Keeping your content organized can help you with knowing how to share the resources with your donors and community, but also help you with how you repurpose your content! Learn how to use this amazing template, then grab it and start organizing and reusing your content!

What you'll learn:

→ what information should be on your tracking sheet
→ why its important to track content
→ how to use the spreadsheet to track tasks

Want to skip ahead? Here are key takeaways:

[4:00] Core Information On your spreadsheet, include core information like episode #, title, description, links, and other important information that you use. This can be a one-stop location to easily go back to for information you may need later on.
[7:55] Task Oriented You can also include information on tasks that need to get done for this specific project. Have a checklist for everything that needs to get done by everyone that works on this project. This will be helpful if someone new needs to step in and help out.

Resources

Content Tracker

Full Transcript

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So we've talked a lot on this podcast about content and the importance of creating content and the power in repurposing it. And so today, I wanted to talk a little bit about how I keep my content organized so that I know what's been done, how to come back to it, what kinds of things I've talked about in those pieces and give you a tool and a resource, which is just a Google sheet by the way, to kind of keep you organized and on track. And also for you to just really be able to have a resource for all of the things that you've been creating. So if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, I have a question about this, or that, it's a really easy place for you to go in and search for the things that you've created. So you can provide those valuable resources to your potential donors, or volunteers or team members that might need support with how to talk about your organization and what you do. So that is what we are going to go through today. It'll be a quick episode, I promise. But I think a really impactful one that you can implement today to pull all your content together. Now, before we get into this episode, it is brought to you by our online fundraising virtual Summit, y'all it kicks off on Monday, and I couldn't be more excited. We have so many experts coming to talk to you about how to build, plan, launch and grow your recurring monthly donor business campaign, all of the things. It's going to be incredible. We're not only going to teach you strategies for how to create the program, and make sure you're talking to the right people. But also then once they're in your program, how do you take them to the next level? How do you get them to give additional gifts and increase their giving? It's going to be amazing, and I can't wait. So grab your free ticket at onlinefundraisingsummit.com. I can't wait to see you there next week, it's going to be amazing. Let's get into the episode. 

[INTRO] You're listening to the digital marketing therapy podcast. I'm your host, Sami Bedell-Mulhern. And each week, I bring you tips from myself and other experts, as well as hot seats with small business owners and entrepreneurs to demystify digital marketing, and get you on your way to generating more leads and growing your business. 

[Sami Bedell-Mulhern] So tracking content is super important. Because after time, we go on, we've been building out all of these pieces, we kind of forget what we talked about. Or maybe there was something we knew we wanted to dive deeper in. But did we already talk about that? And then also, how do we know what to repurpose, right? There's been great episodes on repurposing content and just adding more information to it, right? Like talking about summer activities for kids, maybe we just take that same blog post and add to it every year. So we're still driving traffic to an existing post that we've already created. It makes life easier, right? But it's hard to remember what we've done. And it's hard to really be able to just kind of comb through our website and remember the content that we have. Plus, if you're using Google ads, you might have elements that you forgot you had, that would be great for you to run ads to. I recently went through a bunch of content on my website, opt-ins, and things of that nature. And there was some brilliant things that I came up with a while ago that I totally forgot I had done that we're thinking about bringing back again. The work has already been done. It’s now just about kind of cleaning it up and bringing it out to you all again. So it happens to all of us. So what I have specifically for my podcast, because that's my main content driver, is a spreadsheet, and in the show notes for this episode at thefirstclick.net/174, there will be a link to a Google sheet, which just has kind of a bunch of basic headers like we're going to talk about today. That you can kind of take and create and make your own. You just have to click file, make a copy, and then you can edit it and make it your own. But here are some of the things that I make sure to include in my spreadsheet. So obviously, the episode number and the title. And when I think about kind of pulling this all together, I really want to think about what are the different things that I'm going to want to sort by and search by, like that's the beauty of a Google sheet right, or an Excel document. So there are a lot of columns in this. And that is because I really want to make sure that I can clearly go back and find the information that I need. And this sheet is also for multiple purposes. So some of it is for my editor to be able to pull the information that he needs to publish our podcast episodes.

