316: How to Audit Your Content Strategy for the New Year

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Thrive Podcast, where we believe creators deserve more, more money, more freedom, and even more love for what they do. I'm Brie Pair, your coach for content creators. And I know the struggle, the long hours, the endless ideas, the feeling that success is just out of reach, but here's the truth.

[00:00:24] You've got what it takes. And this podcast, it's your shortcut to getting there from strategies that actually work to behind the scenes insights. We're unlocking your potential one episode at a time. So if you're ready to turn your creative hustle into a thriving business, Hello. Hello. Welcome back to the podcast and happy new year.

[00:00:51] It's 2025 and I am feeling so much differently going into this year versus last year. And that is something I think for all of us to keep in mind is what season of life we are in and how that plays such a huge role. In our business. So going into 2024, beginning of this past year, I was I still feel like I'm a new mama, my kiddo is not yet too, but then she was not yet one, she was 10 months old, nine months old, and I was in a very different season of life and just with what my capacity was, um, so, for example, my Christmas wish last year.

[00:01:44] was for my daughter to finally sleep through the night. And she literally slept through the night on Christmas Eve. I got a full night's sleep and woke up refreshed on Christmas morning. It was a completely a Christmas miracle. And from that point on, she has been able to sleep through the night. I mean, I say that with the caveat, you know, if, if you know, you know, but She started sleeping through the night.

[00:02:15] And so looking back, I have to just give myself so much grace. I tend to be very hard on myself and a very achiever personality and feel like I could look back on this past year and And be like, Oh my gosh, I, I didn't get enough done. Like I didn't hit these goals. Why didn't I reach this? And then I look at the reality of the season of life that I am in and realize, Oh, I actually killed it.

[00:02:52] It just looked a lot different than it would have in previous life seasons. So I just want to share that. Wherever you are, just to acknowledge the season of life. So acknowledge the other things that are affecting you and your life and your business, because all of those things do affect your productivity, the goals that you're able to hit, your mindset.

[00:03:19] All of that affects your business based on other things you have going on in life. It is all connected. So just keep that in mind in the back of your head this year. And as we are diving into this episode. So for this first episode of the year, I wanted us to audit. our content strategy for the new year.

[00:03:41] So I'm going to go through some key points that you can take notes if you are able or go and read the show notes at thrive together at blog slash podcast. And we'll leave detailed show notes for you there. But the first thing that I want us to think through is what's working and what's not. Now, I talked about this in one of our December episodes about how I tend to just quickly jot down stats and where we're at and just move on, do that typically once a month and but not actually stopping to analyze it and that is something that I am changing in 2025, where I am making sure that I give myself time every single month to really dive into.

[00:04:33] So, The strategies and what's working and what's not our metrics. Basically, everything I'm going to cover here in this episode, I'm going to be really doing a deep dive in every single month. Probably I'm going to try to block out like two hours once a month to dive into this because I know that by not doing it, I am just staying on that go, go, go mode.

[00:04:57] And I am not being as efficient as productive or as effective with the content I am putting out for you guys. So this is basically an inside look as to what I am doing and what I suggest you do as well. So what's working and what's not. So we want to analyze our content and identify what's falling flat.

[00:05:18] And really analyze the top performing content. So, What I want you to do is, in some way, whether it's a spreadsheet, a doc, a notebook, whatever it may be, is to really comb through your content from the last year. Look at those things that performed really well and looked at those things that did not perform well at all.

[00:05:42] And so you'll have like two columns. And then I want you to write the topics down in each column versus whether, whether it performed well or didn't. What was the topic? Look at, is this a topic that my audience has indicated they wanted to hear from me about and then really dive into it. This works for every single type of content.

[00:06:05] So, whether that is a blog post, a Facebook post, an Instagram reel, a video. A YouTube. Sure. A Tik TOK, an email. You really want to take the time. Now will I be able to really deep dive every single month? Honestly, this part right here, if you haven't been keeping up with doing this, like I haven't, then Doing it for an entire year is going to be a bigger to do rather than just going month by month.

[00:06:39] It's a lot less content to do it month by month. So keep that in mind. This is a bigger task that I'm asking you to do right now. So look at Those things. That's that's why I'm like, look at the top performing and the ones that are falling flat. You don't have to look at every single piece. So I want you to ask yourself on each of those.

[00:06:59] Does it have a hook? Is it engaging? Does it make you want to binge more content? What could you do differently? And what could you try next time? This takes a lot of self awareness and being truly honest with yourself. You know what type of content stops you in your tracks, makes you read it, makes you watch it, whatever it may be, you have to be brutally honest with yourself on this.

