outside, but it was the foundation’s work. And now heading into Q2 with this lovely spring energy, I know exactly what I’m building towards because I’ve done that groundwork.

That’s the thing about looking back. It helps you move forward with intention rather than just plodding along with no destination.

OK, so once you’ve had a look back, here’s how we can think about mapping out content for the next 90 days. So we want to start with one goal, just one.

What do you want this quarter to do for your business?

Get really specific. So instead of saying “grow my audience”, we want to say things like, “get 200 people on my email list”, or “fill 10 spots in my program” or “I want to speak on whatever stage it is”.

Then that goal becomes your north star for that quarter and everything you create should be pulling someone closer to that thing, even if it’s not explicitly promotional.

Then think about content in three phases (I promise this is simpler than it sounds).

The first phase is warming up. This is the content that comes early in the quarter and it’s all about building trust, reminding people what you stand for and really drawing in the right people. Think educational, inspiring, personal posts that you’re not selling in, you’re just deepening your connection.

Then the second layer of content is building that belief in your way.

This is where your content starts to shift the mindset of the people who need to hear your way of doing the thing that you deliver. So if someone’s got a belief that’s stopping them from working with you, this is where you gently address that through your stories, examples, your own experience.

You’re building trust in your way of doing things and you as a person.

Then the third phase is the invitation. This is where you talk about your offer. Yes, we do have to sell. Um, but the thing is that if you’ve done the first two phases as well, then it’s not going to feel salesy. It just feels like the natural next step because you’ve already built that trust bridge and addressed their desires and aspirations and shifted their perspective to your way of doing things.

And that’s it. That’s a campaign. The beginning, middle, and the end.

Every piece of content within it is doing its job.

The beauty is that you don’t need to post every day to make this work. You just need to post with enough consistency that people know that you’re there and with enough conviction that your way of doing things is the right thing for the person that you’re trying to attract.

Now, if you’re sitting there thinking, okay, I love this, but how do I actually figure out what to say in each of these stages? Then this is exactly what Content Mixtape is for.

I’m giving you my super simple P squared framework, which helps you mix up types of content you’re sharing so that you’re not constantly selling or constantly educating.

You’ll create that natural variety that keeps your audience engaged. There’s actually 92 days worth of prompts in there, so you’re never gonna be staring at a blank page wondering what to say.

It’s essentially your toolkit for the campaign approach that I’ve talked about in this episode. Get the Content Mixtape here.

To bring all this together, because I know I’ve given you a fair bit to think about today.

The goal isn’t to do more content. The goal is for your content to do more, and that starts with deciding what you actually want this quarter to achieve.

Look at what the last quarter told you, and then build your content around a clear intention rather than just filling a calendar with content that looks nice, but doesn’t actually do anything.

As always, thank you so much for listening. If this episode shift is something for you, I’d love to hear about it. Come and find me on Instagram and tell me what your Q2 campaign is gonna be focused on. I genuinely want to know.

Keep building your quiet confidence and I’ll see you next time.