Transcription
This is exactly what we're all going to do in May on Instagram, on TikTok because we need a new era of content.
Okay, April was rough. I feel like with content right now, what we're all needing here at the office is we need to actually start having more fun. And I feel like our social media profiles, our Instagram or TikTok, like when you look at our accounts, it's not us enough. Like it's missing us. Like our sense of humor, our personality, our opinions. Like you should really think of it, which might sound weird, but when you look at your Instagram and TikTok, you should think of it as it's like a Pinterest board of you, of your thoughts, your opinions, your advice, your mistakes, your life. Like, I think sometimes we're content strategizing too close to the sun, and we're losing the plot, and we're not like having fun and enjoying the journey, and content is just feeling complicated and like confusing. And we're going to have fun in May. And of course, we're going to grow in social media. Like May is going to be a big month. I can feel it. I know I said this in April, but April has nothing on May. May is going to be a good vibe on social media.
So, today we are doing our monthly installment. The last episode of every month is the next month's content strategy. So, it's the May content strategy episode today. I'm so excited. I have built out, of course, your content calendar, your posting strategy, the vibe, the habits, everything for May. So, I do your content strategy so you don't have to. I'm excited. So, I think without further ado, let's just go over to the desk. I'll share my screen and we'll go through the content strategy for May and we're going to do after hours today. I have a couple of updates. Busy blooming like housekeeping office updates.
If you're new, by the way, I should say welcome to Busy Blooming. This is your digital office of social media. We clock in every single week here honestly at Wednesday or Thursday. It kind of depends on the week, but we clock in midweek here for our social media and content creation meeting. The Busy Blooming Podcast is actually twice a week. On Mondays, we're in HQ. We grab a coffee every Monday morning and we go through what's happening, what's trending, what's going on that week. And then over here on YouTube and Spotify, we have a midweek meeting, which is things like content strategy, state of social media, what's happening this month, and a busy blooming. You always stay on the pulse of what's working, trending, and happening on social media. So, make sure to grab your desk. Subscribing is grabbing your desk. If you're new to the office, welcome. Introduce yourself down below to your new co-workers. And I think without further ado, let's just clock in. Let's get into our May content strategy. I'm excited.
Something that we've been talking about so much this year so far, which I think is one of the most important content strategies right now, is realizing that AI search is fundamentally changing the way that people are discovering brands and creators and content online. Whether it's Chad GPT, Perplexity, Gemini, people are using those as search engines. It's not just Google anymore. And they're asking for reviews and recommendations, even creators to follow directly from those AIs. And as a creator, it's so important that your brand shows up in those answers. We've all heard of SEO, but AEO stands for answer engine optimization, and it is, I think, the biggest underutilized opportunity for creators right now. That's why I'm so excited that today's episode is sponsored by HubSpot. They have the best free resources for creators and you guys. They have released a free tool called the AEO grader that shows you exactly how these AI platforms perceive and represent your brand behind the scenes. My favorite part about it is that it's not just a vague overview. It gives you a score out of a 100 based on five critical dimensions. Sentiment, presence, quality, brand recognition, and market position. The reality is right now is that we live in something called the zeroclick funnel where if somebody asks Chad GPT for the best tool for X, they'll get a full answer without ever having to search or click on a website. And so you need to ensure that AI has the right impression of you and your brand. I personally love the sentiment part of this tool because it's so interesting to see how the AI talks about you with such a good temperature check on your brand and like your digital presence. HubSpot creates the most incredible tools for creators and people who are building brands online. So definitely go check this out. It's completely free to use. I will link it down below. And honestly, we all need to add in AEO to our strategy. And I'm so curious to see how AI is perceiving all of our brands. Thank you so much to HubSpot for sponsoring today's episode. And let's get into the video. Let's just get right into it.
