211: How to build a content habit

Been told you need to be more consistent on social media? But struggle to build the habit?

These 3 steps will help you to build a content habit for this year.

This is all part of our new campaign - Around the World in 90 days - your ticket to good content marketing! 

Welcome aboard flight CQM222, I am your pilot, Mariah - you have your ticket to good content marketing in hand. 

While on this flight the flight attendants will be here to assist you to get off the content creation hamster wheel and onto a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom-based lifestyle. 

Each week you will be given a new stamp in your passport and by the end of the 90 days you will be on your way to explore the world of Content Marketing as a solo traveller. 

This is week eleven - get ready, it is going to be a wild ride! 

If you LOVED this part of your trip (the episode), make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah.

⁠⁠⁠✨ ⁠⁠JOIN OUR LIVE ROUND OF CONTENT BOOTCAMP✨⁠

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

  • The 3 steps to build a content habit

  • How to be more consistent online

  • How to get more results with your marketing

SHOW RESOURCES 👇

If you like this episode, don't forget to share it to your Instagram stories and tag me⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ @contentqueenmariah⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!

Other than that, enjoy - chat next week 💕

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

This is your pilot speaking. My name is Mariah and welcome to this special series of the Content Queen podcast. You have boarded flight CQM 222. And you have in your hands, your ticket to good content marketing. We hope you have a safe journey on this 90-day trip strap in and get ready to experience all the strategy and learnings you need to enter 2024 with the direction on how to create content that is unique to you and your business.

While on board you have complimentary access to old learnings that will help you attract your own passengers to grow and expand your trip. While on this flight, the flight attendants will be here to assist you get off the content hamster wheel and on to a new way of marketing to help you live a more freedom-based lifestyle. Each week you'll be given a new stamp on your passport.

By the end of the 90 days you will be on your way to explore the world of content marketing. As a solo traveler, seatbelt on, we are ready to take off. Hello, travelers. We're nearly at the end of this 90 Day campaign and it's been such a vibe I've absolutely loved every minute.

We had our first stop last week which was in Colombia in in Casa in house and we did an in-house workshop where I really helped those that joined build two-week content plan and I had some beautiful feedback. It was so amazing. I have so many screenshots but one of the attendees was really excited to start posting they hadn't been doing much content creation so they were at sort of the beginning of their journey. And we had people that have been creating content for a long time and wanted to explore new ways of content creation. And I invented a new word which is the brain shop.

I went to a brainstorming workshop at the same time and said brain shop so we brain-shocked a lot and yeah, that was it was so awesome. And the whole workshop was Columbian house theme. So the presentation had so many beautiful house references.

We talked about the three steps to create two weeks of content. I helped those that joined, expand on the types of content that we'll be creating. It was just such a vibe. So that was step one. And after a short journey, we're actually going to be doing step two, which is going to be around the world anywhere that you are located. And this is going to be our content bootcamp ran live. I'm so excited to announce this.

So basically, content bootcamp last year was revamped to content bootcamp 2.0. It was a course that I had ran live in 2020 twice, and then I popped it on my site and people could purchase it and we had quite a few students go through it, but I found it was a bit long, it kind of needed a bit of a spruce. So I revamped it last year. I filmed it in Byron when we were house sitting and completely relaunched 2.0 And we had some amazing students go through it last year. And it got me thinking about it being a program and it is self-paced, but I know a lot of people struggle to finish courses.

There's always lots of questions and we have an opportunity for people to leave questions and we answer those and everything but I thought you know how good it would be to run it live and run it live a couple of times, and those that purchased it previous can join the live round.

So starting Feb. 19 for six weeks, we're going to be doing three live calls and then have three weeks to do the work. So it'll be live call work, live call work, and give people a chance to go through each part of my three-part strategy process that makes up content, which is the seven steps to a content strategy.

So in part one, its research and we go through two parts of the content strategy, which is you know, building out your target audience and your goals and then optimizing your channels. And then we've got the strategy part, which is part two that's nailing the strategy, building out what I shared in the workshop, because we went through one part of the strategy and then sharing a bit more about storytelling and building out that story. And then the last process which is process the last part is process going through repurposing processes, and measurement so on this episode I'm going to be talking about process which is building habit around content creation.

So I want to talk a little bit about that today and sort of share my insights on building content creation habit, because it can be challenging, but once we've got the habit, it's here for life, right, like I've shown up on a weekly podcast apart from having Christmas off since 2019 2020 2019 into 2019. So I know what it takes to build habits so I'm going to share my insights on that but basically, the live round is to get a strategy done.

