Creating a Content Marketing Hub on Airtable with Colie James

What's the status of all your content ideas? Are you struggling to keep track of your blog posts, social media updates, and marketing campaigns? 

If you're anything like so many of my clients, organization feels impossible. It takes everything you have to create and publish content, never mind organizing both your ideas and your output. Plus, effective content organization isn't just about tidiness – it's the key to strategic marketing, consistent messaging, and maximizing the impact of every piece you create.

In this episode of Talk Copy to Me, former guest expert Colie James joins us to talk all things content ideation, creation, and organization.

Colie shares her expertise on using Airtable to create a powerful content marketing hub so you can streamline your workflow, repurpose content effectively, and ensure your marketing efforts align with your business goals.

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EPISODE 133.

Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: 
https://erinollila.com/creating-an-airtable-content-marketing-hub/ 
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Want to join me and other small business owners in September to collect, organize and strategically use social proof in your business and marketing? Get on the waitlist now, and I'll let you know the second doors open up:

https://erinollila.ck.page/3ee1bb13e9

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Learn more about your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, The Driven Woman Entrepreneur, Go Pitch Yourself, and Counsel Cast.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about Erin’s VIP intensive options if you’d like to learn more about how you can hire her to help you with your marketing efforts
• Reach out her on Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

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Well, hello, Colie, and welcome back., if you are tuning into Talk Copy to Me for the very first time, you will be excited to meet Colie and hear all about how she uses Airtable for her business and specifically her content and how you can too. But if you are not a new listener, you will know that Colie is one of the all stars on this podcast. This is actually her third time. Talk to Me, SEO, Ollila. Back on Talk Copy to Me as a guest. And she is the only person who has been on three times. So that, I don't know if that makes you feel special, Colie, but you are only person who's made it back past two episodes on this podcast, I mean, I feel special every time I get to just talk to you. So this is just like a cherry on top of the, of the cupcake or whatever that expression is. I've been eating too much cake. We're in the middle of like birthday season here. So cake is definitely on my mind. as it should be. I guess we'll start this episode talking about the idea that we both really love Airtable as a way to run your business, the reason I asked Coley to come on the show is because I have found as. Good as I think I kind of know my way around Airtable, Colie knows it better by far. So there have been things that I've created that I've been happy with, but Colie has a few Airtable specific templates in her product shop. And I have learned myself that it is so much easier for me to purchase the template that \ Colie creates. And then adjust to my own needs if necessary, or just like, let it go with the magic that she's created. But she's really here to guide us because one of the new tools coming out in her product shop is a content hub. And I have very strong feelings about organizing content, so I thought this is such a good episode to follow our testimonial episodes and kind of lead the way before some of our longer term content episodes, because we talk about creating a lot, but we don't really talk about organizing.\ Why do you like Airtable as a tool when there are so many other options that you can use to do things for your business? I'm going to admit, I have never been a spreadsheet girl. I mean, my mother, bless her heart, is like a hardcore spreadsheet user. She has spreadsheets to like, estimate all of her bills, when her credit cards will be paid off, how much her retirement is increasing. I mean, the amount of things that my mother does in a spreadsheet is amazing. But, to me, spreadsheets are very they're not static. But when I think about all of the ways that you can combine data in multiple tables inside of Airtable by linking it, by doing automations, I just feel like, like a spreadsheet is like the 90s version of what we should all be using now. Like, if that's going to be my analogy, like, A spreadsheet is the internet version from the 90s and Airtable is like what we all think of as the true internet today. Like just gives us all of the power to put everything in one place and my personal favorite is using it for organizing content. And also specifically in my business because there are a lot of people that have their hands inside of my content creation. I have a blog writer, I have a podcast manager, I have a virtual assistant. And so. Airtable allows me to share everything with everyone and we can all get automated communications based on what someone else has done without me having to tell everyone what to do every second of every day. When I first came over to Airtable, it was