So firstly, every time I do a content strategy, I want to back it up with some data of like why are we doing this in May? And one thing I'll talk about at Busy Blooming, of course, is what is working right now on social media. So going into May, there's two big themes I've pulled and infiltrated throughout our strategy. So the first one we are taking over from last month which is just the constant in 2026 with the creator economy that focused brands with clear topics are winning in 2026. It is, dare I say, the year of the niche. We just talked about this last month, interest media. And whether it is like YouTube removing their trending page or Gary Vee doing a talk about the future of social media or Adams, the CEO of CEO of Instagram talking about social media. Like everything is screaming at us that creators that have very focused topics and very clear brands are winning in 2026. It's just the way that social media is going. So, going into May, just like check in like, okay, are my topics clear? Do I have a clear brand? Like, is this cohesive? And try to, we've said this a million times, but not think of your social media as a like creative representation of you and your interests, but it really truly is a business and a storefront that needs to be cohesive. Not pigeon holing yourself into one topic, but building a cohesive brand with multiple topics that probably work together for the same target audience. So, first and foremost, focus brands with clear topics works. We already know that. But the second thing that's working right now is FaceTime energy casual content. And I pulled this article from Rolling Stone that I'll talk about next week in the state of social media, but it goes into basically saying that FaceTime style, FaceTime casual energy content is really working right now. And as we just talked about, AI is like changing everything to do with social media and content and just everything in general. But when it comes to social media, I think because of AI, people are really loving the content that feels very human, for lack of a better phrase. And going into May, I really want us to take this to heart of okay, this like human casual energy, FaceTime energy. That's what's working right now. And I think a lot of the content we are seeing on social media is very like soulless, I guess. I don't know how else to describe it, but it's just like purely aesthetic. There's no connection. There's no relatability. There's like nothing deep to connect on. And I think the more that we can lean into that in May, the better.
So, okay, context. All that being said, this is our May strategy. So, the goal for May is we are going to build an inner circle in your corner of social media. So, your Instagram, your TikTok, YouTube as well. It's going to be an inner circle. It's like a group chat. It's the group chat again about a couple of topics. And in May, we want to build a cult-like following everybody talks about. But you really want your social media profiles to feel like every time you make a video, you're not reintroducing yourself. You're not giving a bunch of context. You're not having these like super scripted hooks and AI sounding hooks and you're creating content with the assumption that the people who are consuming your content know you, love you, think you're hilarious, they're obsessed with you, but also they've been there. So when they come across your content, they almost feel like they're like missing out on something when you're talking and you're talking about something you just talked about yesterday or you're just like creating a piece of content being like you guys, okay, today we're doing this at the office and there's no context. You're just creating for the inner circle and it kind of creates that FOMO feeling and inner circle energy, FaceTime energy, which is really important. So that's the goal for May is to make your social media profiles an inner circle and your corner of social media, the you coded corner of social media as Alist would say.
Okay, so one thing that we're going to really want to focus on in May is defining your target audience and getting really really strict on this. We didn't talk about this last month, but with this whole vibe of trying to create an inner circle, it's really important to think about who you're talking to and it's going to help so much. I always forget to do this sometimes and it's really easy I think as creators to fall into this trap where you feel like you're talking to the abyss of social media like you're just talking to TikTok and so what happens is you kind of dilute your brand and your personality and like sometimes you feel like you have to create a million disclaimers and like give a bunch of context and reintroduce yourself. If you instead when you sit down to create a video and talk to the camera, there's a person in your head that you're talking to. There's either a creator. You could talk to me. If I'm your target audience, talk to me. Think about me. I sometimes think about like uh JC Marie who I love. Sometimes I think, okay, I'm going to talk like to her in this video because established creators like that, like that's who my target audience is for this one video. So, it could be a creator that you know of or it could be somebody you make up in your head. So, really think about, okay, the people who I want to watch this video, who are watching this video, first of all, are obsessed with you. They have the same sense of humor as you. They just get it. Like they just get it. You don't need a million disclaimers. But also, you know exactly what they're struggling with, what they're going through, what they like, what they don't like. So, for example, you're not just giving generic protein recipes to the whole platform of TikTok. You're giving protein recipes for vegetarian 9 to 5 girlies who work in the office every single day and they're on a budget. And that's going to completely change the tone and the vibe and bring that like inner circle energy to your content. So for example, for me, how I do this is when I'm talking about Claude, for example, I'm not talking to the abyss of TikTok and Instagram about Claude. I'm talking to you, the people who create on social media, who are content creators, who are social media managers. I also do talk in a specific way and I have a specific sense of humor. So when I am creating content about Claude, everything I'm saying is for social media. It's all surrounding social media. It's for people who are similar to me. And the way we talk about it is like funny and different. And that's the whole point about creating your inner circle. So get really strict on your target audience.
