2/ In the tweets following, we’re going to learn about content and how to make it work for your business - raising your online profile, hopefully removing overwhelm, removing analysis paralysis, helping you stay on a consistent schedule, and increasing the money coming into…
3/ …your business. (Which is my main goal with all of these threads- I just want girls and gays to get their money.)
As with every single piece of business advice I give, please don’t view this as an end-all and be-all guide to content planning and strategy.
4/ Look at this instead as a primer, a starting point for you to look for more information.
What is content? Content is everything in your business, honestly.
5/ Content includes but is not limited to clips, audio, photos (professional and DIY), gifs, podcasts, all social media, ad copy, website copy, newsletters, blog posts, and anything else that you post online to sell or promote your business.
6/ Even if you are a FSSW and have no intention of creating clips to sell, if you have a social media presence, a blog, or a newsletter you create content and you hopefully can find something of value in this thread.
7/ If you are a full-on content creator, your plan will obviously be much more complex and involved. If you are a dancer and only have a social media presence to plan, it will be much less complex. My goal in this thread is to open your mind to two things:
8/ You can create as much content as you want or as you decide is appropriate for your business model.
You can do this without being burned out and yanking out all your hair.
Why do you need a content creation strategy?
9/ Entrepreneurs, in my opinion, are some of the most fascinating people because we combine endless creativity with devil may care ambition. From my point of view, SWers (and we are entrepreneurs!) have these qualities in spades. We want to do it ALL. ALL THE TIME.
10/ We are idea people, creatives. We could be playing with our cat and out of nowhere get a great idea for a blog post or clip. Because of this we sometimes get ahead of ourselves.
11/ Creativity runs in fits and starts, we have a burst of manic work for two weeks and then the next month is dry as hell. Maybe that’s just me but I feel like there are a few of you out there that can relate.
12/ What creating a content strategy will do for you is allow you to breathe a little easier. You can work during your creative “flow” times and rest when you need to, knowing that you have content to release in “the bank”. A very good thing.
13/ But also consider this, creating a content strategy and calendar will allow you to stay consistent in your customers and clients eyes. You always have something “new” that is coming out to catch or hold their attention.
14/ Having that ace in the hole if shit happens in your life knowing that you don’t have to take more than the minimum time needed to post your content.
15/ Rather than logging onto social media and trying to be sexy or funny or clever to drum up business, make a clip from start to finish, come up with a blog post on Wednesday night to come out Thursday morning, or write your monthly newsletter an hour before it comes out.
16/ No judgement, I have totally done all of these things myself, believe me. That’s how I know how stressful it can be to run your business this way.
Managing Time Expectations. So how much time is this going to take?
17/ Listen, I’m a full time SWer and have been for 6 years, despite what I told my clients. This is how I make my living and feed my family and I’m a single parent with no other financial support. Because of that, the pressure is on me to always perform and get sales OR ELSE.
18/ On the upside, I don’t have a day job to take up most of my hours during the week. I work from home from my office, bed, or my favorite chair by the window, unless I’m seeing clients. Like I said, I have to hustle hard or the bills don’t get paid.
19/ But I have more time to spend hustling. Your situation will be unique to you. Maybe you have a day job and can only devote a few hours a week to your business. That’s all okay.
20/ We can make this content strategy and calendar in one (very, very long) weekend, or the process can be spread out in smaller chunks over a few weeks. It's your business and you’re in control.
21/ A Content Audit The First step you are going to need to take is to perform a content audit. This is not as scary as it sounds. Remember the notebook or laptop I had you get out in the Twitter for SWers thread? Time to grab that again. We’re going to make some lists.
22/ Begin by listing every single site you have a presence on. Twitter, Instagram, NF, OF, C4S. All of it. Make sure to add your own site and blog if you have one as well. And every site where you advertise.
23/ As best you can and without overthinking it, I want you to either check or estimate your follower count and reach on each platform as well as rating whether you would view it as super essential, essential, good, fine, or meh. Use a 1 to 10 scale if you prefer.
