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- š„ Set fire to your content plan. This one won't make you cry inside.
š„ Set fire to your content plan. This one won't make you cry inside.
A no-brainer guide to creating content (when you really didn't want to anyway)š.

Last week, i said this weekās issue would be a guide to scaling your brand personality.
But writing it i realized making that a whole issue would be a stretch.
So i made it a LI post. itās linked at the bottom of the issue.
Now letās get down to business.
You should be using your customer research to build your whole marketing plan.
And 99.99% of the time your marketing plan should start with written content.
Obviously, going from customer research ā content is not exactly an easy thing to do.

thatāsā¦not great odds.
So today weāre going to cover
what content channel should i do?
How to get your topics list for your channel
How to manage your workflow
And yes, despite the influx of AI in search and the frequent pronouncements that ācompany blogs are dead!ā
They are very much not because
a) people still use Google
b) those LLMās are training on blog posts and Reddit posts
Someoneās stuff is going to show up on search, it might as well be yours.
What channel should i do?
If youāre a B2B SaaS company, choose one of these 2 distribution ā content channels as your starting point.
SEO ā Blog or Video
Community ā LinkedIn, Slack communities, or Reddit
The one you choose really depends on:
How quickly you need sales (faster in communities than SEO)
Which one youāre more comfortable with (if you have zero LinkedIn experience, it will probably be easier for you to start with writing blog posts than writing and engaging and building an audience)
You need to create a content conga line that proves to your audience you know what youāre talking about and youāre here to help.
Blog or community posts are the best way to start the music. š¶
5 steps for a content plan you donāt hate having to use
1. Do audience research for your main topics
Look at the questions, pain points, and rants from your customer research (ahem, the customer research database we talked about!).
If you donāt have a whole lot of customer research that will answer those questions than do audience research to supplement š .
look at reviews of your competitors for questions that still arenāt answered
use Reddit to find pain point topics (Gummysearch is crucial for this!)
2. Create your content plan based on awareness
There are 5 stages of awareness.
Unaware ā General topic information
āYour intro guide to product marketing for SaaS startups (when youāre not a marketer)āProblem aware ā āWhy your lack of customer research is causing your churnā
Solution aware ā āHow to nail your customer research so your marketing worksā
Product/Service aware ā Proof as case studies āDropEvent increased MRR by 32% because of customer researchā
Most aware ā same as Product/Service aware
List those topics out in an awareness format, like this ⤵ļø

makes it super easy to see where you have gaps.
you can duplicate that table btw - hereās the link to a Google Sheet.
You need content that hits all 5 for your main topics.
Cap yourself at 20 of these posts.
Thatās roughly 5 big topics.
After that you can get to the more āboringā posts like comparisons and āvsā ones
Hereās what mine looks like right now.
Needless to say, iāve got work to do to fill in those gaps.

awareness levels on the left side, marketing foundations topics at the top
(i have 6 topics, one for each marketing foundation)
3. Do basic keyword research for those topics
I shall not reinvent the wheel here.
Go to Ahrefs (or SemRush)
put in phrases that you found in your topics list
sort KWās by traffic and difficulty
save a master group of KWās match your topic and audience that are in the 500-2,000 searches and below 32 KD
save smaller groups of those KWās for phrases
4. Setup your workflow for success
š Use a single database for ALL of your content and ideas
Create templates within the database for each content type that has a standard outline and how-to guide included.
Put your ideas in there as you think of them so itās easy to flesh them into full posts.
We use this calendar template (free in Notion). Only took a few tweaks to customize.
š Choose a day/wk youāre going to post
Stick to it.
If you can schedule your content (yes for blogs, no for Reddit), than setup a low-cost tool for that.
I use Scheduled.so for LinkedIn posts.
š„ Work in a 3-day format
Day 1: collect info and throw into doc (set 30min timer)
Day 2: string idea into a coherent flow (30min timer), note where you need images or infographics (15min)
Day 3: finalize to the format, QA, schedule to publish
If youāre posting in communities, lurk for a week or two before you start posting
Learn to read the room.
5. Build your calendar based on ⨠reality āØ
You are one person (or a very overworked team).
Thereās only so much you can put out there.
For Blogs - Getting one piece of content out a week is a win
For Communities - Aim to post 2x/week
š¤ Once you have your system in place, you can automate more steps
And eventually scale up and delegate.
Content is a long game, donāt flame out trying to publish an infinite amount of posts in a month.
ā±ļø My biggest āaha!ā: donāt start consistently posting until you have 3 pieces of content ready to publish.
Ideally covering a full column (why ā how ā proof) so you hit every awareness stage.
That way you arenāt struggling to hit your cadence while you sort through your brand new SOP.
Look at you! With a manageable content calendar. š
Breath a sigh of relief and go get a little treat. šŖ
I did it! now how do I repurpose content?
Great question, iāll cover that next week. š
And finally,
If your brain canāt think of things to talk about, even after you do the customer research and lurk awhile mayyyyybe you shouldnāt be the one handling content in the long term.
Content is not for the faint of heart and spray-and-prayād of attention spans.
Believe it not, I really freaking love doing this or else i wouldnāt have pulled an near-allnighter to write this newsletter about it. (yes, really!)
Did it for Jeremy at DropEvent and traffic increased by 20% MoM. (the team and I did his foundations work and website too).
If you want to talk through the what to post, how to post it and where - iāve got you.
Pull up on my calendar.
Cheers!
Iāll see you next week.
Sophia šš©š½āš» (just Sophia, Aelia is on her Anne of Green Gables moment in ChitrÄl! š )
P. S. hereās that promised brand personality that sticks LI post link. š
Powered by a large breve latte from Cafe Stella ā (with whipped cream!)
If you liked this issue, loved it, had to have it, and want to support, please:
Refer us to a friend who doesnāt want to do marketing. weāre taking new clients for April for Customer Research, Websites, and Marketing Strategy!
A DM with āI heard you were looking for help with [blank], consider hiring Sophiaā is highest praise!
Forward this newsletter over to someone who is crying over their marketing task list
Join the convo on LinkedIn (This comment section is a lot of fun!)
Any of this would make Aelia and I jointly squee on a call in the near future and is much appreciated. šš½

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