Okay. Next, the posting strategy. So how are we like actually going to do this? Okay. Here we go. The posting strategy for me. Two content pillars plus inner circle energy plus less than 60-second videos 60 seconds or less. Okay, that is the posting strategy. So last month we did content templates. You can do that for this as well. When it comes to content pillars, I have a kind of a, you know, more broad way of looking at them because after just working with so many people and then being in HQ and talking like we all are just, we know each other here. We're in office and I feel like everyone is so different of what they need in a content strategy. Everyone's mind works so differently. And when it comes to content pillars, you might find it helpful to have the content pillar of skincare. For me, I feel like that is too high level and I need a specific content pillar that is like hot takes on social media or my routines as a founder, like things like that. So, when it comes to content pillars for the month of May, pick two and we're going to rotate between those two. You can either do a content template like we did last month where you have a topic and a style. That's you have two of those content pillars. Or you could do a series. One of your content pillars could be a series. We've been talking so much about in HQ, the whole hook of I'm going to run an experiment for 30 days. Like that could be one of your content pillars. And then the other one could be your outfits of the day for work. Some thought starters for what your content pillars could be. You could do my hot takes on a series of your journey with mistakes I've made about what I'm doing too. How to, your guide to, it could be ideas like meals, outfit inspo, it also could be a series. So, for your content pillars, some thought starters, just pick two buckets that you're going to create from. And again, everything you create is this like inner circle vibe. So, for example, your content pillars could be my hot takes on the social media and creator economy industry. And then the other one is how to use Claude for the social media. They're very specific of like who you're talking to. Another example of two content pillars for May could be reviewing the new fashion drops for corporate girles for under $100 and then your outfit of the days for working your 9 to 5 in Toronto. It could also be two series. You could show your weight loss journey for 2026 and then the other one could be meal ideas like whatever you want to do. So pick two content pillars and have some fun with this. Like make it as specific or high level as you need. I I'll let me show you mine. Actually, these might not make any sense, but let me just share. This might help one person. So, this is my these are my content pillars for Busy Blooming's account and mine. So, the first one I'm going to do is how to use Claude for social media and content. The other one's going to be the life of running social media's office. This is going to make no sense, but I want to do things like showing my workday and showing like the tech I'm using and the processes I'm using. Um, mindsets and habits that I do, like founder hour, things like that. Talk about mistakes I've made like building this podcast, Busy Blooming. I want to do like outfit of the days when I'm going to film with Maddie, showing when something's new, updated in HQ. Like again, bringing that like inner circle vibe of my work life. That's one of my pillars. Busy Blooming's content pillars are going to be you guys. We're doing this series that I think you're gonna find so funny. This is like this is inner circle vibes because people are either going to take this seriously or not on social media. We're doing a Claude at the office like skit dock series thing on busy blooming account. So that's one of our pillars. So it's kind of a series and then the other one is just what's happening in social media like just news updates things like that. So those are so those are my content pillars. So, posting strategy for May, pick two content pillars, two topics, series, templates, whatever you want to do.