24/ Do not overthink this. You can not get this wrong. I never want you to let perfectionism hold you back from success. Just jot it all down in a notebook or spread sheet and let it be done, no big deal.
25/ Secondly, I want you to list every site and platform you WANT to be on, in addition to the ones that you are now utilizing. YouTube, Podcast, all clip and/or ad sites that you’ve been meaning to expand to but haven’t yet.
26/ Social media platforms that you’d like to establish a presence on. Forums. That memoir you want to write. Don’t overthink this either. Just because you write it down doesn’t mean you have to do it, and it doesn’t mean you fail if you don’t. This is a brainstorming time.
27/ If you had all the time and budget in the world, what would you WANT to do? Go nuts. This is playtime. Rate these items on a scale of 1 to 10 as well, if you like. 10 being a “must do!” and 1 being a “if I exhausted all other options, I suppose I could do this.”
28/ Lastly here, I want you to make a third list. Looking at List #2, what are THREE to FIVE easy and feasible next steps? Without overthinking, because nothing is ever set in stone and you’re the whole boss of your business, what are a small handful of realistic next steps?
29/ If you are doing this planning over the course of several days or weeks, this is a good time to take a break.
Now we are going to take a look at your content assets that you already own.
30/ These include your website(s), if you have one, any blog posts, every single social media post (don’t list them individually obviously- Tweets, Insta posts, etc will suffice as bullet point), clips you have made, ads, photos (or groups of photos), audios, written erotica.
31/ Think outside of your current scope as well. I recently remembered that I own a ton of old blog content that I had written that can easily be repurposed in this phase of my career.
32/ This may take a long time, especially if you have been in business longer than a few months and have been working hard. This is a good time to breathe and take your time. It’s okay to do this step by step.
33/ What we’re doing here is getting a good look at what we have to work with already. What you enjoy doing most. Where your skillset and natural talents lie. And also let’s not forget what makes you money.
This brings me to the final step of content inventory.
34/ Time to answer those questions. A spreadsheet is good for this because it can be added to slowly over time and stays relatively neat.
Column one: Content name
Column Two: Fun quotient
Column 3: Ease Factor
Column 4: Profitable
35/ When you are selling clips online, platforms have reports that show you your sales for each individual piece of content. So if you need to simply reference those numbers to see what made you the most money.
36/ If you’re talking about social media posts, blog posts, or if you are an in-person worker, I’m going to ask you to think if you had an increase in sales or bookings around the time you made these posts.
37/ Really try to look back through your social profiles and see engagement and if it correlates with your calendar being fuller (or your sales being higher) in the days or weeks following. I know this seems boring as hell but data is always your friend.
38/ And we’re about to use it in the next step.
If you’re chunking these down it’s a good time to take a break again. If you’re a glutton for punishment like me, let’s press on!
Identify Strengths So we took a look at our assets. Both our platforms and our content.
39/ This is a great start. In the sex industry, I always suggest playing to your strengths. That’s where we're going to start.
40/ Make a separate list or highlight your strongest platforms and what you consider to be your best content (looking at the balance between best selling and easy/fun for you to make).
These platforms are going to be what we focus on building bigger first.
41/ That is where we’re going to put our strongest focus.
Content like this is going to be what we focus on making more of. Because it’s easy, fun, and makes you lots of money. Make a note of these things and we’ll come back to them soon.
Identify Gaps.
42/ Next, let’s look at the gaping holes in our businesses. Listen, loves. If you want to have a sustainable business, there are a few things you are going to need to have.
43/ You will need your own website, a way to capture emails for your email list, a newsletter, some kind of social media presence. I’m assuming by this point you already have a product or service you are selling.
44/ Building a site, setting up a newsletter, etc is beyond the scope of this thread. But we will talk about the content therein so once you have those things up and running, you will have words, etc to fill them.
45/ For right now, make a shortlist of all the glaring gaps in your business, as discussed above. We’ll figure out how to schedule building those things shortly.