because another copywriter had shown me how she was using it as, , like a form to collect responses. And then to organize the answers, specifically for doing voice of customer research for her clients. And I thought that was so fascinating because I also am not so much of a spreadsheets person. There've been so many reasons why I feel like spreadsheets haven't been enough, specifically for things like, , true editorial calendars, which I think we have an episode after this coming up on editorial calendars. So a quick overview is it's really like what's publishing when and how do things, , influence or affect each other. So with SEO, for example, , we want one main keyword for the, like a blog post or a case study that we're writing. That doesn't mean we wouldn't have some additional keywords that we're just kind of sprinkling in and then maybe linking as a breadcrumb to a different blog post we've already written. So tell me how you do that on a spreadsheet. Right? Like you can have a column. Yeah. Oh, trust me. I have had some creative approaches to this over the years, but like you can have a column, but then what happens for all the other keywords and like, how can you check you're not reusing things? Like, I just feel like when it comes to spreadsheets, I'm using like control F all the time to find things, to make sure that like, I'm manually double checking my work. So, I'm, I'm agreeing with you in the idea that like, I use it as a spreadsheet, like on steroids, because there are such great search, , functions. There are like, , segmenting functions, but it really started for me with the idea of the forms, because I've always hated Google forms. I feel like it's just been so difficult to like, read things and get good data that's easy to understand. So to suddenly have the form option. in my field to be able to collect information and then interpret it was very helpful to me as a copywriter. So if you're completely new to Airtable, I think it's a good idea to think of it like as it looks like a spreadsheet from the grid view, but you're able to like power it up and do things that a static spreadsheet can't do. But Erin, then people say, oh, but can't I just take a Google Form and like stick it in a Google Sheet? Yeah, that's an extra step. And I don't think that any of us really think about how much those extra steps cost us. Over the lifetime of our business. Now, you mentioned the data. I mean, legitimately one of my favorite things in Airtable is aggregating data. So you take that one view, that grid view that you said is just like a spreadsheet, because it is, it's just a table. It's a table of a bunch of information. But you can create as many views as your heart desires. You talked about an editorial calendar. One of the things that I legitimately created the content hub for, , is so that I could see how many times I was asking for the sale in a given month. I talked about it on my own podcast., I had a guest, we were talking about the rule of seven, which, you know, people really need to see your stuff like 24 times before they decide to buy from you. But one of the things is, are you asking for the sale? And are you asking for the sale enough? Well, who wants to scroll on Instagram and see how many times you asked for the sale there and then in your email marketing program and then on Pinterest and just all of the different places. But if you are putting like your content publishing calendar in one place for all of that kind of content that you're creating for your business, you can create a calendar view and you want to filter it to where the only thing that it's is when the CTA is. Buy this thing and then you can look at a calendar and very quickly you can be like, Oh, I only asked people to buy stuff in my business three times last month. That's probably why my sales are in the toilet next month Let's do a better job totally and and that is an excellent point to add on to it we're talking about the views that There are other ways we can view things within Airtable, like the gallery view. So if we're talking content specifically, that is extremely helpful for when you're creating like social media campaigns or when you are a podcast, right? Cause another hub that you have that I have purchased is your podcast hub. And that is sometimes the way that I will look at my, um, content in the gallery form to just like think to myself, okay, like, well, uh, when. Maybe it's been too many solo episodes in a row or the opposite. Maybe I'm having way too many, um, guest experts on and now I need to kind of focus and do a couple of solo episodes. And that's just a one tiny example, but there are, there are many different ways that the views that you have, um, it could be the Kanban view, which is, you know, looks like the Trello board. If you are working on a project and you want to pull it between boards to The type of, um, direction that, that your project is taking or like if your content is, is created. So yes, it is a spreadsheet on steroids. It is a different way to collect and analyze data, but it also allows you to, uh, view the data in the way that you need to see it. And I think that's so important specifically to content because. I have ways I like to see content as, um, you know, like a strategist and a content creator, but the reason why I think people are not consistent with organizing their own content or