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January 8, 2019 - Melody Jennings Bowers

How to Get Started Using a Content Calendar

It’s a new year, which means it’s the perfect time to get organized!

One of the tools that we use to stay on track throughout the year — and can help change the way your business performs — is the content calendar. Maybe you aren’t quite sure how to leverage the use of a content calendar for your business, or maybe you’re thinking it just sounds like more work than it’s worth. Trust us when we say that the return on your investment of time and planning will be 10-fold.

Read on to find out how crucial creating — and abiding by — a content calendar is to running an efficient business. We’ll teach you how to create your content calendar, explain why it matters and, of course, teach you about the most important factor of all: measuring the response (i.e. data!).

This is a good data project to start with to get your feet wet, and when you’re ready to dive in whole-heartedly, we’re ready to help you level up your data collection skills by signing up for our Know Your Data course. There’s a reason people are spreading the gospel of Virtual Collective — the proof is in the data!

Intro to Data Collection Course Button | HerDataMethod.com

Content is King Queen

There is a reason Seth Godin calls content marketing “the only marketing left.” Content is the most authentic, useful and affordable marketing for the internet age today. In 2019 consumers and followers are expecting you to know what they want to see on their feeds and in their inboxes. The busier (and more distracted) everyone gets, the less time they have for content that provides zero value. The responsibility is on the business owner to not only understand intimate details about your target customer but to consistently deliver information that will get them to engage with your brand … AND buy your stuff.

So where does one begin?

Step 1 - Get Strategic

The first step in getting strategic about your content is to make sure everyone on your team knows your customer persona(s) inside and out. (Do NOT skip this step! If you do not have a customer persona figured out yet, please stop and go read this blog post and this one too before doing this exercise, then come back and learn more about content calendars. It will make your life a lot easier, promise!) Once everyone is clear on your customer persona, it’s time to create content that you know your customers will find valuable and that is in line with your brand. After all, if you are going to persuade people to buy your stuff, then you are going to have to do more than schedule a few random posts and tweets on any given day; you need to show that you’re an authority on whatever topic your business deals with, and you need to establish that level of trust with your customers.

To ensure that you’re creating content that your customers find relevant, we recommend you create three or four different “buckets.” These buckets are essentially categories that help you stay focused on the content you create. If you’re considering writing a blog post or scheduling something for Facebook if it doesn’t fit within one of your pre-established “buckets,” then it’s likely not 100% relevant to your brand, and therefore, it’s not relevant to your customer base.

Content Calendar Blog Post Definition | Her Data Method

To be clear, “content” is any type of material you publish, whether it’s an article on your blog, a post on Facebook, an e-newsletter, or even a retweet that you find relevant for your audience. With that understanding in mind, it’s important to organize all of the content you plan to publish, whether created or curated, in one central location where you can organize all these moving parts. That is what is called a content calendar. Think of it as a blueprint to organize and map out every single piece of content you intend to publish for any given period of time — from Instagram posts to blog posts. Create a content calendar for each month, quarter or even year, and you’ll quickly see a common thread weaving together your brand’s message. It’s actually quite spectacular to see it all come together.

Step 2 - Get Organized

Okay, so we’ve established what a content calendar is, but how do you go about organizing it?

There are any number of ways to skin this cat. There are paid tools, marker boards and everything in between. At Virtual Collective, we use a shared spreadsheet in Google Drive that is available to all of our team members who create content and contribute to content planning. Since the spreadsheet lives in the cloud and we largely work remotely, this approach allows us to be collaborative while providing a repository for any plans and ideas. By using tabs, we can organize by month, and within each tab, we can organize by day, allowing us to map out and account for all social posts, blogs posts, newsletters and the like. This calendar will help you establish a consistent publishing rhythm, and eventually, you will be able to determine what is working and what is not — when do people most respond to your posts, and when do you hear crickets. And why is that important? Because in order to capture the largest audience for the message you’re looking to send to your audience — sales, promotions, special announcements, etc. — you’ll want to make sure you’re publishing at the most well-read time based on the data you’re collecting from previous publishing times.

[icon name="arrow-circle-right" class="" unprefixed_class=""] Here's an example

If you have planned out your week’s worth of content, and you have your weekly newsletter coming out on Thursday, you’ll want to plan a social post a few days earlier encouraging people to sign up for your newsletter. That way you’re letting your audience know you have something they’ll want to receive.