Understanding Your Client Base and their Customer Journey.
46/ In my last couple of threads, I talked about how important it was to focus on what makes you unique, as opposed to trying to fit in. I talked about finding things that are adjacent and compatible to your SWer persona that you could use to flesh out your story.
47/ I also talked about finding your voice by understanding the feel or mood you want your SWer persona to have.
Now we’re going to talk about building that bridge to find a client or customer that will want what you have to offer.
48/ In traditional business, marketing teams will often write a customer profile of who they are trying to sell and market to, down to the car they drive, hobbies they have, etc. We’re going to do the same but with a little twist.
49/ I want you to consider the kind of person that books you and/or buys your content. Can you determine an approximate age range? Can you determine what types of hobbies he enjoys? Can you imagine what his emotional needs are? Good.
50/ For me, in my previous persona, my clients were most often upper management or C-level executives, they often owned restaurants as well, they loved film, wine, liquor, food. They often dabbled in recreational weed.
51/ They were reformed bad boys who would do anything to recapture the romance and adventure of their younger days, if only for the night. They craved to be a little bit bad again, to have that permission. They were aged 45-60.
52/ Now, and this is especially important if you do any fetish work or produce any fetish content, what types of fetishes are they into? What makes those things hot to them? What is the psychology behind the fetish? What types of appointments or content do these guys enjoy?
53/ What really makes them tick? Try to flesh out as much as you can, and understand as much as you can about this.
For me, I only briefly provided submissive services at the beginning of my career before I learned that it was not a good fit for me.
54/ Many of my clients were submissive by nature. They all had their fair share of kinks, from interrogation to bond girl/villain role play, to being cucked, to being my sissy.
55/ Because I knew that a large portion of my clientele was coming to me already with these desires, I could easily reference these things in my social media (I did not make content at the time).
56/ Because I knew my clientele were mostly reformed bad boys looking for an excuse to misbehave again, I could easily strike that tone and try to tease that impulse out of them in my tweets and Instagram posts, as well as my blog.
57/ Take a look at your current clientele, who are these guys? What are they into? What are they coming to you for? (The answer is never just sex.) Keep this in mind as we move on.
Learning from Colleagues’ Content. I’ve said it previously and I’ll say it again.
58/ If you want to learn to be good at something, find those who are the best at it and study them hard. Whatever your niche, find the thought leaders, the most successful, the top-selling. Study their websites, read their blogs. Buy some content.
59/ Subscribe to their newsletters. At the very minimum, follow them on social media and select the option to receive notifications when they post or tweet. I can’t emphasize enough that by being teachable, you will increase your chances of success.
60/ I will say again, as I have before, that it is never okay to copy another SWers work, in any way, shape, or form. It is more than okay to learn their techniques and adapt them to your business.
61/ For the purposes of this content strategy exercise, I also want you to take a broader view of these things. What has this person been doing for the last few weeks/months/longer? Can you see trends of how things have evolved? How often are they releasing new content?
62/ How are they engaging their fans and followers? How are they structuring their week? Months? Years? Do they have annual events? Are they promoting industry events? Are they marketing seasonally?
These are not questions to journal on.
63/ These are things to observe over time and study.
You never want to only study one person or leader. To avoid accidentally making your business a carbon copy of another SWers, aim for at least three leaders to learn from.
64/ But even more than that is wonderful if you can manage it. As you grow in your business, you will find your new leaders will often become your peers and friends. At that time find at least three new leaders to learn from and repeat forever. There’s always more to learn.
65/ While you certainly can do this part of the process in a surface way in about an hour, expect to spend some time, I’m talking months studying learning from your chosen leaders. I’m still learning from mine.
Determine The Types of Content You Need To Make
Alright.
66/ Still with me? We’ve taken inventory of our platforms and determined the strongest ones we’re going to focus on. We’ve chosen the next (new to us) platforms we’re going to tackle.
