326: Create a content strategy designed for your business

Question... are you creating content because it actually aligns with your business goals… or because someone on the internet told you that you should?

Because if I had a dollar for every time a client came back from a coffee catch-up saying, “Someone told me I should start a podcast” or “TikTok is where I should be”… I probably wouldn’t need another retainer. 😂

In this episode, I’m unpacking why trusting your business and understanding your audience matters more than following random advice online.

Because yes, experts can guide you and support you, but at the end of the day, you know your business better than anyone else.

Marketing isn’t about being everywhere. It’s about knowing why you’re showing up there in the first place.

If you LOVED this episode, make sure you share this on your Instagram stories and tag us @contentqueenmariah 💫

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LEARN THE DETAILS OF A CONTENT STRATEGY WITH MY FREE AUDIO GUIDE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

KEY EPISODE TAKEAWAYS 👇

✨ Why trusting yourself matters more than following random marketing advice

✨ The difference between being a content creator and a business owner

✨ Why posting on social media doesn’t automatically equal business growth

✨ How a content strategy gives you clarity, confidence and direction

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 episode 326, and we're talking about how to create the best or most ideal or most design content marketing strategy for your business. Welcome to the Content Queen podcast. I'm your host, Mariah, entrepreneur, storyteller, digital nomad, creative content boot camp, founder of Content Queen, with over 10 years experience in marketing.

This podcast is here to help you create your perfect content marketing strategy by blending storytelling and strategy. So let's get into it. I did a workshop this week, and the topic was the three pillars of marketing. We talked organic, we talked paid, and we talked collaboration. Now, before I got into any of my presentation, I shared with the audience that it was really important for them to know and trust themselves when it comes to marketing.

Because yes, of course, you call on experts to help you think strategically, and yes, I'm very aware that when I [00:01:00] work with a client that doesn't have a marketing background, I give them... I see things from a different lens. I even did a revision on a website that was, um, done by someone in a team that I'm working with, and the things that I was able to pick up, I know that the founders were not going to be able to see without a marketing background.

But what I mean is, you know your business, you understand your audience, you need to trust that more. Because yes, you will go online and you will see experts say, "You should be doing this, you should be doing that." But at the end of the day, with a content marketing strategy that you have put together in alignment with your goals, your audience, and knowing that deeply, you will always be able to come back to that whenever you doubt yourself.

Whenever you see something online that you should be doing, or every time you go for coffee with a friend who says, "Oh my God, I'm loving TikTok at the moment, you should start a TikTok." Because if I had a dollar for every time a [00:02:00] client came to me after a coffee catch-up with another colleague, a friend, a mentor, and said, "You should do this," I would be very rich, and I would not need another retainer.

But what I want you to understand is when you are doing any marketing, having an expert next to you is very important, one-on-one, that knows your business. Not an Instagram guru, not a TikTok, not Claude and AI, although very helpful, I will not dismiss the power of AI. But this is the point, right? You need to do the work, and you need to learn it alongside with support and guidance.

So before I'd even got into this workshop, I had made it very clear that everyone in the room, whilst everyone was gonna make suggestions and everyone was going to share what worked for them and what didn't, it was important for them to know and trust their business and understand what they needed to do.

And I truly believe that you cannot know that without having... A content marketing strategy, a [00:03:00] marketing strategy. Without, as I said, understanding your target audience, your goals, and the main channels that you will show up on in alignment with your target audience and your goals. What you post and your posting plan is the organization and the understanding of what you are going to post.

But where you need to be and why you are doing it is the foundations of a strategy, and if you don't have that documented and you don't know that fully, it is really hard, really hard, to market your business and to market it well. I had a client that we've been doing project work for... Just project work for them, editing videos, come to me and ask their, and ask me what I thought about potentially doing long, potentially doing short.

They use their YouTube channel as a content creation platform, and they have not sat down and asked, "What is the point of this?" And I said, "Before we go into anything of what you're going [00:04:00] to do next, why are you on there? What are you trying to achieve, and how is it going to help move your business forward?"

Because then that's how we get out of, "I'm a content creator," versus, "I'm a business owner." Because content creators use their channel to document, tell, and share with an audience to generate traction. A business owner uses platforms to market their business to get brand exposure and ultimately create customers.

So if you don't know why you're on platforms and why you're doing it and who you are trying to market to, none of the advice you get is going to matter. So to create a content strategy designed for your business, you have to sit down, and you have to do the work. And I don't care if you have a business that's been around for five minutes or a business that's been around for five years and has changed a few times.

You keep iterating the strategy. You keep evolving the strategy. Now, if you would ever [00:05:00] work with me one-on-one, me doing the content or the marketing for you, I will not even send you a quote before we have done a strategy because I don't know what we're going to do. I need to sit down with you and understand what you're doing and why you're doing it.

And I changed this in my business because I started quoting jobs based on, "Oh yeah, I wanna do like two or three posts on Instagram, and I want an email, and I want a blog." So I would quote that, but at the end of the day, that person might not need that. They might not need that right now. They might not need that ever.