even publishing, you know, you mentioned how many times you asking for the CTA. Well, because that was maybe top of mind for you, that's something you're paying attention to, but people aren't. Most businesses don't have the time to just sit there and be like, Oh, let me analyze this. Because they think to themselves like, All right, I don't have time that whatever, I'll figure that out next month. But next month becomes the next year, which becomes the next year too. So I think that when we have something like this, Everyone can set it up, it collecting what they need and they can view it in the way that they need to receive the data because, you know, there are editorial calendars, um, or, you know, content calendars that I've used for work, especially with bigger brand clients that are on a spreadsheet that it's like, you're getting so much massive amounts of information you don't need. So then you ignore that whole sheet or you're not getting enough. So then you have to create, especially if it's like something shared, you have to create your own sheet within this bigger document and it's going to look confusing to the other people. So Airtable allows you to receive the data that you need in the way that it helps you to understand and organize and plan. How often have I been asking for the sale? How often have I shared these specific products?\ , , am I talking about these content pillars enough or am I focusing on one specific thing? And I think that, \ , If you're not using a tool that's more dynamic, like Airtable is, it just becomes a task on your to do list that doesn't get done. Yes I'm like absolutely Erin and I think the one thing that I want to say about these views is you can create as many views as you want and And those views can stay. So for example, I've never really thought about the information overwhelm that you get from a spreadsheet because you look and there's just so many rows and so many columns and there's never enough space for you to be able to see what you want. But for example, when I'm sending something to my podcast manager, if I make her a view and she only sees the episodes that are currently assigned to her that are ready for her to add it. If, because I mean, I haven't counted them, but I'm pretty sure that my grid view of my podcast planner probably has at least 20 or 30 columns. I mean, there's a lot of fields in there, but she doesn't need all those fields when she's getting ready to edit. So, if I hide All of the ones that she doesn't need to see in her view. It just makes it easier for her to focus on exactly what she needs and not get overwhelmed by all of the stuff that someone else needs. That's also helping with this pot that with the product, with the podcast production. Yeah, when you had just mentioned that, I peeked over to my, um, the spreadsheet that I'm using to manage my podcast at this time. Because, you know, I know, I mentioned that I had got Coley's, um, podcast planner and, and, um, And I've only started pulling things over that this is literally just like a week ago that I had done this and I'm moving my data over, but I want to make sure it's consistent. So I'm keeping both alive as I do this, but I just looked over to my spreadsheet and I have 32 columns. Uh, so much. but because that's because I'm doing SEO in a few columns. That's because I'm doing, um, I'm indicating what series, you know, because I do these things very often in mini series. That's because I'm indicating whether or not I've created social assets, whether I have an email, and where are the links to these things. So I couldn't imagine sharing that whole thing with a team member and having them feel, you know, Confident that they were doing the correct thing that I was asking them for. So it is a very important tool to be able to pull back data you don't need. It's not just seeing all the data in one place, it's removing data when you don't need the data to be there as well. Mm hmm. So I want to jump back for one second though, because we had talked about this before we got started, but. Because we don't obviously know you as the listener and what your, your comfort level with Airtable is, I think it's important to say like there are things that you can do , in Airtable on the free plan and the paid plan. Do you want to give us a little bit of an overview specifically for content about some things that we should be kind of considering?, Based on the conversation that we might say and how that might affect the different users. Okay, so it's kind of weird. You and I had this really long conversation when I was making this new content organization hub because I was like, I want people to see the power of Airtable without getting influenced by all of the shiny objects. And that's what I consider the, the automations to be. The automations are amazing, but first and foremost, I need everyone to centralize and organize whatever it is that you're working on. And you don't really need automations in order to do that. And so, For this particular hub, automations are not the most important thing. And so you do have a limited number of automations every month that you can do for free if you are on the free plan. I think that for a majority of the people out there, you're going to be able to get on the free plan and it's going to last you a while. But one of the things that Erin and I were talking about