This One Move Will Get You Excited About Creating Food Content Again

Photo by Elevae

Every month, I hop on calls with some of my industry colleagues to chat through things happening in the food world, ideas for offers, or to chat through things they’re experiencing in their own businesses. One of them is a book marketer, and we can’t leave a call without talking about how much cookbook authors loathe marketing. Some of it is that you don’t know what you don’t know. But some of it is you’re overwhelmed and feel like you have to do all the things just to keep up—my book marketing friend would say: Yeah, you kind of have to.

I’m not talking about running in figure eights going nowhere. But it’s also not realistic to tell you that you don’t have to worry about marketing until your cookbook comes out, and then never again. I often get book proposals with promotional plans filled with “I will” statements i.e. start an email newsletter, pitch media outlets, but the person hasn’t started any of those things yet. Once you get a book deal, content marketing (the buzz you create about yourself) doesn’t get easier. I’d say it’s harder. There’s added pressure to perform at a high level, and if you’ve been dinking around with content, it’ll feel like you’ve been swept up in hurricane.

So, how can you change this? You need a content calendar. Clients will often tell me they don’t have time to create one or they love to post things in the moment. They’re also the same ones who tell me they don’t have time to work on an email opt-in or to be consistent on social media. 

Let’s flip our attitude around and look at the 3 ways a content calendar can uplevel your marketing game and get you excited about creating food stories again.

Removes Decision Fatigue

The biggest hiccup with creating consistent content is decision fatigue. When you don’t have a plan, you spend all your time thinking about the perfect piece of content, instead of creating it. You’ve probably had one post you poured a lot into that didn’t do very well, so you want to make sure that whatever you put out now, is the best it can possibly be. So, you just brainstorm and decide absolutely nothing about what you’ll actually create. Why put out something mediocre when you can wait for something better?

It doesn’t really work like that. 

Eventually, you have to choose, and the more you create, the easier it will be to figure out what to post and what might not be a good fit. 

One way to do this is to create content pillars or categories, similar to Jenna Kutcher’s JK5 Method. By choosing five storytelling buckets, you can rotate through each, so you’re never posting too much of one thing. So, if recipes are a category for you, then every 5th post would include a recipe. That frees you up to create other stories. Maybe, it’s sharing about your cookbook writing process or spotlighting what you’re currently reading. Whatever you choose, just choose. 

You can pivot whenever you need to, but by not choosing anything, you’re making a choice anyway. Might as well decide to do something instead of sitting on the sidelines.

Frees You Up to Make Better Content for Your Audience

Here’s the thing. When you’re scrambling from one post to the next, you’re not giving yourself a chance to sit back and think: How can I serve my people better with my content?

A content calendar is the best way to find holes in your content, so you don’t lean heavily into one content category. Because content isn’t just blog posts, email newsletters, and posting on Instagram. It’s what those pieces are doing for your audience. You can create round-ups of your best blog posts, freebies just for your email list, or even collaborations with fellow food folks your audience may not have heard of yet. 

Someone who does this brilliantly is relationship expert, Matthew Hussey. He’s constantly creating free to very low-cost guides for his audience, and his weekly newsletters are oozing with valuable takeaways, even if you never purchase a single thing from him. And he talks about the same handful of things over and over again, but each time he introduces a topic, there’s a slightly different angle. 

By creating a roadmap for yourself, you’re able to provide people with more than a lame blog post that you throw up just so you have something up. You’re able to make transformational content for your people that they won’t be able to shut up about. Isn’t that why you’re doing this in the first place?

Allows You to Create a Cohesive Strategy 

When you’re posting in the moment all the time or loosely planning content, it gets messy quickly. And you’re not creating things on the internet just to create things on the internet. Your content should support your bigger business goals. So, it should lead to your email newsletter, another blog post, or an action you’d like people to take i.e. like, share, follow, buy etc. 

Sometimes, something just hits you in the moment, and you have to post about it. But for the most part, scheduling content, be it blog posts, email newsletters, or social media, should make your life easier. If you have a schedule, you can see the calendar at a glance and what promotions or seasonal content you need to focus on. 

Amy Porterfield shares an email list building strategy where you have set periods through the year just for growing your list. The idea is to create brand new content and teachings that would support whatever your opt-in is. Instead of haphazardly throwing out a few posts pushing people to your email list, you could craft killer content across all of your platforms for an entire week or two.

Something else a calendar allows you to do is promote content from one platform to another. You don’t have to create 30 new Instagram posts and Stories a month. Plan out how you’re going to promote the content you’re creating or are a part of. So, your email newsletter could point people to your latest blog post or podcast interview. It should be an ecosystem where you’re constantly sending people to another place to receive more insights and value.

Posting with purpose also gives you that extra wind to show up. It’s only when you’re aimlessly posting hoping something hits just right, that you’re frustrated and feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. But with a content calendar, you have a plan, and you just work the plan.

How to Create Your Own Content Calendar

Content isn’t what’s stopping you from reaching your goals. It’s how people will find you, follow you, and want to work with you. There are SO many ways that can happen, but content isn’t the enemy. 

You can take a regular old digital or paper calendar and map out your schedule if you’d like, or you can the content calendar template I’ve created for you here. It’s a complete scheduling system, so you can track the progress of an individual piece, where it’ll be used, and what type of promotional content it is along with a full publishing calendar and so much more.

Grab your free download now, plus my 5-day series Writing Gold, and let’s get moving.