So if you've been thinking about working with Content Queen, you're not sure what that looks like. This is the place to start. So I'll put all the links in the show notes. So check it out, but start Feb. 19 and this is our last stop of the trip. And it's going to be in multiple parts around the world. We have an awesome campaign wrapped around it. Europe, Australia, Morocco, and Colombia.

The four main places I've been on my travels the four main places I've been able to really explore this digital nomad world, create content for business owners. Create content for myself see results. And all because I had a strategy all because I built a strategy that was going to work so I'm not chained to my laptop all the time. Like a content meal. Yes, I create a lot of content you need understand I create content for multiple different businesses.

So this course is really all this program is really taking apart everything that I've done to allow me to travel and live a free lifestyle and help my clients do the same. And I want to run it live. And we're going to be so you could choose your destination right do you want to be in Europe? Do you want to be in Australia? Do you want to be in Colombia Do you want to be in Morocco? You wanna be knowledge places and where you're at? Do you want to live a more free lifestyle? Do you want to spend more time with your children? Do you want to stop being chained to your laptop? This is it.

This is the last half of our journey to help you be your own content marketer or your own content creator for your business at the time. Maybe you want to outsource eventually, but you know, you've got to build income to do that. So marketing is one way to get eyes on your products and services. So then your sales can come into play and you know, get the clients so of course marketing is super important. And this is the chance this is a chance for you to really build a sustainable content marketing strategy for this year that doesn't have you posting every single day doesn't have you well unless you want to and unless it's gonna work for you doesn't have you just being this content meal as I said on this hamster wheel always creating.

So that sounds like you. The link is in the show notes. I would absolutely love to see you in content bootcamp. But as I mentioned, we're gonna be talking about one element which is you're building a habit around content marketing for your business. So I want to share a story about my fitness journey. So basically, in when I moved to Melbourne i at the time we've got an alarm going off gotta love an impromptu alarm.

So basically, I was I'd moved to Melbourne I was starting to work full-time. I lived out of home. And I felt like you know that all those responsibilities that come when you start living out of home, you've got to cool you know, all the things like I was very lucky. My mom was amazing. But yeah, living at home for the first time is extremely overwhelming. There's lots of things and I felt like I was eating a little bit to survive.

I remember mum like helping me prep meals when I'd go home on the weekends. And it got to the point where I just wanted to feel better about myself. So I wanted to join a gym and my employer offered like a discount on going to the gym. So I signed up near my house for the gym, given that I had this promotion from my corporate job so All right, I needed to start going because I was paying for it right so I guess that's the first level of building habit is that accountability.

So yeah, I was like what can I put in place to make sure that I can build this routine to keep going to the gym I did things like you know have my gym bag packed, you know before I even work up, take my gym bag to work so I would drive straight to the gym. I would you know put things in my calendar, okay, I'm going to the gym on these days. I was like really planning it out. So I could go to the gym consistently because I knew that was going to make me feel better.

But I'd also actually had put on quite a bit of weight when I first moved to Melbourne. Just so happened to be that because I was extremely ill and didn't know at the time if you followed my health journey, but I wanted to get to this goal. I had a goal in mind of where I wanted to be but wasn't necessarily a weight goal, but I wanted to feel strong and healthy. So I had that goal in my mind. I want to feel more happy. I felt like I'd moved to Melbourne during the winter. I wanted to really avoid that sort of winter blues. So I had all these goals in place that made sure that I was you know, motivated to go to the gym now.

This is the same with content. So when you build a habit around anything, but including the creation of content for your business, then you learn grow and improve your results. Right because you can't learn anything. Well you can't improve your results if you're not doing the action. So I'm going to take you through three things that you can do right now to build this habit. And as I mentioned, am I the right person to talk about this? Absolutely. I help. That is the one thing I've helped my clients successfully do for a long period of time is show up consistently.

It's a main thing right? And with that consistency, comes learning with those learnings come results. I have had this podcast in 2019 every week as I mentioned apart from when I was sick and when I was in hospital and when I had time off over Christmas everything is built around consistency and i i One of my friends says My middle name is consistency. So I'm going to share with you the three things that I've done that have helped me the first one being having a goal, a plan.

What is your calls with content marketing? So to know this, you got to know your business goals right. So what are the overarching goals and why is content where does content marketing sit in this? What are your goals because you are not going to build our habit if you don't have an end result. That you want to get to. Of course, content marketing is very similar to going to the gym, the work is never done, but having goals that you can tick off helps you continue to keep going.

So what do you want to get out of this? plan properly your goals? Do you want to start a podcast Do you want to generate X amount of traffic to your website so that you can sell more of your products? Do you want to you know impact X amount of people? What is your goal? Because if you don't have goals, then you've got nothing to work towards. There's no motivation to actually build a habit to begin with. So start with your goals. And that is like as part of content bootcamp.