before we hit record was this idea of making your content searchable., So, there is a difference in how you search your content if you're on a free plan versus a paid plan. On a free plan The way that you look at your data and how you search for things is best done using things like statuses or linking records so that you know that if I wrote a blog post yesterday, the content pillar that it was about was Airtable.. But if I want to see every piece of content. that I've ever created for Airtable, I could look at my content pillar, , table, and then I could click to see all of the pieces of content that are related to that. That is different than me just searching Airtable and having a bunch of records pop up for me. That is actually done with a search extension, and in order to add extensions to your Airtable hub, you must be on a paid plan. Now, we are not talking about a gazillion dollars. I am personally on the middle plan, which is 20 a month if you are paying annually. And that gives you 50, 000 automations a month. And you can add the extensions like the search. So I need it. I mean, but I don't want everybody to get overwhelmed. Like the free plan is really going to help you organize your content and you should just start there. You can always, now I will, I will warn you and Erin can attest to this. Once you get into Airtable and you start seeing the power there, there is a true thing called an Airtable bug. Like, I feel like everybody that I know gets it. And like, literally all "you do is think about Airtable all day long until you get to a place where you're like, Oh, I'm good now. I mean, my bestie Annemae. She was recently on my podcast where we talked about Airtable, and she will send me text messages at 11pm at night. Okay, listen, I don't know if you're asleep yet, but in the morning when you wake up, can you just take a look at this hub? Like no one else is going to understand my joy, of which I of course I do, but , I just want to warn you guys that if you get into Airtable and something clicks for you like it has clicked for the rest of us, you are going to die. Just be obsessed with doing everything and anything that you can inside of Airtable like immediately for your business and to be honest, your personal life too. Yes, to say before we kind of talk about exactly like what to, what to build out in a content hub, is the idea that While someone can be taught Airtable, I think the best teaching and learning experience is the doing. You know, , I was telling Colie that I track the books that I read. So I created myself a little, like, book, , hub within Airtable. And I was so frustrated because I thought I knew how to do this successfully. And then I realized like, Oh, I want, I should have done like a select option here versus just like typing in the same thing all the time. And it was helpful to obviously talk this out with someone because she had told me how I could easily adjust versus like starting from scratch, but I, I say that to say I thought I knew what I was doing and I was able to learn in the practice of setting it up, which is also why, even though I'm always very 50 50 in my feelings for templates, I think that air table templates are actually extremely helpful compared to like a copywriting template because it's showcasing to you how to use a tool and then you make adjustments. to your business, right? So I, I, I wish I remember what it was, but there was something I had saw in the podcast hub that when I started to set it up and I was like, well, you know what? I'm not actually using that. So I'm going to like, put that to the side. Or it was like, oh, I'm, oh, I remember what it was., do you do your, , appointment scheduling before you do your form collecting still? I forgot on your podcast. And there's a video that explains why I do that. And a lot of people do the reverse. And, I understand that. and I remember, so that's one of those things where I was like, you know, I got to stop and think about this. And then here's how I'm going to do it differently if I stay with the way that I'm doing. And that though, the reason I bring this up is that's fine. Right. So whatever we tell you on like content collection and organizing today, like this is not a, you have to do it or it won't be set up correctly. This is a, here's how the best practices that we've kind of really like. Walkthrough and and this is how we've updated our systems Here's what we think is great for you. And here's a tool that you can use to implement it But also you don't have to do the exact same thing, yeah, and I just want to hit on what you said because this, I think that this is a great example and I think that a lot of people will understand it. So we talked about free versus paid. One of the differences in Airtable is that if you are on a free plan, you cannot redirect someone after they fill out a form. If you're on a paid plan, you can. So honestly, Erin, the first time that I set that hub up, it was the opposite way. I was sending people to the form, and then I was redirecting them to TidyCal. And then I was like, Oh, but if someone doesn't have a paid plan, they won't be able to redirect someone to the scheduler. So I reversed it as a decision because I feel like most of the people that buy it are not going to immediately want to pay for Airtable. So. Before you figure out, like, you know, your workflow of how