67/ We’ve taken inventory of our content to see what we already have, what can be repackaged, bumped, or recycled. We’ve identified the type of customer we’re going to sell to. We’ve studied the thought leaders in our community that are doing similar work.
68/ Now it’s time to look at the types of content we are going to create. Time to start making tracks here.
What types of content options are there on the platforms you’ll be using?
69/ Time to take your list of current and upcoming platforms and look at what your content options are. Video? Audio? Photo? Text? Etc?
Make sure you take note of content types you don’t usually make.
70/ My opinion is that if you are on a platform, you really want to be taking advantage of all it’s features. Let’s take something basic like Instagram. On that channel, we have images and videos obviously. We have stories and we also have fleets.
71/ I KNOW that Instagram is not adult friendly and barely adult tolerant (lots of workers have lost their accounts), but bear with me here for the sake of the example.
72/ You know that in order to take advantage of everything that platform has to offer you need to be producing three types of content. Image, Video, and live “reality TV style” content for stories.
Are you following me here?
73/ Repeat the process with the other platforms you plan on focusing on for now, listing them in your notebook or in a spreadsheet in your laptop.
Determine The Right Content Mix
First let’s talk about the content mix for online content creators.
74/ Go back to your content inventory and review those numbers. What sells the best for you? I would suggest that 60-70% of your new content be in that vein. We always want to play to our strengths, remember?
75/ The other 30-40% can and should be new types of content that allow your creativity to stretch so you can find new strengths.
What about social media content?
76/ Since social media is consumed by our followers for free, it’s important to strike the right balance with building our personality and promoting our product or service.
77/ If you’re just starting out and you don’t know what to do, a good idea is to follow the 80/20 rule:
80% of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain your audience
20% can directly promote your brand.
Or if you like, you can try the rule of threes:
78/ One-third of your content promotes your business, converts readers, and generates profit. (Ad posts)
One-third of your content shares ideas and stories from thought leaders in your industry or like-minded businesses. (retweeting)
79/ One-third of your content is personal interactions with your audience (showing your personality and interacting.
Determine How Much Of Each Content Type You Need to Make
80/ I know I talked twitter to DEATH in my last thread, but here we’re talking specifically about PLANNING this content in advance.
81/ So if you know that 80% of your posts or tweets are going to be light, informative, or entertaining posts and 20% are going to be ads for your business and you know from my last thread that we’re tweeting a minimum of 5 or 6 times a day (let’s say 10 for the easy math), we…
82/ …are going to need 8 entertaining or educational tweets per day and 2 ad tweets.
If you’re posting once per day on instagram, you need 8 days of lifestyle photos to showcase your personality and 2 days (not back to back mind you) of “ad” posts.
83/ If you have a blog (and you should, no matter what your SW niche is!), you’ll need to look at how many blog posts you need to create in the coming 12 months. How often do you want to post, weekly, monthly, three times a week? Add it all up.
84/ How often will you be sending out your newsletter? Add this in, too.
Multiply that by 365 days? Getting scared yet? You don’t need to. We’re not creating all this today, we’re just getting a basic idea of what types of content need we are going to have to fill.
85/ Take your time and repeat for the handful of platforms you’re focusing on. Remember, we cant build everywhere all at once. Maintain your successful platforms and focus on one or two additional ones then repeat the process ad infinitum.
List it all out, or spreadsheet it.
86/ Get an idea of what and how much of everything you’re going to need.
How many clips? How many photos (also looking at how many sessions or shoots)? Will these photos be professional or will you handle them yourself? Audio Clips? You get the idea.
87/ Don’t be afraid to list the big number. You’re not going to have to manage this whole work load now. I’ve got a way for you to chunk it down later in this thread.
Identifying Your Team and Resources You Need Including Budgeting
88/ Once you have your big scary numbers at the ready (don’t panic!), let’s look at what it’s going to take to pull this off. Will you need to hire a photographer and schedule a shoot? How many times in the next year will you need to do that?