That is the first step of bootcamp is understanding how connecting with our audience and our goals. Because they get we can't build anything without a goal. The goal could be to be consistent, and that's awesome. Because you want to learn you want to grow you want to understand your audience. That's a goal. Doesn't have to be numeric all the time, but what are you trying to achieve with content marketing?

Now, if you haven't validated whether content marketing is a core marketing strategy, let's not go down the route of numeric. Let's just start with some qualitative goals. Not quantitative. So qualitative being my goal is to start a podcast or be consistent on Instagram. My goal is to learn more about my audience right now. KPIs might be a little bit harder on this like you might not be able to break down exactly what you need.

You know how you deem that as successful, but start small. Right? Of course, you've got financial goals. I totally get that. But what you need to do first to hit those financial goals is have a sales plan for one, but have that marketing plan for traffic. And to get that you need to have a strategy you need to learn more about your audience and how they resonate with you and your product. So you need to be able to you need to create and learn. So that's the first one have a goal, have a plan.

The second one is make it fun. Make it a fun process. If you're trying to create content from a really on motivated on creative space, it's gonna show so understand the channels that you really enjoy and have fun for you. I have a quiz. If you want to understand maybe what channel could work for you. It's in the show notes. But basically, the most important thing is to understand where you want to show up and what is going to be fun for you.

Do you like to write? Do you like to speak? Do you like to be on video play to your strengths first, right but until you build a habit, then you can branch out don't overdo it don't that I'm going to be on heaps of these platforms because you're gonna burn out and you're going to hate it. So make it fun. You know, even in the creative process, play music, create a really nice space for where you create your content.

You know, like, I'm super lucky. I travel the world I have new Airbnbs all the time. The places that I create content are so fun and creative and we do it in on the beach and we do it. You know I'm super lucky in that way because it's always fun. So it's always motivating to create so how can you make your space fun? How can you you know, then that comes down to can you reward yourself after you do it now my partner is reading Atomic Habits by James Clear and he put in my head to do this podcast because like I think you need talk about habits because you've built a really consistent habit with your content creation.

You are really good with your habits in general life. And of course, haven't read the book. It is after he's finished. But basically I know he talks a lot about reward. He talks about pairing all these things so that like you remember to do things right. And maybe we do in a more in-depth episode after I finished and maybe one day we get him on the podcast, but I know reward is is good for habit building.

Of course if you're like trying to do a healthy diet or exercise and you reward yourself for the chocolate. That's not what it is. But you know, like for example, if it's like okay, I'm going to batch record 10 of 10 videos or five videos today. My reward after that is to rest relax, go to the beach, like do something fun, do something that you've created your business for, like the freedom, lifestyle that you wanted and why you created your business. Do that, like give yourself some fun space.

Another way to do this as well is collaborate with people like if you love connecting, make it fun, don't do it alone. Like you know go live with people on social media create your we're seeing so many collabs we're seeing even people collaborate on carousels on Instagram, obviously on podcasts going live together doing reels together, like collaborate with people and make it a fun process for you like when you think of making content creation fun even if you dislike it.

I mean, I don't think you do because you wouldn't be listening to this podcast. What's When do you feel like it's fun? When do you feel like it's creative? Like, what can you do to make this process more fun for you? And of course, then in the process of doing this, find the things that aren't fun, write them down. And these are the first things you're going to outsource when you're in the position to you might not be ready to hire a content marketer or a social media manager.

But are there admin things in your content creation process that you could potentially outsource? Can you get a VA to help with these things? Can you find someone you know like, video editing for me hated Canva I love Canva but hate it like I hate design. I'm just not good at it. It was the first thing I ever outsourced, even in the early days because I knew that it was blocking my creative flow with content and it was making it not fun for me. Video Editing. Not fun to me.

Do you know who loves it, Mitch? He's amazing at it. He's so good. So amazing rat match. Made in Heaven. Guess what he also loves Canva like, obviously that's very lucky of me to have found someone like that but I still pay him he doesn't do for free like I have hired him to help in the process. He's now a partner in Content Queen. But make it fun for you reward yourself after do make it a fun process while you're doing it. Collaborate with people just make it fun happens.

And the third one is build accountability. So there's so many ways we could do accountability, right? And the part of building a content creation habit that you consistently show up for your business is all about understanding who you are and how you work because you are the creator in this process, right?