Okay, so now that we've got those down, let's talk about the style of content. Personally, what I'm going to be doing in May is video content that is 60 secondsish or less, like shorter videos. And so the vibe of the content in May, I think to build this energy we're talking about should be no like hooks, you know, like I I'm a hook hater, okay? When people are like, "This is the biggest mistake I made or your content's not bad. You just need this one thing." Like, we're not doing that in May. That's not giving inner circle energy. That's giving you're talking to people who you don't know and they don't know you. Instead, you'd start the video by saying, "You guys, this is the biggest mistake that I am dying to tell you." You know what I mean? So, no like generic hooks or really no hooks at all. No rigid scripts. Like, no, it sounds like you're reading a script or AI wrote it. Like, we don't do that here. You're banned. Get them banned. No overexplaining in your content. Like, for example, if I were to make a video about Claude, I would start the video by saying, "Okay, here's module two of how to make your content calendar on Claude." And then I would say, "By the way, I'm Tess. I'm a social media strategist. I've worked in social media. Like, people already know that. This is the inner circle. You just get right into it. So, no overexplaining, no context, no reintroductions. I would personally prioritize video because I think it's the best way to build this like connection in our circle. And I'm going to do every piece of content is like 60 seconds or less just because I think that is what's working right now. At least for me, what I have found, the longer videos are not working as well as like 60 seconds or less. So, that's what I'm going to be doing this month and what I'd recommend doing. And when it comes to like the style of the editing of the content, being FaceTime energy and casual and like this whole inner circle vibe, doesn't mean low quality. It doesn't mean that you can't have gorgeous editing. And if that's something you love to do and you really want to be a part of your brand, do it. There's an example here on the screen. Like I love this. It's all about the how you say it, the energy. It's not necessarily the look of the content. It's your vibe, your energy, all of that. So, you can edit if you want to have the big text, all of that. But if you don't, it's a great month to be a little more casual on camera, use your front camera, and just like talk with your coffee, whatever it is.
Okay, so May content pillars examples. I have some examples here that are hyperl. If you're in HQ, you can click through. But here's just some examples on the screen of I love this creator. He was our Monday meeting in HQ, our like creator of the week highlight. I'm obsessed with him, Zach, of this is a perfect example of the inner circle I'm talking about. He starts all his videos with like, "Hey, poodles today. Happy Wednesday. Here's my outfit of the day." I'm obsessed with him. Another great example is a journey. I'm running an experiment for 30 days. If I lock in on my goals, I have myself. Here's an example of like how to use Claude. It's very like this inner circle FaceTime energy. And then Mickey Cash Flow, who I'm obsessed with, is such a good blueprint for this whole inner circle FaceTime energy.
Okay, so the content calendar for May, all you're going to do, same as last month, rotate between pillar one, pillar two, and an on the brand trend on Sunday. If you ever need trends, every single Friday, I do a trends and content ideas report for May. I will align the content ideas reports in HQ to this strategy as well. So like it makes sense.
Okay, going into the habits because I always love to do some habits, mental health habits, content habits. So the content habit for May is going to be stop gatekeeping yourself. Okay, we need to stop gatekeeping yourself. You are probably not showing you enough in your content. Check in with yourself. Are you hiding behind scripts and hooks and strategy and editing and all these things? And is your content you enough? Like, does it really represent you? And for the month of May, I just feel like it's time to have fun with content. Again, think of your social media as a Pinterest board of your thoughts, your opinions, your ideas. Like, it's so uniquely you and really like have fun with content and enjoy the journey this month. I feel like content recently for me and I know yesterday we had our live in HQ and one of the prompts was everyone submit like one word of how you're feeling with content right now. If you were there the words that were populating in the word cloud were like overwhelmed, in a rut, flopping, confused, overthinking, spiraling. Like it was a dark place yesterday in the live thinking about content right now. And I think it's because we're being overly strategic. We're not tapping into our uniqueness like of what makes you you, what makes you unique. And so stop geeking with yourself and actually have fun with content. Like content creation, create being creative is supposed to be fun. Okay. And then our mindset habit of the month. I'm going to take last month's into this as well just because I loved it so much is having one social media free day per week. Like we are just going to have one day off of social media or at least one day a week. If you worked down to five, weekends can be hard. So, whenever you want, but have one day of no social media for the week. Also, these pictures on the screen, like this is us. We're so back. Like, in May, we're so back. This little dog in the corner with the croc on his head. That's our vibe for May. Like, you know.
Okay, anyways, a bit of an overview. Okay. Content focus for May. Creating an inner circle on your profiles. FaceTime energy. Posting structure is two pillars with 60 seconds or less videos inner circle energy. Content habit is stop gatekeeping yourself and mindset habit is one social media free day per week. That is our May content strategy going into the rest of this. So if you're in Busy Blooming HQ, you can download this PDF. You also there is a workbook. So, I won't go into it, but it's 10 more slides of content ideas, AI prompts if you want to use AI to plan. There's b there's basically a step-by-step workbook I can show you. Last month's looked like this. So, it's like designing your templates, all of that. So, anyways, if you want to go check that out, you can go into busy HQ and that is our May content strategy. I'm so excited about this. If you have any questions about May, please use the comment section as always down below. And I'm just so excited. So, I think without further ado, let's just clock out of the meeting. I have a little bit of like a business founder new thing that I've done um over the last couple of weeks that I wanted to share. So, if you want to hear about what's new, a busy blooming, keep watching. If you don't, then please feel free to clock out of the meeting and thanks for being here and let's have an amazing May.