things are going to happen, it is important to understand the limitations of each of the pieces of softwares that you're using. Which is exactly that, and that's also the primary reason that I chose to buy the templates from you versus doing it myself. Because Coley and I have joked probably for the past six months, maybe? Because I have, I've literally built out my own podcast hub within, , Airtable. And it's mostly filled out, but here's why. I ended up purchasing Colie's , even though I've already kind of done the work because there were like the, these little things that I wasn't thinking of specifically things like the automations, for example, I didn't, even when you said this right now, I didn't know that there was, if that was the difference between the free and the paid plan, was that like the redirecting, like, so I was All right, that makes sense now. So I wouldn't have even factored that in myself. And I would, once I got to the point where I was ready to like make it live so that the guest management was done, I would have been like, why isn't this working? But let's jump into content for a second. So I was very impressed when you had kind of shown me what you were building. I liked that. You are approaching it from a different way that my brain automatically treats content organization. You are approaching it more from a, how does the content that I create affect my business goals? From the content creation standpoint, I am not necessarily thinking of business goals. I'm thinking of how, like, from the strategist, like, how do all of these pieces of content play together? You know, like, what needs to be balanced? Is there a strategic, , user journey through the content? But that's always a gap, I think, the business goals versus the content that we create. So I love that you have things within your content organization tool that talks about, like, the different channels you're on, the offers that you have, and whether you're sharing them. Do you want to talk through, , why you segmented and organized your tool in the way that you did, or maybe the decisions that were made as you were, like, creating it? Sure. So, I mean, it's, it's not rocket science. I literally thought of every single thing that I would need because I don't want to take the time to go find shit when I'm trying to make content. So, I was literally like, okay. What are all the things that when I'm writing a blog post, I need to go find? Well, if I'm writing a blog post about Dubsado, I need my Dubsado affiliate link. If I'm writing a post, I probably need some client testimonials related to Dubsado.. So I just literally sat down and I made a table for every single thing that I would think that I would need as I created a piece of content. And so for me, that ended up being things like content pillars, all of the marketing channels. All of the important links, which would be like affiliate links. And some things that people don't think about, like Canva links and links to my Google Docs, because if you have ever worked with like another business owner, let's say someone like Erin, who has written some copy for you, they're probably delivering it to you in a Google Doc. Now, Who has trouble finding that Google Doc link every single time you want to go find something? Maybe your Google Drive is more organized than mine. And if it is, bravo. But that is what I now use Airtable for, like I want a table that just gives me all of the links to all of the things inside of my Google Drive, my templates inside of Canva, so that when I sit down to make content, I literally just have to have the Airtable hub open. I have actually started writing my content inside of Airtable, but not everyone is ready for that., but , if you're writing the content somewhere else, just copy and paste it into Airtable as your last step before you hit publish so that everything is there and you will be able to, like, do some searching. But, I mean, getting back to the tables. So I have all of those. And then when you actually get to the content ideas, which is basically the main attraction, the rainbow of this hub, that's where you're going to put all of your actual content. But then you can say, okay, I'm writing this Instagram carousel today. This is about Airtable. So I'm just going to click to indicate that the content pillar is Airtable. What links do I need? I need my Airtable. Affiliate link. I'm going to click this so that that one record. Has every single thing there so that when I'm ready to go actually put it into Instagram as like a caption or I'm ready to write that blog post, I am literally just copying and pasting the pieces from that Airtable record wherever the content is gonna go., last thing. Scheduling. I am still using something like Metricool as my scheduler. So if I want to see everything that's been published like across everything, I can go to Metricool. And you do have some success in doing search again, but then what happens for the things that I don't schedule in Metricool? I'm doing all the social media there, but that won't include my email, that won't include my blog. And so again, Airtable is like this place where I am dumping everything now so that that's where I go when I'm ready to create content for my business. I love everything that you just said., I want to go back though for a second because there's something that you had mentioned