So the first thing you can do is map out days that you feel creative to create. And there's an awesome article on this that I worked on with the client around and I'll put it in the show notes around the energies of the day. And if you're into that, this might resonate. I was wondering why on Mondays I wasn't creative, and why I really didn't enjoy content creation on Monday, but on Tuesday I was on fire and I can write so much on a Tuesday.

So I started to understand that and I started to understand the energies of the day, Monday being a slow day. Tuesday being a productive day, and Wednesday being a day for voice so I work this to my strengths and the strengths of me as a creator and what I knew from this article, and I started to plan my content days, so I don't do everything on one day I break it up. So I will do writing on a Tuesday and planning planning on a Monday sometimes as well because I find planning on Mondays it's like you know I can it's just high level stuff, right?

Let's like people have their CEO days on Fridays on Mondays. And then on Tuesday, I'm really in the flow of writing. So I'll write my newsletters. I'll write my captions for social media. Things like that. And then Wednesday, I'll generally record my podcasts. I mean, while I'm traveling, it's a little bit harder. But I'll try and do videos on Wednesday and really play to those strengths. So how can you right now get your calendar, where you've got space and book in an hour here and there for your content?

You know if you are a big calendar person I used to be I used to have everything in my calendar now I'm a little bit more flexible because again travel it's it's super you just you can't you can have your meetings booked but like that's it and then I kind of do it on the morning like our our you know if I if I want to like get stuff done and be really hyper focused, I'll allocate certain tasks in my calendar.

But basically you just want to put in spaces where you will ride where you will video or record where you will schedule all of those things. So do that now. Like what's stopping you from doing it now and see how it goes and play around with it and tweak it and change it based on what works for you. So that is keeping yourself accountable through your calendar and your schedule. You can hold yourself accountable out like and this really does depend on how you reach accountability.

There's an awesome like, concept for this called the Four tendencies. And I've talked about this a lot. And it is in content bootcamp. It's understanding how you reach accountability. So if you are really good with internal or external accountability, so think about yourself, are you really good at doing things for yourself? Or do you need someone to push you like, I'm a really good internal accountability person, like I'm very good at keeping myself accountable. But for example, my partner Mitch, he's really good at external accountability.

So when you understand that you can use that to work for you. So maybe you need a mentor. Maybe you just need an accountability partner to keep you on track. Maybe it's like, your audience, like if you say to your audience, I am going to go live every Thursday on Instagram there. You know, you've told people you're doing that. So how can you keep yourself accountable by using things that work for you? And you know, I have clients that hire me as more of their mentor to keep them accountable with these things.

So we look at the content for the week. We, you know, map it all out. They'll create it, they'll send it to me for you know, to have a little give feedback, but I'm keeping them accountable on the journey like it's it's them creating it, but this is a really good how like a mentor or coach can help you stay accountable with these things.

The next thing that you want to try and do is build some kind of process so that you're when you are sitting down to create the content, you know what you have to do? So you go Alright, what's the process of creating my week's worth of social media content? Okay, I have to there's X amount of videos that needs to be done.

There's, like a planning element there's hashtags is emojis is caption writing and have every step marked out and then when you go to sit down to do it, you're not like, Okay, what am I going to do? What's next? You have it in front of you. And this is a really good way to keep you accountable. Because you've set yourself up with success to make it happen. It's like it's like a program at the gym, right if we're using this gym story you ever programmed, you're not just like looking around at the weights like not understanding what to do next.

You follow the program, make yourself a program. So you know what you've got to do when you've got to do it. My whole ClickUp is my my second brain. I've mentioned these many times before. That ClickUp. I know exactly what I have to do. I open my laptop that day. The tasks are there for me. I know what needs to be done. I don't have to think about it. I've keep myself accountable with allocating the tasks to myself. It's a process right and then the last thing you can do is set yourself up for success.

Like I mentioned with the gym bag, you know, like concept. How can you if you're every Tuesday’s content day, how can you get things ready? How can can you have like the tripod set up on your your office desk or you know everything ready for you? So when you get up and that's the first time you're going to do it's there for you. There's no procrastinating you just make it happen. It's like having your gym bag at the door.

Set yourself up for success. Make sure it happens. So yep, have a goal. Make it fun, and build accountability. Now this is all based off you and how you work. I can't tell you do it this exact way. You have to play around and understand how you work as an entrepreneur. You should have been doing that already. As like with a system some people like Trello, some people like ClickUp, some people like Asana some people like Monday.com understand what works for you. That is the most important part.

So if we go back to that gym story, what happened? So I set myself up like I had a goal. I made it fun with the gym because I you know I had music I like had a play list. You know I made sure that my experience when I got and when you get to the gym it is it is enjoyable, just getting there. So I set myself up for success by having like a cool playlist updating it. You know, I'd always be excited because it was like a time I could listen to music. And then the third thing was keeping myself accountable scheduling it in my diary, having my gym bag ready. Having a trainer having a program all those things.