Okay, welcome to a little after hours business update from from me. I'm so excited. So, something I'm so excited to share with you. This has been over a year in the works. So, I don't know if you guys have heard me talk about Busy Blooming HQ a million times over the last almost a year since it's been launched. And I actually hosted when I launched Busy Blooming. It was hosted on something called Circle. And if anyone wants to ever start like a membership or community, Circle was great. I loved it and it was a lot of fun in there. But my vision for HQ a year ago when we were building it was to always have a completely custom platform where we have an app which is in the works but we have a custom app. The user interface when you log in on the web browser it's completely custom like it's not hosted on Patreon or circle or whatever it is built from scratch. Narsmith built from scratch basically building HQ. And anyways, this has been so many months in the works of actually building a full custom digital product and it is here. The new Busy Blooming HQ. So, I'm going to share my screen and show it to you. I am so proud of it. I'm so excited about it. I feel like everyone is so excited about it. So, this is it. Okay. This is Busy Blooming HQ. This is the digital office of social media. I am obsessed with it. So basically what I wanted is that there is this digital office that you go into where you can always stay on the pulse of what's happening, what's trending and what's working on social media and this is it. So there are so many other ways now to stay on the pulse. For example, there is this constantly curated by me by hand feed of what's new and what's happening. So, we have platform updates, creator economy, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. Every single thing in this news section I have handpicked. I am every single morning in my founder hour looking at what's happening and what's new. There's also this feed up top so you always just stay on the pulse of like what's going on in our industry. But then we also have content ideas. So content ideas and trends I love to do. I love to scroll. I love to think of unique takes on trends. So every single Friday um we have these content ideas reports and there's so many of them. There's 45 reports. So you can go into this week's I always drop a voice note with it and there's a week of content for you every single Friday for the following week. Trends, content ideas, we link all the audios, all of that. But now, because we have 304 ideas, you can now go into the content ideas vault. And in this vault, you can sort through if you want a content idea, text on screen, or a trend for Instagram. You click on it and it's right here, which is so exciting. So, you never run out of content ideas. And I have made every single one of these. We also have the IT desk. So, if you ever have questions about Claude or editing Final Cut Pro brand deals, like anything technical about your content creation journey, you have your content tech team. So, anything like Claude related, tech related, Storm is actually in here answering all these questions about Claude. Someone in here, I hate Claude. But if you have any other technical questions, I am monitoring this as well. You literally submit like an IT ticket and it's so fun. So anyways, there's the IT desk. There of course is our Monday meeting. So every single Monday I drop a meeting in here. It's the additional podcast episode of the week only in HQ and I go through I grab a coffee in the morning on a Monday and go through all the headlines, the news, platform updates. We do a creator highlight corner of the week for some inspo. We have a monthly live. We did our live session yesterday, our big reset. I shared April recap and it was just like it was so fun. We have our group chat which is in Instagram DMs. So the group chat is so fun. We have our group chat and it's just truly like a digital office that you clock into and it's completely custom. I'm obsessed with it and I just I love it. So this is the new busy blooming HQ and I just want to share because I'm so excited about it and I think you will find it so helpful. There's also a bunch of templates. So tomorrow or today actually the May content strategy will be in here. But we have Claude templates, YouTube, you know, thumbnail templates, YouTube strategies. You can see here this is last month's April content strategy. It has like the whole thing, the workbook, voice note, everything. So anyways, I just wanted to share that social media's digital office and I'm so excited about it.
Okay, so that is it for today's meeting. Happy May. I hope we all have an amazing month and thanks for clocking in with me today. Make sure to go check out the HubSpot resource below. I'm obsessed with the AEO is like blowing my mind. So definitely go check it out and I will see you guys next week or or on Monday in HQ. Okay, bye.