So episode number is one column, the title is another and then the description is the next one. Those are all kind of pretty straightforward. I also like to put the date that it's live on my podcast and also the date that it's live on YouTube. Now it might be redundant. And most of the time, it's exactly the same. But just in case something is going on, or maybe we have something else that's happening, I like to make sure that all of that is there. Then I also have my YouTube links, and my website link and my website pretty link. So pretty link is, like I say, this is at thefirstclick.net/174, the actual URL for this episode is going to be a heck of a lot longer. But I like to have shorter links that I can share much more easily, like on this podcast. So it makes it easier for you to remember so you can go back to it. So all of that is there. I also like to include on here what my CTA is, so what's my call to action that I'm including in the episode and on the show notes. And I think the reason why this is important is because if you change your calls to action, so maybe your donation language changes or your registration language changes, it's easier to go back to the spreadsheet and see all of the different places that that call to action exists, so that you can go back and update it on those avenues. Now, not to get too nitty gritty here. We also recommend, if you can, on your website, creating things like global modules, so when you change it in one place, it changes everywhere else. But if you can't do that, then having the CTA column is really important, so that you can know where exactly you need to go back to make those updates. I also like to include a link to the freebie or information about the freebie if there is something in there again, just so I know how to go back and make updates as things go moving forward. I have a lot of guests on my podcast. So I do like to have a column that calls out who my guests are, so that it's easy for me to remember, they're usually in the title so I can search for them there. But it's also a great place to have them and contact information. Really, I want this to be one stop shop for how I'm promoting the podcast in my content, but also just making it easy to go back to reach out to them if I need to. And then I have columns that say like posted on LinkedIn, posted in my Facebook group, wherever it is that you are posting your content, I like to put the date in there for when it was posted. So again, it's usually the date that the podcast goes live. But I like to put that in there because sometimes I reshare content again. So maybe we're getting you know geared up for giving Tuesday, I might want to go back and share the Giving Tuesday episode that I did last year. So then I can update that date in the spreadsheet. So I know when I shared it last so I'm not sharing the same content too much over and over and over again. So those are kind of some of those core things. 

From a like am I getting things done perspective, I also have columns that are, you know, are the Pinterest graphics created? Are the headliners created? So headliners for us are the audio grams, it could be graphics for social media, like are all of those things done, which kind of helps me a little bit with task management. We do obviously track that in our project management tool. But once that podcast is closed out, it's not showing up for me. And so it's great to have everything in this spreadsheet so that I can kind of really track what's been done and what hasn't been done. Now, depending on how many people are involved in your process, you might also have columns that are more task oriented, like audio files are ready, show notes are ready to be created. Or research is done. And we're ready to now go into the writing phase, the writing phase is done. So you might have checklists for different parts of the process, depending on how many people, maybe have a volunteer who's writing the post. And then somebody from your team is reading and editing it, somebody else is publishing it to the website and somebody else is supposed to review it right, you can have like checkboxes for all of those things as well, to ensure that everything is getting done. And then for you, you have this quick snapshot of everything that has gone on.

So that is how I kind of structure my content spreadsheet and my content tracker. I like to have it there because we have so many things going on. It's hard to remember all of the things that we have to do. It's hard to remember all of the things that we did. And so this tracker is great. So I will again like I said this template will be at thefirstclick.net/174 for you to take and make it your own, but I hope that you will integrate it into your process so that you have like a place to go. So then what I do is, if I have a client or a customer or somebody who's like, hey, you know, I'm really struggling with this, or I'm working on a proposal for somebody, or I'm talking to a donor, and they bring up a pain point, I can say, You know what, I have got this great piece of content that I want to send to you that's going to help you with this. And all I have to do is go to that spreadsheet, click, well, I am on a Mac. So Apple F, I think it's Ctrl. F, if you're not, I'm not quite sure, search for like one of those keywords, it'll pop up those topics for you, you've got it all there, you've got your URL there that you can easily send off, you know what the resources are that are attached to it, you can easily send those off. And you're not then spending all this time kind of going through your website to try to find the content that you need. I also love it from a standpoint of turnover. We don't always have the same people that are helping us with the project. So when everything is in one space, everybody can have eyes on it and see it and be able to effectively use the content that you're spending all this time and effort creating, we want to make sure we're using it as much as possible. Now, the last thing that I will kind of say about this spreadsheet is you can make it work however it needs to work for your organization. So if you have a different project management tool that you want to put it all in, please feel free to do that. This is meant to work for you in the way that you work in your business. So take the core strategies that I'm sharing with you and pull them into what makes sense for you. It does not have to be in a Google Sheet. But it's just the tool that we use and seem to love. So there you have it, my content tracking tool, which is a very fancy Google Sheet. I hope that this has been helpful. This has been a super quick episode, but just an organizational piece that I think can be critical in helping you with maximizing on the content that you are already creating. I hope if you liked this episode that you will subscribe if you're not already wherever you listen. New episodes come out every Tuesday. And please leave us a five star review. While you're at it. We really appreciate it helps us just support more nonprofits in the amazing work that you all are doing for now. I'll see you in the next one.