I did all those things and what happened I gained muscle again fitness. I ended up doing multiple mini triathlons with my corporate company. They did these like corporate travel and I loved them I woke up to my weights. I felt good. I felt fit. I felt active. I felt strong. And that was my goal. Then I started eating better because I was going to the gym so all these things started happening because I was going to the gym.

So I made that one and then I got results. In so many other areas. I felt good, mentally Good. Then I started doing more journaling or meditating I started bettering my myself because I was making the commitment for my body. So the same thing can happen with content right? When you start building that habit, you start to learn more about your audience, you start to engage with them more you start that conversation, you start learning exactly what they need, then you start building offerings around that from there, that's what they need.

You start getting more sales, more eyeballs on your website, like it's a spike and you know it and then you start to go okay, well, you know, I've built this accountability around my content marketing. Now I want to improve the way my videos look or I want to outsource or then it just you get more results with that habit to the is a ripple effect when you start to build habit around these things.

If you don't build the habit, you're not going to learn you're not going to grow and you're going to understand what's working. You might do this habit and start to realize, okay, there's actually other areas of marketing that helped my business more than content.

So I'm going to actually focus here and I'm going to outsource my social or I'm going to cut back on my posting. I'm going to post in like more in different seasons of my business and just keep something you know, rolling. Like this is when you start to learn what works and you can make really good decisions about your business and your marketing. Right. So once you see the results, it will get easier to continue.

So measure and build a proper strategy and if you need that support, we have Content Bootcamp, you can decide where you want to stop around the world. It's going to be a live component so you'll be able to access me I'll be able to really help you and get in and really help you build the right strategy for you and your business, not a cookie cutter strategy that's just not going to work for you a proper content marketing strategy.

And there's an element of this, building the process to actually show up so you can see the results, and then being part of bootcamp every three months we meet in my membership to do measurement queen, which is measuring our content and everything but because you purchase boot camp, you actually get access to that forever.

So you'll just get invited to that event every three months. But here's the awesome thing as well joining boot camp because how I see it is if you join boot camp, you work out the strategy then you're like okay, I need a little bit more support with execution. My DIY Content Marketing Club is a space where it's got templates, it's got resources, it's got our Facebook group.

It's a really good way to continue to grow, learn, build, you know, if you work out, okay, well, based on my strategy, I'm going to start a blog or I need to be on this certain channels, then there's resources and templates to help you execute. So what I wanted to do to make sure that people really got the most out of boot camp is offer three months for free in this membership. So this is how it will go right.

We're going to do the live round of content Bruce thing Feb. 19. We're going to do that. And then once we've done the live round, you have a strategy you're going to get three months free in the membership. So you get six weeks in bootcamp, then three months for free in our membership in that three months. You have access to guides, templates resources, the Facebook group, we have monthly calls in there as well.

But after the three months, you also get access to quarterly workshops, where we will dive in and you can then go back through boot camp again and tweak and change your strategy. So it is like a whole like a whole journey like this is your customer journey from buying bootcamp and then of course, if you want to stay on in the membership, you absolutely can. It's a super affordable membership. It's not expensive.

So that is the benefits of joining boot camp. I'm not going to just give you a course and that's it. There is a whole journey with this program from making sure this strategy works for you and your business. If you have any questions like reach out to me on socials, I would love to support you with your strategy. Build this habit and really just make it fun, make make you accountable and give you a plan. And that's what it's about. And this is our one element that we go through in boot camp in detail, really building that accountability.

So if it's something you struggle with, then you know, I hope this episode has given you a little bit more guidance into building a habit. And you want to join us for boot camp starting Feb. 19 All the links in the show notes but be a content queen or king and remember that developing your strategy and story develops your business.

Thank you so much for joining me today on this flight. Stamp your passport and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends can do this by adding it to your Insta Stories. And tagging me at Content Queen Mariah or just tell them about it share them this episode if they're like need habits.

If you rate and review on whatever platform you're listening to this on, it does help me get this message out there of course but people see the podcast they want in they want to share their expertise. I have so many amazing guests from being in the charts. So let's keep us in the charts. Keep these amazing guests coming.

Follow us on Instagram Tik Tok. Let me know any topics you want to know or things you're really struggling with in your content journey. Let me know and I'm starting to plan out much content now. So I'd love to know what you want to hear in March and I hope to see you in boot camp.

Bye!

PodcastMariah MacInnesmarketing, marketing advice, how to be authentic online, business ownerComment