Every time you get into your car, you know where you’re going – whether it’s a routine destination or an adventurous road trip!

Very rarely do we just hop in the car and wander around, driving until we decide to stop.

But this is often what we do with our content! Put it out there, not really knowing where we’ll end up…

Which means sometimes we wind up going circles or not getting where we wanted to go.

THIS is why designing your own content roadmap is a smart idea to help you get clear on:

1. Where you’re going

2. How you’re getting there

3. Customizing your journey based on your needs

4. Having everything you need along the way –

5. Removing any discomfort or annoyances as you go!

Listen to today's episode & get what you need to create YOUR OWN content map and stop the wandering around...

posting or publishing without a purpose

and wasting your time & energy on content that's not working FOR you!

I'll break down my 5-Step Framework that’ll help you design YOUR Customized Content Roadmap –

So you can apply it in simple, easy, do-able terms!

PS: want personalized support with this stuff? Nab a Content Quick Win Power Session at
https://www.jenliddy.com/power

Links Mentioned
https://www.jenliddy.com/power

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Full Transcript

Hey, it's Jen Liddy.

I'm the host of the Content Creation Made Easy podcast, and I'm really glad you're here. I wanted to update you on what's happening with the podcast. We have decided to move to a two times per month podcasting schedule. We found that by doing a schedule where we published every week, we were just constantly trying to keep up with the transcriptions, the editing, the posting everywhere we needed to post, the emailing - it just felt like I was really on that dreadmill that I talk about.

Even though I love doing interviews and I love talking to you, I love learning everything from the people that I interview, and I love sharing what I learn with you. I just needed some breathing room. I wanted to start today's podcast by saying, "Hey, you might need some breathing room in your own life, and where can you give yourself permission to either scale down, scale back, switch things up, or get some help?"

It's not an easy decision to make. I know that, and I wanted to just be really open about, like, we'll be moving to two times a month. I hope you're still going to be here with me, and I will be bringing you valuable interviews. Today, I'm going to be talking specifically about how to create a content map for yourself with my framework. I'm going to jump into that in a minute, but I wanted to just start by saying, "Hey, you might need a breather. Where can you take that for yourself?"

In today's episode, I wanted to share with you the content map framework that I share and take my private clients through every single week. The reason I'm sharing it with you is you might feel like content is for you. Just one of those things that you cross off the list or that you do because you have to do or that you're avoiding and you feel bad about. I thought that if you had the framework in your back pocket, you could really use it. As I go through it with you, it's got five steps. I'm going to be asking you, is this a strength of yours? Would this part be easy for you? I'm going to give you lots of examples like I always do because I'm a big, huge nerdy teacher. I want to break each part down for you and get you thinking about how can I make this part happen for myself.

Actually, if you are looking for support, I have opened one-off sessions, and I'm calling them the content quick win power sessions. I'll tell you later about how to get to them, but if you're thinking like, "Oh, I could just really use an hour with somebody to either verbally process."

We can do that!

You might not need somebody to support you all the way through, but you might need a little support. I'll tell you about that later, so let's dive into my framework. I created this framework based on the many people I've worked with and how I saw what they needed and where they were struggling. It needed to make sense. It needed to be clear, and it needed to be easy for everybody because if you could do content on your own - you would do content on your own.

People hire me because they're like, I need a way to make this palatable and sustainable and get me motivated to do it. That's why I created this five-step framework, and I call it the stack framework, S-T-A-C-K. I love that it's the stack framework because each piece really does go in perfectly with the next piece.

They all work together to create what I call the content map, but you might call a game plan or an overview, or really what it is is a content strategy. Let's dive into the first piece, which is the S, and that stands for strategy. The reason I want to talk about strategy is if you don't start with a strategy if you don't know where you're headed or why you're doing content, you've heard me say this a million times, then doing content feels like an absolute waste of time, and you wind up just doing it for the sake of doing it.

You might be a natural strategic thinker who can think very globally, very visionarily. You see the end already before you begin. If that is the case for you, then you have a leg up in this game because not everybody can. If you're a strategic thinker, remember not everybody can think the way that you think so big. Strategic thinkers think with the end in mind. I'm going to give you an example that I think makes this really clear. Let's take podcasting as an example. Podcasting seems like it's just this one thing, and your content strategy would be, I'm going to do a podcast.

But think about that, think about all the types of podcasts that are out there. I'm going to talk about three right now. Imagine you had a podcast, and I have had clients who have had podcasts that are purely for their enjoyment and creativity to create. They're like hobby podcasts, they put their time and energy, and creativity into creating a hobby podcast.