[icon name="arrow-circle-right" class="" unprefixed_class=""] Here's Another Example

If your business deals with women’s health, then wouldn’t it make sense to publish something on National Women’s Health Day, thus showing your hip to the awareness day, your a relevant member of the women’s health community, and you have important, on-topic information to share with your followers?

Those are the things that keeping a content calendar will help you prepare — and plan — for.

Before You Start Building Your Content Calendar Blog Post Image

Identify your audience.
According to Entrepreneur.com, “Reaching out to people who are more likely to be interested in your brand is not only more cost-efficient; it’s also more sustainable and less time-consuming. Consumers do not want businesses to gloss over them; they seek legitimate trust and genuine relationships.” Gone are the days of half-assing your content. Your customers are expecting content that speaks to them. They shop with brands that understand who they are and where they are in their life. Before you can plan out your content, you have to understand who is digesting. When you define your customer persona, you will not only get the basics like gender, age, location, but you will also get to know their beliefs, their fears, and their buying habits. Now think about what type of content will motivate them to buy what you are selling.

Identify your channels.
Not all customers are on all social media channels. Some people are only on Instagram, or some decision makers only keep up to date with LinkedIn. And what about Pinterest? And don’t forget about Facebook — love it or hate it, you still may want to be present in that play space. You still need to put a minimum amount of effort to make sure your business page is up to date with current and relevant content. However, you can’t ignore the power of Facebook’s algorithm. That being said, you can schedule out your FB and Twitter channels with relevant articles and blog posts that are informative and still speak to your customer, but you might want to spend your creative energy on keeping your Instagram account the main point of social contact. In order to know what channels to focus on, you have to pay attention to the data. There are tons of articles you can refer to that will tell you the demographics for each channel.

Identify your “buckets.”
What can your audience expect from you? Based on our customer persona and what posts have had the most engagement over the past couple of years for us, we have identified the following “buckets” into which every single piece of content we create should be able to fit:

Content Buckets Blog Post Image | Her Data Method
  • Online courses/digital services
  • Women in business
  • Small Business
  • Organic Sales Marketing
  • Data collection/Use

  Schedule, publish, promote, track, and tweak your content.
Now that you think you have the right content for your customer and are posting to the right channels, now you can test your efforts. Try publishing at different times of the day, and measure the response. Try being direct with your call to actions for some posts, and see how your audience reacts. See how your customers respond to different content types and don’t forget to play around with video. When you know what you are looking for, reading the Insights and reports gets a lot less intimidating.

Step 3 - Build Your Content Calendar

  Monthly Planning Calendar
Planning your social media posts and paid campaigns, email campaigns, blog publishing schedule, and events is a lot for one person to keep up with, let alone keeping a whole team on the same page. That’s where the Monthly Planning Calendar comes in. Your calendar will give you and your team a snapshot of everything going on with your brand in order to plan out your content accordingly.

  Blog Repository
If you have been blogging at all, you are probably sitting on a lot of content that can be repurposed and republished. We like to have a repository of all blogs with the publish date to review each month. If a previous post feels relevant to the type of content you are pushing in that given month, this list allows us to decide if enough time has passed so we can repromote it.

  Article Repository
When reading articles throughout the week, any blogs or posts that are relevant for our audience go into the article repository. We have our articles organized based on our content themes, or “buckets,” so we can space out our content consistently across all channels.

Now can you see how a content calendar is incredibly useful?

We really believe in this strategy and have seen it become a valuable tool not only for us but for our clients as well. So, we have done a lot of the work for you and created a FREE template for you to download and fill in for your brand! (Woohoo!)

Be sure to take the time to fill in the content on all of the tabs. After you use your calendar to strategize and organize your content (and actually follow said plan for a couple of months), you’ll be ready to start looking at the data your strategic planning has generated.

Sign up below to receive our Content Calendar Template for FREE!

  • Email Address

Check your stats - image

Time to Review Your Stats

Have you ever downloaded a report from Mailchimp or actually looked at the Insights on your Instagram account? Well, those numbers can tell you a lot more than just who liked what. Those metrics matter. Once you get more strategic about delivering your content, you will increase your odds of engagement with people who have a high likelihood of becoming customers.

But… Why are They leaving?

If you start to notice people unsubscribing from your various accounts, don’t panic. Believe it or not, this is actually a good thing because it means your audience is aligning itself to your message. You don’t want people around who don’t care about what you are publishing because they aren’t ever going to buy what you are selling, right? A more targeted list is way more valuable than a large number of followers and subscribers. The cliche is true: “It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality.” You want to clean out the naysayers and invest in building out your community of believers in your product or service. It’s okay to lose some followers and email subscribers if it means that the ones who choose to stay are more willing to like, share, tag and talk about your brand. THOSE are the people who are worth your time and attention.

