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Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
Ep 204 // Want to Take Time off From Content Marketing? Follow These 9 Simple Steps
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Well, hello, hello, hello, friends, and happy holiday season, right? We just finished up Thanksgiving and we're moving into Christmas time and then New Year's. And I don't know about y'all, but we love Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's in my family. And so in this season of that, I thought it would be really fun to share with y'all some very practical tips on how to take time off. Because the truth of the matter is content marketing or marketing, your business in general can take and does take so much time. And while I love it, sometimes I like to take a break. Now last year about this time, I had a newborn baby and I planned ahead. Obviously, I knew he was coming, right? So I planned ahead and actually ended up taking off most of November, all of December, all of January, and most of, if not all of February. So these are tried and true tips on how to take time off in your business without having to just walk away or close the door. So listen in, I've got some real practical tips for you, because even if this time of year is not when you choose to take time off, I do believe that it's good for all of us to take some time off for our from our businesses, from work in general, and rest. And it's actually a biblical principle. So listen in, take notes. I'm going to actually have you draw out some things in this, so let's jump in. Hey there fellow entrepreneur. Welcome to simple SEO and marketing. Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of search engine optimization and you to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business. But when it comes down to it, does SEO feel complicated and hard to implement? Are you tired of wondering what in the heck to do with your website to get more traffic and more leads knocking on your door? What if I could tell you that there was a simple, proven system for using SEO, blogging and copywriting to get leads from your website and not just any leads. High converting leads. Hey, I'm Faith Hannon, wife, mama, copywriter, SEO strategist and barrel racer. And for the last years, I've been figuring out what works and what doesn't work in the world of online marketing to get organic traffic. And now I'm here to share all the things I'm learning in the trenches of SEO, copywriting and content marketing. How does 300%, 500% or even 12,000% more traffic in a year sound? What could your business do with that kind of traffic increase? How many More people could you help? So listen in and prepare to take note. I'm about to drop simple, actionable SEO, marketing and copywriting tips, all with a heavy dose of Jesus loving encouragement. Let's get you more traffic and more leads so you can help more people with your God given gifts. All right, y'all. So, fun fact, I was doing a little bit of research lately, and I came across a statistic that said most small business owners. The average small business owner spends 20 hours per week just on marketing their business. 20 hours per week just on the marketing aspect of their business. And I was like, what in the heck? I don't even work 20 hours a week most weeks. Which is fine. Like, that's my life and that's what I want. But the fact of the matter is, running a business can take so much time, and content marketing can be a big portion of that, which is why a lot of businesses choose to outsource it, which is awesome too. But sometimes it's nice to take a break. Whether you need a break from client work, you need a break from content marketing, you need a break from whatever, right? Sometimes we just need breaks, and that's okay. It's actually biblical. I think God is the one that created the Sabbath, right? The Sabbath is for us, supposed to serve us. And you know what? It's good to take breaks in business. Hmm. Now, while we have obviously, in my business, figured out how to create content, create quality content in way less than 20 hours a week, I. E. The 12,000% traffic increase we got for one client in under a year, spending an average of two hours a week or less on their content. Right? We've obviously figured out a way to streamline stuff in way less than 20 hours a week. But how do you prep for time off? Right? And when I was preparing for maternity leave last year, this is something that I really put a lot of thought and time and effort into and saw a lot of success from. So this is something I wanted to just kind of break down for y'all as we go into this holiday season. Now, if you're somebody that's like, faith, I can't take time off during the holiday season. It's my busiest time of the year. That's fine. Come back and listen to this episode again. Like, when you know that you can take time off, okay. Doesn't necessarily have to be over the holiday season. Doesn't necessarily just have to be for maternity, maternity leave or some huge life event. Right. I want you to have these tools in your pocket so that you can take a break and take time off from your content marketing, and you can apply these to other aspects of your business. But obviously, content marketing, content creation, and SEO is my specialty. Okay, so I've got nine steps for you. Don't worry, they're pretty simple. Okay, now step number one, get ready to write this down, y'all. Write it down. Step number one is you have to know when you want to take time off and plan ahead. I know that seems really kind of simplistic, but it's true. Now, in my case, I was like, all right, babies do this day. Like, I obviously don't want to be working up till do his due date, just like cramming, like, so I want to be done with all my stuff by this day. Like, I just. Just look at the calendar, right, and know when you want to take time off and plan ahead. Okay, and step number two is muy importante and probably one of the most important steps in this. So I want you to bust out a blank sheet of paper or a spreadsheet, if you're a spreadsheet kind of, kind of chick kind of dude. And I want you to know the function and the strategy behind each type of content. Now, step two has several sub steps. Okay? So within this step, right, we're going to figure out the function and strategy and frequency of each type of content so that we can figure out how many pieces of content we actually have to have locked, loaded, and ready to go. All right? So within step two, I want