Other people, like me, for example, use their podcast to move people into their business. It's a marketing arm of their business - that's the reason that they're doing it. The goal is to grow their business, and it's not for the sake of doing it for creativity or because they love hearing their own voice. It's to move people into a service or product in their own business.

Then there's another type of podcast, the podcasts that are the products themselves. The way that they make money is through ad sales. You might hear an ad on a podcast for detergent or a meal planning company, but it has nothing to do with the actual podcast. That's how they're making money. But if you don't know before you go in what the strategy is for you to use this podcast, then you're wasting a lot of time and energy.

Going in strategically, now if you're a strategic thinker, you're like, no, duh, Jen, of course. But for tactical people like me, I like to get shit done. I like to cross things off the list. I am tactical, so sometimes I find myself in the middle of just doing, and I'm not really sure why I'm doing it all.

Strategy is the number one part, it's the first thing that we do when we create your content map. Why are you creating content in the first place? Where is it driving people to? What is it doing for you? If you are a strategic thinker, you probably nailed this down. You will be driven crazy by the next thing I'm going to say, which is the T in the format, which is tactics. Because for strategic people, they love the ideation part, but it's the doing that is the death of them, as my friend Claudia says.

It's the monotony of the doing keeps them from ever getting things actually implemented. T is the next step. Once you have your strategy, you know where you're going. Then we look at what are the hows? What are you going to do to achieve that goal? How are you going to get there? This is where we break things down into, like, where are you going to be?

Now, tactics are very specific, but sometimes people confuse their tactics with their strategy. This is what that might look like: I want to grow my business, so I'm going to get on TikTok, and I'm going to do a different video every single day on TikTok, and I'm going to repurpose it to Instagram.

That's not a strategy - those are things to do.

When you're thinking about your content map, first of all, once you have the big goal, what are the little steps that you're going to take to get to the goals? Those are the tactics, where are you going to show up, and what does that look like to you? Let me give you an example, I have a client right now. Her goal is threefold, she wants to grow her audience, specifically on Instagram, so she wants to increase her followers. She wants to always have a waiting list for her private clientele. She has a three-session package that she sells, so she always wants new people in the hopper, and she wants to sell her digital products.

Now, all of those things are enormous things in and of themselves - they're goals to achieve. How are we getting there? Well, we're using social media for her content. She's creating a blog, and she is working on tightening up all of her sales pages for her digital products so that the copy really sings to her audience. Those are the tactics we're using.

Still pretty broad, right? We're still not talking about, like, well, what am I supposed to say on Instagram? We haven't gotten there yet, but once the S and the T are done, you know why you're doing it and where you're doing it, and how you're doing it. That way, you don't have to think about those things anymore, and you can just stay on track.

The S and the T in the framework are incredibly important because really creative people love to get distracted, and there's tons to distract us with. But when you know your S, and you know your T, you're just like, this is what I'm working on.

Then we move into the A, which stands for your authority. This is where we really hammer out, what is your messaging? How can you stand out and differentiate yourself among the many, many us, or people like you online? The authority is where we find your voice, what your brand values are, and we hammer out your philosophy because, remember, you're in your head all the time. To you, you're just like, yeah, my brand voice is this, and the way I show up is that, and this is how I want to sound, and this is my messaging. You don't think twice about how you're differentiated from other people.

The A piece, the authority piece, is a huge piece that most people have not spent the time to parse out. What is your brand voice? Do you know what your brand voice is? Do you know how to differentiate yourself? Have you really thought about how your philosophy or your why about being in business, your mission, your values translates into your authority and your messaging?

This is a big piece.

This is before you come up with your content topics and how you're going to say things in your copy, you have to look at your authority and settle yourself. This is a really big foundation, you have to step into your authority in the A part of the model. What do you want to sound like? How do you want to be differentiated?

If you have not done that, this is a big piece that you can do. One of the things I would do if you're struggling with this is to go back and listen to my interview with Justin Blackman. He was incredible in talking about voice. I think even if you just listen to that piece, that could really help you. I think Bobby Klink also did a great job with this in his interview, which was the last two podcast episodes. I broke them into two pieces because they were long, but he really knows how to step into his expertise and his authority and lean into who he is online and how he differentiates himself.