So that's why I said, "No more of this. It is strategy before we work together." So I'm telling all of this to you because this is what's going to empower you to market your business properly. I had someone that listened to my free- Audio Guide, my secret podcast, which you can download via the link in the show notes.[00:06:00] 

And she said to me that it was so interesting for her because she just assumed if she posted on social media, she would get business. And she discovered that she was very wrong in that, and that by having a strategy, she was able to see what she needed to post and when and why she was doing that. Now, the reason I bring up this episode now is because I created my course, Content Bootcamp, to fill this gap of business owners that don't have a strategy and they don't...

They just post on socials or they post in places, or they market in places. There could be places that you don't even need to show up on and you are, or there could be missed opportunities, right? It's so interesting when you sit in a room with business owners and you start sharing ideas, how light bulbs s- switch on and people realize that they've probably wasted their time on a platform they didn't need to be on.

So the reason I bring this up is because I created Bootcamp. I wanted to fill the gap of people that weren't going to outsource their marketing. And this bootcamp is about creating an ideal content strategy for [00:07:00] business owners based on their own business, and I've helped hundreds of businesses do this through Bootcamp and other mediums that I run.

Now, I want to run a live round again, but what I realized is I think there's a gap missing in the way that I run my bootcamp, and I think, in fact, one-on-one time with me would be super beneficial for business owners because I can do what I would do with a client and help them really unpack stuff.

'Cause as I said before, I will see things in a way that you may not. But then once you have that knowledge, you trust yourself to market in that exact way and it will work. Right? So I realized in live rounds, whilst we have live calls, people don't often get one-on-one time with me. And I heard of a program that one of my clients was doing in the Facebook Ads world where the owner of this program would get into your ads and help you set them up, and that that was really beneficial.

And I... My light, light bulb moment happened for me that I realized, "I think I need to do this." I think I need to [00:08:00] have these live calls where if I have a small group of five people, or six people 'cause there's six weeks, I could do a weekly call, and each week focus on one of those businesses. And we'd do the strategy together, and people can watch.

And then if some people can't come to the call, they come on the day that their strategy is going to be, right? So I realized to make Bootcamp more effective, I needed to change the way in which I ran it. So this episode is to get you thinking if you don't have a strategy, maybe it's time. And if you were thinking about doing any work with me, now is the time, because I'm going to run Bootcamp live again.

At the moment, it's $450. I know for my time one on one, I do need to increase that price. But I want to test this and I want to test it with you guys because you listen to my podcast, you have either been on my mailing list, you wa- you follow me on social, so I know you like what I have to share and you like the way I teach it.

So that is why I, if you [00:09:00] purchase Bootcamp, if you join Bootcamp, I will reach out to you and I'll share what I'm thinking with the beta round, and I will do it for th- this price, the price that it's currently at, which is $450, to test to see if it will work. And then if it works, of course I'll have to increase my price.

So if you've been thinking of joining Bootcamp, I feel like now is the time because you will get that one-on-one session with me and you will get it at the price that it currently stands. So I needed to do this podcast episode so I could tell you about it, and I think you know you need a strategy, and maybe you have something, but maybe it's not quite working, it's not quite right because you need that marketing eye on it, and hello, here to give you that marketing eye.

With all the experience I have, the amount of strategies I've done is insane, and they work, right? I know they work, so I'd love to help you. So I'll put the link in the show notes if you'd like to join Bootcamp and test this beta round with me because I really wanna see how it would work and how it would logistically work versus be helpful.

I... Actually, I know, I know it will be helpful. I think it's just more the logistics that I need to test. So the link is in the show notes. Feel free [00:10:00] to reach out to me if you have any questions. And yeah, I think we, we know we need strategy now because back in the day, the conversations on social media was all about reels, how to create interesting, engaging reels, trending audios, and now the conversation is how do we create a strategy?

How do we use AI to do a strategy? How do we be more strategic? So I know you know you need one. In some way or, or another, you either don't have one or you do have one and it's not working, and I'd love to support you. So be a content queen or king and remember that developing your strategy and story, 'cause we will be talking about storytelling in this strategy and that's what makes it super unique, it will develop your business.

Thank you so much for joining me today, and please don't forget to share this with all your business and entrepreneurial friends. If you'd like to do Bootcamp with them, feel free to share it. I would love to have your business friends on the calls. And yeah, you can share it with them on your Instagram stories by tagging me @contentqueenmoriah or just send them the link.

You know, click copy link, share in WhatsApp chat, whatever. And if you do leave a rate and [00:11:00] review, it does help me get amazing guests. We have a massive lineup of guests. Actually looking at my calendar, I need to get my guest questions sorted because I've got like three interviews next week and three the other, so we have amazing guests, and the reason we do, 'cause I'm getting pitched.

People are pitching to be on the show, and that is because of you and you leaving a review. But if you haven't left one and you love the guests we get, please leave a review. And yeah, if you have any questions, if you want me to talk about anything in particular, send me a message on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and I will talk to you next week with our next guest.

Bye.

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