you to list out each type of content that you are using for marketing. And I'm talking about a blog, a podcast, a video, social media channels that you're on, like your email. Like, list out every place that you're doing content marketing. Now, whether this is like a hard sell piece of content or just a nurture piece of content, you can distinguish that here if you'd like. But really, I don't know that it matters so much for this phase. You're welcome to distinguish it if you like, but the point here is I want you to just list out all of the places that you're showing up. This is not the time to list out all the places you wish you were showing up. This is where we are going to create basically a checklist, a spreadsheet, whatever you want to use of the content that we need to have created and ready to go so that we can take time off without losing momentum in our content marketing. All right, so for me, this was. I had a podcast a week that was going out Consistently about a blog a month that was going out consistently. I had blogs for clients. I had four blogs a month for clients that were going out all of their various email and social marketing strategies. So, like, we had all of that aspect I needed to get done. It was all my client work needed to be done ahead of time, and all of our work needed to be done ahead of time. So that all needed listed out. Okay? And then you need to distinguish between how often you must do something versus your nice to dos. Now this is when you need to get realistic. Okay? So for me, I was taking off essentially three and a half, almost four months, all right? And I wanted to be able to be like, deuces, yo. And like, only talk to my assistant because she was one of my. Because she's one of my best friends. Like, and we were able to do that, right? I. I wanted to be able to just, like, walk away and cuddle my newborn for a few months. And I'm glad I did. But this is where you need to distinguish your must dos versus your nice to do. So for me, I cut back on a couple things, right? I cut back on. Well, maybe only one thing. I cut back on an email because I was doing two emails per week, and I cut down to one. Okay? So you need to. Need to distinguish here between your must dos versus your nice to dos. All right? And now I want you to think about or just like, jot down the function or the goal behind each type of content, right? So if you're on social media, I would love it if you would distinguish between, like, the function and the goal between each social media channel that you're on. It just doesn't have to be like some big, huge, like, spill your guts, dig deep into your soul kind of thing. It can just be like, oh, so my Instagram strategy is to point to my blog. Okay. My Facebook strategy is to create community. Great. Right? And then next I want you to ask yourself, can I repurpose something for any of these? If the answer is yes, great. What is it? Make a note. If the answer is no, great. Move on. Okay, so within step number two, right? Here's what we've. Here's what we've worked out. You've listed out each type of content that you create that you need to create, that you're currently creating. I should say that you're currently showing up. Okay? So podcast, blog, video, social media, email, like, what. Whatever it is that you're doing. I telling you how to live your life. In this part, I'll do that another day. And then you're going to jot down how often? How often are you doing this thing? And you need to distinguish between a must do versus a nice to do. Is there an area that you can cut now? If you're only taking off a week or two weeks, like, you probably don't need to cut anything. If you're trying to take an extended break, like a maternity leave or something like that, then you might need to make some cuts. Okay. And then you're going to look, just jot down the function or the goal behind each type of content and then remind yourself of the strategy behind that and ask yourself, can I repurpose something for this? So for this whole step, you can do this on a piece of paper, you can do this in a spreadsheet, you can do this on, you know, Google Doc, whatever, but get this written out. Okay. Okay. Now we're moving on to step number three. Step number three is you have to, have to, have to, have to have to have an established workflow. Now, I know that the term workflow can feel really overwhelming. It can feel really like faith that just, like, stifles my creativity. But the fact of the matter is, is if you do not have some kind of workflow, even if it's as simple as a checklist somewhere for how to create and publish each type of content that you're doing using for your marketing, if you don't have some kind of workflow or a checklist for that somewhere, then you are literally wasting brain power and a poop scoop of time every single time you create content, refiguring out and remembering every step that you have to take to create that content. Now, this is a huge mistake that I see a lot of baby business owners, myself included, when I was a little baby blogger, make okay? Because I would sit down, be like, oh, I want to write a blog a week. And then I'll have to stop and think, okay, I need to do this thing and then this thing, and then this thing and then this thing. Oh, I need Squarespace or mailchimp or the blog. Where's the blog? Rift Draft. Where's that? What website did I like for graphics? Like, you have to refigure out all of those things each time you sit down to create content. And it wastes so much time and so much brain power. And I don't know about y'all, but brain power is at a premium in my life, okay? I have to make sure that when I sit down to create content, I'm not wasting brain Power and creativity on remembering which link to click and then what to do next. Okay, so you need to have an established workflow. Chelsea Jo over at Systemize youe Life was absolutely game changer for me here. I took her course, did systemize your life and systemize your business. And that has helped me tremendously. But also, you don't have to get super fancy with it. You can literally just have a checklist with links in it. Okay. So that you don't have to, you know, spend a bunch of time figuring out how to make a workflow when you really just need to get on the content creation, batching. Okay? So you need to have an established workflow. Step number three, step number four is you need to just plan out your long form content. And I'm a huge proponent of planning of bulk planning. I'm a huge proponent of batching