[00:07:25] Also celebrate those wins on the top performing content. But then on the flip side, if it didn't perform as well, go through these questions. If you're like, yeah, like it did all of that. Give yourself grace, because sometimes it may just be some a fluke that would be a good indicator that you should repost that content, and we'll talk about that in a little bit.

[00:07:48] So that's what the very first thing to do is just looking at top performing versus what is not working. And then, uh, Let's dive into metrics to measure so it's easy for us to, like, have a spreadsheet plug in, like, follows subscribers, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And so those page uses engagement rates, follower growth conversions.

[00:08:11] What you really want to do. Is have a key performance indicator, A KPI. If we wanna be technical and you wanna sound badass, I don't know why that makes me feel like badass when I can like a KPI anyways, so you wanna determine what matters to you. So is that reach? Is that comments? Is it clicks? You can say that you want all of those things.

[00:08:38] Absolutely. We want we want the reach. We want everybody to comment. We want everybody to click. But is that realistic? How often are we getting that? Like, are we getting all of the things from every single viewer, right? Not entirely realistic for us to expect every single person that sees our content to interact with it and engage with it and share it in the way that we want to.

[00:09:02] So that's why we need to set a key performance indicator and determine, okay, with my emails, what am I really wanting to make sure happens with this? What is my goal? What is the goal with these emails? What is the goal with my blog post? What is the goal with this real? Is it to get views? Is it to get people to comment and set off a miniature automation?

[00:09:26] Is it to get people to follow me? Right? What are those metrics? So I would really set that for every type of content that you have. And for some of them, it could be different, right? Like, okay, well, this one, I want comments versus this one. I want engagement. But you can see that when we don't set those KPIs, how when we're analyzing our content, we can easily beat ourself up.

[00:09:56] Right. So if you go back and be like, Oh, why didn't it, this real perform as well as I wanted, or, you know, this blog posts, why didn't it do that? If we didn't set, like, what is the target goal of this particular piece of content? It's going to be hard for us to analyze things in bulk. So there's different ways that you can do it.

[00:10:19] What I really suggest considering though, is like, as you go into your month, And you're creating content for that month, really setting those goals at the beginning. Right? Because if you go into it being like, okay, I really want to increase this, or I really want to see this from my audience, that's going to dictate how you create your content versus just being like, Oh, I'm going to create this fun piece of content on this topic because my audience likes it.

[00:10:47] Awesome. Great. But then if it doesn't perform in the exact way that you wanted to. You can't be upset about it. So that's when, you know, you don't have to set it every single time, but having a general idea of your goals for the month is going to put you in that CEO seat versus just the content creator seat.

[00:11:08] Right. So if we want to like audit our content strategy for the new year and take it to the next level, we really have to think about what is the end goal of each of my pieces of content. Overwhelmed with your content biz, tired of doing everything yourself and still not seeing consistent income friend.

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[00:12:02] The next part is content alignment. So ensuring that our content aligns with those goals, but also with our audience needs and with our personal brand, you know, sometimes we get off track. It happens. Okay. So with thinking about all of the things that we've already talked about, those metrics, what's working, what's not, we want to start this year off with revisiting those things and then strategizing what exactly we need to do to make things happen.

[00:12:29] Right? So typically we'll set like this lofty goal or maybe a one year goal or a five year goal, or by this time at the end of the year, I want to be here. That's awesome. But when we just say that out into existence and then keep going and doing the exact same thing we did last year, it's not going to give us different results.

[00:12:52] If we want different results this year, we have to do things differently than we did the past 12 months. So, We have to ensure that the content we are putting out actually follows and tracks with getting us one step closer to those goals. So that's why every single piece of this really stacks and really falls into alignment.

[00:13:20] The key thing here, I think, to make sure that your content is in alignment with your goals is to really dive in deep as to What those goals are, and what are the exact steps that I'm going to need to do to get there and breaking it down. This is what I do hand in hand so much with our girls inside of shift is really like, okay, they come into the program.

[00:13:44] They answer. A really long document. I say really long. Uh, they go through a form, um, that lets me be able to dive in deeper into their business and into their goals. And then we create what I call a road map and we break that down into actionable steps, right? So if somebody comes to me and it's like, okay, I want to increase.

[00:14:04] My income, I want to be making this much money by the end of the program. I want to get on media vine. Okay, great. Those are awesome goals. And how is the progress going as we're working to hit that goal? And so those are things that you really have to dive in deep with yourself and also ask yourself, Is this something that I can do on my own?

[00:14:29] Or do I need to look for help? Do I need to look for somebody to help me with that strategy and to review my ideas and where I want to be and make sure I'm on the right track? That's why we created shift. So, Wherever you're at, that's something where you just have to be brutally honest with yourself and really actually dive in deep.