Once you have set up your content calendar and are publishing content according to a schedule, take a look at those reports and pay attention to your likes, engagements and new newsletter subscribers. On the posts that are getting the most engagement, what time were those posts published, and who was engaging with them? This is data that you can use, even if only a few clicks here and there, to help you discover clues about your customers and how to provide content that will help them the most. Oh, and by the way? Now you can call yourself a data collector. Yep! When you pre-plan your content, ensure it’s in line with your brand, publish regularly and measure the response, you’ll soon be able to get a very clear picture of your audience, and you’ll also be able to tweak accordingly.

Calendar Schmalendar

The bottom line is this: you can do all this work, but if you don’t have a deep-rooted understanding of your company’s value proposition and a solid understanding of your customer persona, it’s a futile effort — you’re just sending random information into cyberspace. So do the foundational work first. Sign up for our introductory course, “Intro to Data Collection,” and we will walk you through all of that. When you’re ready to begin your journey into data collection, you’ll quickly (and finally!) see the power of understanding your audience and measuring what matters to your business.

Intro to Data Collection Course Button | HerDataMethod.com

I have completed the first few lessons, and oddly want to savor them! I learned so much in the first hour, and am motivated to invest the time to apply these steps to my own business.

– Angie Li, UX Specialist + Researcher

Data Matters! HerDataMethod.com Nashville, TN

Filed Under: How To Guides

October 2, 2018 - Melody Jennings Bowers

Mission Statement and Value Proposition: What's the Difference?

What are They, and Why Are They Important?

By now, you probably know what a mission statement and a value proposition are—especially if you’re a business owner. But maybe you don’t know exactly what they are, or why it’s so important to have them.

Let’s start with exactly what they are.

Your Mission Statement

Your company’s mission statement is a written-out announcement of its central purpose, goals, and focus. In short, the company mission statement is YOUR WHY. Meaning, it’s the reason that you started a business, invested loads of time and money, and lost way too many hours of sleep! Your company’s mission statement should describe your motivation, your passion, and your conviction.

Here’s a formula to follow when writing your own mission statement:

Mission Statement Formula - Her Data Method

Your Value Proposition

While your mission statement is YOUR why a value proposition is your CUSTOMER’S why. It’s the reason your customer connects with you and believes that you’re going to be able to solve their problems. It’s basically a short explanation of why your customer should notice you.

Your value proposition should ultimately answer the following:

What problem can you solve for your customer?
How are you going to solve this problem?
Who has this problem you want to solve?
Why are they going to care if you solve this problem for them?

How are they Different?

The main difference between a mission statement and a value proposition is that one is for you, and one is for your customer.

Your mission statement is for YOU because it will determine your company’s direction; it will help you stay focused on why you began this journey, and it will help you make decisions for your business. It will also shape strategies and help you keep your core purpose in mind.

Your value proposition is for your CUSTOMER because it tells that person—in a very concise, creative, quick way—what your company is, and why it will solve their problem.

Mission Statement is YOUR Company's WHY
Your Value Proposition is your customer's WHY

Why Do You Need Them?

Having both a mission statement and a value proposition in place is extremely important for your business. Why? Because you can use them to tell your company’s story more effectively. They are also the main cornerstone of your data collection framework.

Your value proposition is very important because you should be using it as the filter that you view everything else through. Creating a strong value proposition in the beginning rather than later will save you time, energy, and money in the long run. It will give you the confidence you need to tell your customers why they should buy what you’re selling, and it will lay the groundwork for all the copywriting that awaits you as you begin to create landing pages, emails, social profiles, and blog posts.

As for your mission statement, as mentioned before, it helps to guide direction, maintain focus, and form strategies. It also keeps you and any employees you have on the same page. It tells everyone what your goals as a business are. In short, your mission statement is an expression of what your company is, what it wants, and why it exists.

Find and Target the RIGHT Customers

And So…

When it comes to writing your mission statement, boiling down your passion and conviction into one or two sentences can be very difficult. As for writing your value proposition, that be even harder! Trying to come up with a quick tagline to grab your customers’ attention can be very overwhelming. But remember, just being willing to start thinking about your mission statement and value proposition puts you way ahead of what most business owners are willing to do.