I think if you're struggling with the A part, go back to those two pieces and re-listen to them, and start to think about how you can apply it to yourself. The C is where we get more into the nitty gritty - this is where we start to think about your content and your copy. How are you writing in a way that sounds like you but also really relates to your audience? That brand voice that happened in the authority piece, we bring it in here because that's how we really get your copy to sound like you.

The content also has to sound like you because you are an authority. What does your audience need you to be talking about? This is where we're like breaking down your content pillars or your buckets or your themes or your subjects, or whatever it is. What does your audience need to hear from you over and over and over again? The way that I like to teach content pillars is there's like three to five of them.

They're the things you talk about all the time. This isn't the how's, my pillar one is, what does it mean to be a holistic nutritionist? That's not what your pillars are. Your pillars are ideas that, over and over, you are talking about with your people that they need to either shift their identity or they need to understand at a deeper level. There's a lot of things that your pillars could be. You want to spend time in the C part of the framework.

Now, I don't even get this far with my clients until month two and a half or three in our one to one work together. So until you have the strategy and the tactics and your authority laid out, you don't want to start thinking about your content topics and your content pillars. You have a lot of other foundational work to do. So here's where you're going to muck around a little bit and you're going to figure out, okay, what are the things that my audience needs to hear from me? How do they need to hear it? How do I want to say it? This is where we start to play around with what your copy sounds like. We add your voice in, but we also like, okay, what stories can I tell here? What examples can I give here? How can I mirror to my audience what they need to hear? That's what happens in the C part of the stack framework.

Then we move into the K part, which is the last part, and I call this the kick it into gear. This is where we start to create your personalized plan. I'm going to give you an example of how this looks. I have a client who is a very visual client, she creates beautiful visuals, she thinks visually. But when it came to actually making a plan to regularly get her content out there, she was super stuck, and nothing seemed to work for her. I thought maybe since she was visual, she would like a more visual type of planner. No, she did not want to use Trello or Asana. That never worked for her and she didn't want to use anything except a Google Doc.

What we did was we created a calendar on a Google Doc and a template on a Google Doc with all the dates listed out for her because she could really think linearly when it came to planning. The kick it into gear section of your plan is the last thing you do. This is your system that you create. Now, a lot of people, like, maybe you use a pen and a paper to plan. Maybe you love something like Asana or Trello. Maybe you put everything in a software like Later, and it just comes up for you right there.

It doesn't matter what you use, but your system has to be incredibly personalized for you. You can't kick it into gear if you're using a planning and execution system that does not work for the way that your brain works. Literally today, I'm recording this in the evening, and today I saw that particular client, and we spent an hour making her personalized plan so that all the other stuff we had already done, the strategy, the tactics, the authority, and the content and copy, now she can put it into play because she sees how it all comes together and this implementation system works for her - it's like her sanity system, it'll keep her sane.

What will work for you? What is working for you, and what's not working for you? I would love for you to be thinking about this holistically. Where in your content map do you have holes? Where are you falling down? What do you need to work on? What resonated with you today? Where are you like, yeah, I really need to work on that, or I don't believe I need that. I just really want you to make this your own because this stack framework gives you the map that only you have to follow. It's not a one size fits all thing. Ultimately, what these things working together does is it creates a content vault.

For example, my client today, she knows that this is all in one place. It's all broken up into five different pieces. She needs to do a new bio, well, she can just go into her authority piece. Everything that she needs for that bio is in there, she can write it. I was working with another client today. She wanted to update her homepage, we literally banged it out in an hour, but do you know why we could? Because all along the way I've been working with her from the S to the T to the A to the C to the K, and everything was already there. I could just go in, get what I needed and pull it out. When you have your stack framework filled, you can do the same thing. It means whatever content struggle comes your way, you have a sales page to do, you go to your content map, and it's all there. I hope that this was helpful for you. I hope the examples were helpful. I hope that you are motivated to create your own content map. I meant to tell you if you want a 1-hour session, you can get one, and you can go to jenliddy.com/power.

Basically, it's in 60 minutes, and we can accomplish so much because you're going to do an intake for them, and I'm going to review the things before we get on. But you don't have to struggle with all of this alone. Work with somebody for the pieces that you need, but you've got a lot of this down. You just need to sit down and parse it out, and I hope the STACK framework will help you do that. I would love to know your thoughts on this, and you can always leave me a comment below or you can.

I would love it if you left a review talking about how this helped you. If you have any other questions, please leave a comment, and we will be sure to get back to you. I will see you in two weeks because we're going to that two episodes per month, and I have a great interview for you then, and I'm really excited to share that expert at the end of April.

I'll see you next time. Bye.