Podcast Summary:

Do This, NOT That: Marketing Tips with Jay Schwedelson — SPECIAL SERIES: Forget Content Calendars? Content Systems! [Bathroom Break #78 Collaboration with Marketing Millennials]
Date: October 20, 2025
Host: GURU Media Hub
Guests: Jay Schwedelson (Do This, NOT That; subjectline.com) and Daniel Murray (The Marketing Millennials)

Episode Overview

This special "Bathroom Break" edition unites Jay Schwedelson and Daniel Murray for a practical, humorous, and highly actionable session on content organization strategies. Instead of the typical content calendar talk, this episode dives into real content systems: how to tag, store, remix, and repurpose your marketing materials so you never waste good ideas or forget what works. Along with insightful marketing tips, the hosts share real-life travel annoyances, making for an engaging and relatable episode.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Problem: Content Chaos vs. Content Systems

• Jay admits his organization is "wildly unorganized" regarding content, leading to lost ideas and wasted effort ([02:25]).
• The episode’s central thesis: it’s not about creating a content calendar—it’s about building a system to organize and remix high-performing content.

2. Tagging, Tracking, and Remixing Content

• Daniel details a robust tagging system for every piece of content:
  • Tag by TOPIC, PERFORMANCE METRICS (likes, shares, comments), and PAIN POINT addressed ([03:03]).
  • This makes it easy to analyze what works and remix successful ideas, reducing the need for constant reinvention.
  • Quote:

    "I’m in the believer that you only really need to produce five to ten great pieces and then you can remix them forever." — Daniel ([03:29])

• Concrete approach:
  • Social content performance is tracked (likes, shares, comments).
  • Newsletters: Track open rates and click-through rates.
  • Tag content by performance in spreadsheets or databases for easy comparison and idea recycling.

3. How to Build Your Content Library (Tools & Tactics)

• Tools discussed:

  • Notion: Used for the main content database, including links to content, templates, and assets ([04:40]).
  • Google Sheets: Suitable for simple tracking, especially for smaller teams ([04:40]).
  • Google Drive: Houses meme templates and creative assets.
  • Canva: Used for organizing and modularizing pitch decks by client type ([06:48]).

• Quote:

  "You could put this in a Google Sheet. This is even a simpler way to do it... You don't have to go into Notion." — Daniel ([04:54])

• Jay’s Insight:

  "People make the mistake... categorizing campaigns like, ‘Oh, this campaign did really well’, but the idea is to create a content library and this offer library of things that really resonated." ([05:37])

4. Ideation and the Writer’s Room Process

• Daniel’s system for newsletters:

  • Team drops cool ideas and campaigns into a shared channel.
  • These get funneled into an "ideas" Google Sheet.
  • Weekly “writer’s room” meetings to prioritize and select content based on timeliness and relevance ([07:41]).
  • Separate "evergreen" ideas from timely, relevant ones.

• Quote:

  "Relevancy ideas will always trump the evergreen, but we will write evergreen ahead of time, so we always have a bank." — Daniel ([08:50])

• Jay’s Advice for Solo Creators:

  • Block content creation time on your calendar every week, even if you’re solo. Be intentional and treat content as a primary business activity ([09:13]).

5. Collaboration In Content Creation

• Encourage involving team members from diverse backgrounds and even other departments for broader ideation.
• Quote:

  "That’s the thing that people make a mistake is you should just bounce ideas off of people...It should go beyond the marketing team." — Daniel ([09:40])

6. Listener Engagement & Wrap-Up

• Hosts encourage listeners to suggest topics via LinkedIn and stress the pervasiveness of content dilemmas across businesses of all sizes.

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Let’s get normal.” — Jay Schwedelson ([01:54])
  (On airplane etiquette, after witnessing a fellow passenger’s loud and explicit phone call.)

• "You only really need to produce five to ten great pieces and then you can remix them forever." — Daniel ([03:29])

• "It’s headline, it’s pain point as a category—did this pain point hit with the audience or not?" — Daniel ([06:01])

• "We broke all our pitch decks into modules ... now if we’re pitching this business, you basically add these three modules and that’s your deck." — Jay ([06:48])

• “Relevancy ideas will always trump the evergreen, but we will write evergreen ahead of time, so we always have a bank.” — Daniel ([08:50])

• "There should be a warning system if you’re gonna sit next to a farm animal on a plane." — Jay ([11:16])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:01–02:25: Introduction, airplane travel pet peeves, and setting up the topic of content chaos.
• 02:25–04:32: Jay asks Daniel to explain his content organization process.
• 04:32–06:01: Deep dive into tools, tagging, and tracking content effectiveness.
• 06:01–07:41: Using pain points as a categorization method; remixing headlines and high-performing topics.
• 07:41–09:13: Newsletter ideation systems and how to maintain a consistent content calendar.
• 09:13–10:47: The importance of intentional weekly planning and inclusive, cross-team "writer's room" meetings.
• 10:47–11:54: Comic relief about big dogs on planes, leading into the episode wrap-up.
• 11:54–end: Quick plugs, takeaways, and listener engagement call-to-action.

Actionable Takeaways

• Start Simple: Organize your content ideas in Google Sheets or Notion, tagging by topic, performance, channel, and audience pain point.
• Track Results: Always collect and reference concrete performance metrics for every piece of content.
• Remix, Don’t Reinvent: Focus on building out and repurposing your top-performing ideas rather than constantly starting from scratch.
• Schedule Creation Time: Dedicate weekly time for content creation and review—this facilitates proactivity rather than randomness.
• Collaborate: Involve a diverse group in ideation sessions; don’t silo content creation to just the marketing team.

Final Thoughts

This episode is packed with relatable humor and razor-sharp practicality. Jay and Daniel deliver no-nonsense, highly actionable advice for marketers and content creators of any scale. Skip content calendars; build a content system that not only tracks what you make, but shows you why it works—so you can do more, with less stress.

Connect & Engage:
Share what marketing topic you’d like the hosts to cover next by messaging them on LinkedIn!
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