89/ If you’re doing photos yourself, will you need to get any equipment? (You can put together beautiful images with minimal equipment but that’s not my area of expertise.) Will you need to find a location? Props? Clothing or Costume? Will you need a mic for audio or video?
90/ Will you need editing software if you don’t already have it? List this all out as well. Later on, you’ll need to research on your own as far as cost and set your budget. Not today though.
91/ You’ll get there, but it is a good idea to have an approximate idea of what your investment will be, if any.
Create Your Workflow strategy - writing, editing, uploading, sharing on social media etc
92/ Everytime you create a piece of content (jesus christ I am so sick of typing the word content), you will need to follow the same workflow strategy. It goes like this:
Create (write and/or film, etc)
Edit
Upload/Post
Share/Promote
93/ This needs to run like a well-oiled machine to keep stress low. Plan now to follow this four step process when you have something new or repackage/recycle something old.
This is where the beauty of scheduling social media posts comes in.
94/ Let’s take a blog post for example. When you upload your blog post, you’re obviously going to tweet about it and post about it on Instagram (or you’d better, just saying).
95/ Schedule tweets for a week out from that time (ICYMI -standing for in case you missed it), a month from that time, three months from that time, and a year from that time. Remember what I said about the life cycle of a tweet is only 18 minutes?
96/ I know you’re retweeting yourself regularly but retweeting isn’t all you can do. As you create, plan the social media posts at that time.
Looking at a Year in Advance. Relevant Dates and Seasons.
97/ Back to your notebook or laptop, this time you’re going to grab a calendar, too. Starting with THE MONTH AFTER NEXT, list the next twelve rolling months, one at the top of each notebook page or in a spreadsheet, ending a year and two months from now.
98/ As it write this, it’s January, so the first month I would be listing is March.
Why are we doing this? Well, we need time to create all this wonderful content of course. We’re trying to be forward looking in our business, not focusing only on this week.
99/ I understand how that goes and I often do it myself. Hell, I wanted to have this thread done last night and here it is after midnight the next night and I’m still working on it.
100/ We want to start building a cushion of time and content where you are always working on content that will be coming out 2 to 3 months from now. It’s like money in the bank and I promise you will relieve your stress level.
101/ We’re going to start by filling in the static dates that you already know you are coming up. Things like the winter holidays, your birthday, valentine’s day if you’re a romantic sort, summer holidays, back to school (great for DILF content lol).
102/ Also industry events if you attend them or would like to attach your name and persona to them. Are there contests that are coming up on your clip platform that you want to participate in? What about cultural or sports events if they apply to your persona? Star Wars day?
103/ Halloween? Marylin Monroe’s birthday? Have fun with this.
If you are an in person worker, are you planning any tours? If you have a general idea of those dates pencil them in now so you can plan social media posts around them.
Can you think seasonally?
104/ Would your SWer character express their visuals differently in spring as opposed to autumn? Would you tweet about how you have spring fever or how the first snow makes you feel warm and cozy? How could your video content change? Your blog posts? Your newsletters?
105/ This is especially suited to more romantic, sensual characters.
I’m not saying you HAVE to do any one of these things. It’s a fun way to open up options and plan out your year. To get your creative juices flowing.
Picking a theme for each month
106/ If you don’t want to go that way, you can instead pick a loose theme for each month and focus your ideas around that. You can tease the theme ahead of time and create excitement with your audience.
107/ And if your fanbase is excitedly looking forward to “Flogging February” every year, well you can imagine how that can affect your business positively. :)
Brainstorming Content Ideas.
This is the easy part for all of us as creatives and entrepreneurs.
108/ This is the part where no ideas are bad ideas. Looking at each month, each event or theme, jot down every single idea you can think of. Just set a timer and go. Take breaks when you need to. And go again. Be ridiculous. Be unrealistic. Be wild with this.
109/ You’ll edit it later.
Create Your Editorial Calendar
Now it’s time to create our editorial calendar. You can find templates online or head back to your spreadsheets.
List every month, broken down by week.