anything. But I pretty much demand that my students batch plan. Because every time you sit down to kind of get your brain going about where you need to help people and how you can market your business and the content that's going to be useful for marketing, every time you like sit down to switch on your brain in that direction, you might as well get like four or five or six ideas out on and on paper. Okay. Rather than having to think through, oh, how am I going to market my business? Every time you sit down to create content. Okay. And with kind of, kind of right behind the planning out your long form content. I love to batch outline content as well. Because your brain is already in that mode. And if you're like me and you're like, ooh, I have an idea, I want to talk about that. Ooh, I have an idea. I talk about that. And you don't write down the main points via an outline, then you're going to look up in a month when it's time to create that content and be like, snap, what was I going to say about that? I don't remember. So batch plan out your long form content and batch outline your content. Those are steps four and five. And then obviously you have to create your content. Now, whether you want to batch create the content or you know, just create an extra piece of long form content every week leading up to your planned vacation or plan time off, that's kind of up to you and your workflow. I generally like to batch create as a general rule of thumb, not always able to do it, but I like to just. Because when you get in the flow of things, you are already kind of in that mind frame and you're able to be a little bit more efficient. But again, when you're prepping for time off, you might not be able to batch create, you know, several weeks or several months worth of content in one sitting or in one day. And that's fine. But obviously you're going to need to fit into your schedule, you know, the time and the space and when you have the energy to create the content ahead of time. Okay? And then step seven is you're going to edit and schedule it, edit it and get it scheduled for publishing. Now, for blogs, this is easy to do. You can go in and schedule that. For podcasts, it's easy to schedule in advance. Social media, there's some limits as far as how far in advance you can schedule things. And then step number eight, you're going to need to list out and or record steps for your team or for yourself for any last minute slash day of tasks that can't be done ahead of time. So for me, I like to include the link to my most recent podcast in an email that goes out with extra tips and bonuses, but I like to do that on the day that the podcast goes out. So that's like, oh, hey, I can go listen to this and here's some extra tips. But the link to actually link to the podcast isn't live until I. Until the day it goes live, right? Which if there are some workarounds to that, please tell me because I'd love to know. But you, there might be a couple things that somebody on your team still has to do the day off, right? And then step number nine is enjoy your time off because you know you need it. And here's just a little bit of encouragement for you if you are like faith, I don't know if I can take time off. I don't know if I need to take time off. I want you to take a deep breath and I want you to listen to me here. Because the truth is, God created us to need rest. All right? If you read back through Genesis, God rested on the seventh day, all right? And Sabbath is a gift. God gave the Jewish people the gift of Sabbath, the gift of rest, the gift of Shabbat shalom. And in our culture, gosh, it's, we have a tendency to go, go, go, go, go, go, go. Like, we don't want to stop, we don't want to take breaks, we don't want to rest, we don't want to cease from striving. But the truth of the matter is we need to, we were not created to go 100 miles an hour, constantly. We need rest. And I get it. I'm a higher achiever. I like doing stuff. I like checking things off my list. I like seeing progress. But ultimately, if you don't ever take time to rest in your, you know, weekly schedule, in your business, in life, and all of the things you're going to not produce, your best work, you're gonna burn out. And ultimately, if you and I don't trust God enough to rest. Mmm, there's something wrong there. Okay, so some bonus reading material that really changed my life around this topic of rest is a book called Addicted to Busy by Pastor Brady Boyd. Honest to goodness, this book really transformed how we approach Sabbath in my family and it's been really game changer. So bonus tip for you there. Read addict. Read the book called Addicted to Busy on your time off. Okay. Or maybe to motivate yourself to take time off. So just going to recap those nine steps to taking an extended break in your business, or at least the content marketing part. Okay. Number one, you have to know when you want to take time off and plan ahead. Number two, you need to know the function and strategy behind each type of content and how much content you need to prep. Okay. And then you need to have an established workflow. Number four, you need to plan out your long form content. Like each individual piece, you need to outline your content. Step five, number six, you need to actually create it. Number seven, edit and schedule it for publishing. Number eight, list out and record any steps for you or your team that need to be done in like the last minute day of tasks. And number nine, enjoy your time off. All right, y'all. So I pray that you are able to take some time off over the holidays. Slash, make yourself take some time off over the holidays because, gosh, we're in business so that we can do the things that we love and spend time with the people that we love and use our God given gifts. So why wouldn't we be strategic about taking time off? All right, I pray that this episode blesses you and you're just able to really lean into the goodness of God in this holiday season. All right, y'all, we'll chat with you next week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing to get more leads and more sales from your website. If it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple podcasts. That is the very best way to help more Jesus loving entrepreneurs scale their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the Kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things, courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website, faithhannon. Com. Until next time. God Bless and I'll talk to you soon.