Let's recap

In order to…

  learn more about how to define both your value proposition and your mission statement
  learn why they are the main cornerstone of your data collection framework
  understand how to use them to tell your company’s story more effectively

Know Your Data, Know Your Customer Course Title Graphic

…check out our course, Know Your Data, Know Your Customer from Virtual Collective!

Do you need more customers but aren't sure where to start? Sign up below to receive the Customer Persona Worksheet for FREE!

Data Matters! HerDataMethod.com Nashville, TN

Filed Under: How To Guides

June 6, 2018 - Melody Jennings Bowers

Social Media: Vanity vs. Effectiveness

Are your followers actually potential customers?

Whether you love social media or hate it, it’s definitely a very effective way to connect with paying customers. Learning how to use a customer persona will help you create a simple measurable benchmark to help guide all of your social media decisions while allowing you to see if your efforts are effective or not.

Cautionary Tail - Her Data Method Blog

Knowing who your target customer is for a small business or startup is more important than ever these days—it’s way too expensive to try and market to everyone.

Unfortunately, I speak from experience when I tell you it’s easy to invest an enormous amount of time and money with little, or nothing, to show for it in return.

When we started Virtual Collective eight years ago, we learned a lot about creating content for the wrong customer.

At that time, we had no idea how to find and target customers, or how to collect and analyze data. We jumped right into writing blogs and posting content on social media channels without having a plan in place for who we thought was our ideal customer. We were obviously missing something because our followers were not turning into customers, and our customers weren’t even our followers. There was a big disconnect.

Followers vs. Customers - HerDataMethod.com

Followers vs. Customers

Who doesn’t like having a bunch of followers on Instagram and likes on Facebook? But think about it: if those people following and liking aren’t buying what you’re selling, they’re nothing but vanity metrics. You need to evaluate how much time you spend on creating content for followers vs. customers.

Vanity Metrics - Her Data Method Blog

At Virtual Collective, we spent a year creating tons of content without a real plan in place to measure or track our efforts. Although I had heard of “customer personas” before, I thought that “small business owner in need of digital services” checked that box, so that’s who we were aiming for.

It wasn’t until I discovered that there was a whole lot more to customer personas that I realized the magnitude of our honest mistake.

Identify your customer, not your market

We created some really great content, but it was for the wrong customer—because if you think about it, what small business owner doesn’t need digital services? It’s important to target your ideal customer, not your ideal market. “Small business owner” is a market, not a customer.

We had been inadvertently trying to reach the small business owner who didn’t necessarily know what they needed. They also required a lot of education and hand-holding, only to discover that they really didn’t have the budget for us to manage and execute what they actually needed.

Susan and Theo - Marketing to Everyone is Expensive - HerDataMethod.com

Theo and Susan were totally different

I knew for a fact that the few “Theo” clients we did have were not looking for blog posts online about “How to Set Up Your Facebook Business Page”, and they definitely didn’t care about our Instagram posts showing me at home with my sick kid working on my laptop.

And while we loved working with “Susan”, our services were too much of a stretch for their budgets. We couldn’t afford to keep working for free and expect to stay in business. So we decided to embrace Theo and Susan’s unique characteristics and started focusing on defining our services to match their specific needs better.

Now, Virtual Collective targets the “Theo” persona for our marketing services—and for the “Susan” customers, we built a course and coaching program designed to help “Susan” succeed even though she might not be ready for a full virtual team yet.

Lots of followers, but not enough customers?

Let’s talk about another common problem: lots of followers, but not enough customers. Which might sound like a great problem that you wish you had, but If you were to really look at your followers, what would you find?

Did you go to high school with them? Are they in your mom’s bunco group? These are the people you can depend on for shares, likes, and reposts—not for sales.

Take a look at your followers. HerDataMethod.com

Those are your FFFs

What’s an “FFF”? A friend, family member, or follower. These are your loyal fans, not necessarily loyal fans of your product, and they are often different than customers. They might not even quite understand exactly what you do, but they might refer one of their friends to use your services, and you can be damn sure that they will “like” every one of your posts!

Don’t get me wrong, in no way are lots of followers a bad thing, but it’s important to recognize that these people are not really helping your bottom line. It’s your customers that are the people who do help your bottom line. They’re the ones buying what you are selling. They will engage with the content on your social channels, and they’re willing to click through to your website and buy your stuff, show up to your event, or sign up for your newsletter.

These are the people who don’t necessarily have a personal connection with you but they share your aesthetic, they speak your language, and they have the money and interest to follow through help you make a sale.

Customer Sweet Spot - HerDataMethod.com

The goal is to find that sweet spot where the two groups overlap. This is that magical area where your followers have a better chance of becoming an active customer.