[00:14:50] Don't go into this year doing the same thing you did last year. And if you just like go, go, go, content, content, content, that's what's eventually going to get me where I want to be without doing this really intense strategy part. You're not going to see the growth that you want to this year as compared to last year.

[00:15:12] So all of that to say, when you do that strategy part, you can make sure that every piece of content is in alignment with where you want to be. The next part is with this audit is freshening up old content. There's, you know, like I said, if there was pieces of content that you're like, yes, it had the hook.

[00:15:36] It was engaging. It made me want to binge more. I don't really think I would change anything, but for some reason it fell flat. That's a piece of content that I would say you should reshare it. If it fell flat, that means a lot of people didn't see it. And even if somebody does see it twice, who freaking cares?

[00:15:55] It's your channel. It's your platform. You get to do what you want to do. So, as you're auditing, write down the pieces of content that's Didn't perform well that, you know, you can just repost and also pieces of content that are still relevant that you can reuse. So either just completely repost or go in, grab that content and tweak it a little bit and post it again.

[00:16:20] Or, you know, if it's a blog post, build on that, make it into a series. If it's a video, how can you reedit it? And maybe. you know, dive in deeper into one piece of it. There's so much we can do without having to reinvent the wheel. That is really exciting and takes a lot of work off of your plate so that way you can focus on new and strategic tactics.

[00:16:48] With all of this, you do need to make sure that you understand tools for auditing using platforms like Google Analytics, Instagram Insights, Pinterest Analytics, different things like that. Use these tools to your advantage. They're there for you for a reason. Yes, you can go in and do some things manually, but really, whichever platform you're on, dive into those analytics as you are doing all of this.

[00:17:15] Make sure you use the tools available to you. So finally, wrapping all of this up, we need an action plan. How do we turn our audit findings into a clear strategic plan for the year ahead? So I've got a list here that I'm going to share with you, and this is how I'm going to go about it. So I want you to look at what times of the year did your content perform the best?

[00:17:40] One thing I wrote down for myself last year was a reminder that, hey, January content the last two years has the best. Been abysmal. It's been terrible. Um, I think I, you know, trying to think through reasoning. You guys are all probably pretty tired and wore out from the holidays and needing a bit of a break.

[00:18:02] Okay, so totally fine. But I go into it. I'm like New Year. Everybody's gonna be excited and pumped. I'm ready to join programs are ready to get started. And that doesn't happen, which is fine, but I needed to write down that reminder for myself because February is typically a really great month for us. I'm assuming because you guys are feeling refreshed and you're like, okay, now I'm ready to roll.

[00:18:28] Awesome. Prove me wrong. Please prove me wrong this year, but so look at what type of the, what times of the year did your content perform the best? What pieces of content should you share again next year or this year? What pieces of content should you expand on? this year. And then looking at which holidays do you really want to lean on this year?

[00:18:50] When you look at those four things, the next thing you know, you're going to have half, if not more, of your year planned. So if you sit down with a planner, you can buy a 12 month planner at Target, right? So, Which is what I like to do just to like, let me quickly jot down dates and then I'll plug it into my other systems.

[00:19:12] But sometimes I just like to quickly get things down on paper. And so when you go through those four things and pencil it in and be like, Oh, okay, well, October of next year, I want to repost this content and I want to build that into a series. Next thing you know, you've got a week or two of content already planned for October.

[00:19:30] And you do the same thing throughout the year with those key places and then filling in. Which holidays do I want to lean in on this year and filling that in the next thing, you know, you're looking at this and you're like, wow, it's not so daunting. It's not so daunting when I look at January or February's content of what I need to create this month because I already have.

[00:19:53] A plan in place for two out of the four weeks. That is how you really take this and you pull it all together. You look at cool. This is the strategy. Now I've done this audit. I've done this deep dive. I feel really solid about it. Maybe I've jumped into shift and gotten advice from Bree. I feel good and now I'm ready to roll and know that I have a strategic plan and I'm not going to be just like, okay, I got to fill the space.

[00:20:19] I got to post content. This is how we step into a different role in 2025 and do things differently. differently and do things that are going to help us grow and hit those big goals that we want. I'm so excited to hear your feedback on this. Please let me know when you do this. If you want a guide to help you go through this, you can download our CEO report.

[00:20:47] You can click the link below in the description or head to thrive together dot blog slash CEO dash files. So this is an end of the year report that will help you dive into this and even more and really help you just like walk through it step by step and make sure that you don't miss anything. So make sure you head there or just go and grab the show notes from this episode.

[00:21:11] And shoot us a DM, let me know what you think and let me know as you're diving through it, how it's going. All right. I'll see you guys back here soon for a new episode.

[00:21:23] If this episode helped you help us grow, leave a review, share it with a friend and tag us on social media. We can't wait to cheer you on.