110/ From all your previous hard work, you are going to s-l-o-w-l-y start putting this puzzle together, starting with the static dates like holidays, your birthday, and other calendar events.
Next put in your newsletter. When and how often will you send it out?
111/ Next your blog posts? When and how often?
Next your clips and audios if you make them? When? How often?
Keep going slowly. I know this can be overwhelming and you don’t have to get it all done tonight.
112/ You don’t need to add social media posts to this part of the plan, but after you have a basic template of your year fleshed out, you can download a social media scheduler and start scheduling posts that fit your upcoming content.
An Example an Editorial Calendar
113/ Confusing? Yeah, babe, I know. Let me try to break it down this way.
It’s January as I write this. So this is how an editorial calendar could look:
March 2021
Week One
Photoshoot - spring dress and pastel lingerie for release in April
Week Two
Newsletter goes out.
114/ Promoting upcoming tour/last months content/previewing next months
Week Three
First day of spring! Gingham dress JOI
115/ Saint Patricks Day - green micro bikini photo set on OF/Special “never before seen” pic sent to my newsletter list with a “Happy Saint Patricks Day” Message
Week Four
Blog Post - March Diary - naughty vignettes of what I got up to in March.
116/ Finalize Plan and start creating content this week for June 2021
April 2021
Week One
April Fools Day! Post naked selfie in clown nose/ Release best of blooper reel of last years clips.
Easter-Bunny tail but worship video
117/ Easter weekend: all selfies will have a hidden easter egg in them. The first to comment that they found it gets a free nude!
Easter Sunday church sex clip.
Week Two
Release first photos of photoshoot taken in March week 1/ Announce Tour in May
Week Three
118/ Spring fever content sale.
Week Four
DIY photo shoot for release in June. Blog Post: April’s Diary
Finalize Plan and start creating content this week for July 2021
May 2021
Week One
Beltane! It’s a fertility festival! Pagan inspired sex rite clip.
Week Two
119/ Tour Starts! Do sexy travel vlogs (to be posted after I safely return home)
Week Three
Welcome home celebration! Short free clip thanking all for a successful tour.
Week Four
Summer starts! Post travel vlogs!
120/ Finalize plan and start creating content this week for August 2021
You want to aim to always be looking ahead at least two or three months. Finalizing your plan, calendar and starting to create your content.
121/ That way when “August 2021” rolls around you can rest easy knowing that you made that shit in MAY, you know exactly when it’s coming out, and remember we have a streamlined plan to take it from creation to sharing on our socials.
122/ If you plan it all out in advance, it’ll run much more like clockwork.
Carving out time to create your content library.
A quick note.
123/ Obviously in all this planning and other bullshits, you’re going to have to carve out the actual time to MAKE the videos, write the newsletter, etc. This is why I like to plan it out and batch it.
124/ If I’m writing blog posts for an afternoon, I am writing nothing but four or five blog posts that afternoon.
125/ If it’s a morning that I’m putting together newsletters, I am logging into my newsletter client and putting together as many newsletters as I have time to do that morning.
126/ If it’s a filming day, well the makeup is on and the hair is relatively done, so I’m changing outfits and filming all I can. If I’m taking photos at a location, I’m taking as many different seeming photos as I can. You get the point.
127/ The actual creation is done in batches, to be slowly decanted later. I often say this. It’s because I really like wine.
Distribute and Market
You did it babe, you built your content strategy, created a content plan and set up an editorial calendar.
128/ As your whore mom, I’m proud of you. If you didn’t get it all done, it’s okay, this is a fuck ton of info. You can take your time and parse out the steps over weeks or longer.
Remember, you can alter your calendar at any time. You’re in charge, as always.
129/ Now it’s just a matter of uploading, posting, and sharing your wonderful stuff. Expanding your reach, building your client base, and making you more money which is always the goal.
This is, again, by no means a comprehensive guide to all things content planning.
130/ I’m sure I missed things and/or there are other ideas on how to do this that I’m not aware of. If anyone else has any tips to share, please let me know and I’ll add them to the thread.