The good news is, it’s not magic—it’s methodical. You can actually move more followers into that circle by intentionally creating a measurable customer persona. The whole point of social media is to connect and build strong relationships with your customer. It also gives you the ability to reach them where they are and bring them back to your website.

You have a lot of people at your fingertips that you can learn more about, so why not create a detailed persona to help target your ideal customer and spark engagement?

As a side note, we strongly urge you to not even think about investing in paid ads until you do this step!

Your ideal customer might be different than you think

Don’t forget to leave room for the possibility that who you THINK your target customer is might not actually be the case.

Don’t be tempted to take any of this personally. In our case, we had two completely different personas and it actually hurt us to try and cater to both audiences with the same content. Discovering that we needed to adjust and re-focus our efforts was a game-changer. I just wanted to warn you that the outcome of this exercise might be different than your assumptions, so stay open to new possibilities!

Some of you might also be thinking that, like us, you had already defined your customer persona already. We thought we had a pretty clear idea of who Susan was, but we eventually learned our assumptions were based on opinions and impossible to measure!

Measurable vs. Not Measurable - HerDataMethod.com

To help you avoid the same kind of mistakes we’ve made I thought I’d share the process that helped us demystify how to create a customer persona.

Once we learned that there are three main types of factors to consider when defining your customer persona it suddenly made a lot of sense. In our course, Know Your Data Know Your Customer, we have assembled questions for each factor designed to help you identify three different types of basic measurable information. I’ve included several examples of each type of question to help you get started.

Are you ready to get to know your target customer better than you ever thought possible?

Sign up to receive our Customer Persona Worksheet from our new course for FREE!

3 Factors - Her Data Method Blog Post

Factor No. 1: Demographics

Start by gathering some basic facts about your customer.

Demographics are measurable facts. Think about statistics. This is how we sort and organize populations. These are black and white truths, don’t make any assumptions here. To find your customers demographics you can ask questions like:

   Are they a male or female?

   Do they have children?

   Where do they live?

   How much is their annual household income?

Factor No. 2: Psychographics

Now, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think about how they make decisions.

The next factor is psychographics. You’ve probably been hearing this word lately in the news. This is the kind of information that can get companies into trouble if used incorrectly. It gets sketchy when this information is used without your customers’ knowledge. However, it is important to identify these factors when defining your ideal customer, because you have to step into their mind. Psychographics are still measurable, but they do require some assumptions.

Hint: It’s helpful to have a real-life customer example. For us, we looked at our favorite client and made assumptions about him and how he made decisions.

   What do they believe?

   How frustrated are they by their problem?

   What do they fear?

   Why will this customer trust you?

Factor No. 3: Behavioral

Your customer’s actions speak louder than words.

Behavioral factors are determined by your customer’s actions. In this step, you will get to think more like a detective.

   What does a typical day in the life of your customer look like?

   What are their buying habits?

Test and Refine Your Assumptions

Once you have your persona defined, what should you do next?

This is where you test and refine— and patience is 100% required. In order to measure your persona, you’ll want to set a goal or “conversion”. This can be as technical (or non-technical) as you want. Honestly, the easier the better. Ask yourself: what is it that you want people to do? Do you want them to show up to an event? Buy a product? Sign up for your email list? This is your goal.

Once you set your initial goal, STOP. Give your hard work time to perform. Give your targeted customers time to find and engage with your content. I have found that three months is a good amount of time to monitor and track your efforts before drastically changing anything.

Goals Image - Her Data Method Blog Post

Remember, All Data is Good Data

If you were spot on with your customer persona, great! Keep up the good work. And if you were right but still aren’t seeing any increase in sales, no new followers, and no new signups for your email list, this can still be good news. That’s the beauty of data collection: you can see where you were wrong, and you can see where you need to make adjustments. Maybe you need to tweak their age or their occupation—or maybe they don’t have a pet. Point is, now you know who not to target. You already know your product is fantastic, you just need to find the people who agree with you.

Let's recap...

  Marketing to everyone is expensive, so evaluate how much time you spend on creating content for your followers vs. customers.

  Follow the 3 Main Factors when defining your customer persona.

  Test and refine your assumptions by setting goals.

Customer Persona Worksheet PDF - HerDataMethod.com

Sign up below to receive the Customer Persona Worksheet for FREE!

Data Matters! HerDataMethod.com Nashville, TN

Filed Under: How To Guides Tagged With: customer personas, data, marketing, social media

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