and that I know is part of this that I think that could be very exciting for people. Like you're talking about, like, what are you doing while you're creating and like how you're storing, but the ideation part of the tool that you have, I think is what people might be like, Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Because, I mean, I won't describe it for you, but like, you're able to capture the ideas that you have so that you can then take the ideas and then run them through the process that you just said. And I think that's generally where there's this missing, , missing link for most content creation in small businesses. I have done so many like power hours and copy coaching calls with people who have said like, I have so many good ideas for content. Like that's part of the problem. Like, I don't. I don't know where to start. Like there's like, I could talk about these different things and it just feels so disorganized for them. And I'll ask often, like, do you have these things written down or are they just in your head? Because like, there is a very big difference from looking at a list of well organized ideas and being able to pull from it to create, versus Knowing you could talk about a lot of things and feeling overwhelmed. So I have always gotten my smaller clients to create like a content pool or a content bank that they can pull from when they do feel inspired. And then another missing link in a traditional spreadsheet like thing is Well, then how is what this inspiration moment actually being strategic, right? So if, let's just say 2017, I'm working with a client, they have a list, they have a little bank of ideas that they want to talk about, they also have a spreadsheet that's like shares their previously posted content, that middle gap of knowing whether that idea is actually strategically aligned with what they've already shared or strategically aligned with business goals is a big is like the doom area, right? And if you are not trained in marketing,, I don't want to be like a doom and gloom lady, but like you will kind of fail because of that specific space of not knowing whether you're actually being strategic and working towards a goal. So to be able to have a tool that takes you from ideation, to creation and then organization at the same time. That's a lift., you're removing a lot of friction that could have been there had you been using something more static, like a traditional spreadsheet. Yeah. So, I am one of those people who get my absolute best ideas at the worst possible time. When it's 2 a. m. and I'm sleeping in my bed, when I'm in my shower alone with my thoughts, when I'm driving my kid to and from her school. And I don't know what you guys do for your content ideation. I think most of us nowadays pick up our phone and go to our notes app and just start writing. Now, that's great. Those notes are even searchable. But they are not organized in any way. And when you're doing it in your notes app, you're not really taking the opportunity to kind of brain dump everything. You're just taking the opportunity to like get that top level idea off your head. And then you move on to the next thing. So, the first thing that I wanted to do was, make it to where you could organize your post its in a digital way. And so, I actually started this entire idea of a content organization hub with a form. And the form was, when I'm in my car. And I've got an idea that is so good, I pull over, even though I'm driving my kid to school, and I want to get it down somehow, not only do I want to get that topic, and I want to just get whatever's on my mind then, I also want to, at the click of a button, start piecing the other parts together. So. For example, if I had this brilliant idea, you know, three questions that you can answer if you had a client hub and air table, . So that's my topic. And then what are the three questions? If I have time and I already know what they are, I want to just jot them down inside of the bigger space. And then, okay, I've already told you this is related to Airtable. So I click on the content pillar and just choose Airtable. I have now, I think, five products related to Airtable. Is there one that I'm going to push or I'm going to do a call to action for? Or maybe it's even a freebie. But again, if that's already in my brain, I'm just going to quickly click the, which offers are related and quickly choose any of my Airtable offers that I want to include. Now, by making the content there, And also choosing all of these factors. If I wanted to look at my offers and see all of the ideas that I've had for content that have not yet been created, I can now do this because I attached that offer to that ideation. I can also do it from a content pillar perspective. So even though those clicks took a few more seconds, they are worth gold in terms of organizing your content inside of the hub. And then, so the, the top layer is, that's just what I do quickly. And then I just, you know, I start drinking my coffee again and I continue to drive my kid to school. And then the next time that I have a content day, I will sit down and , look at the view that is only showing me the content that I have . put down, but that isn't in a stage of being created yet. And I'm like, okay, I need to pick five things to create today for my content. Well, I'm looking and then I'm like, okay, , I'm gonna plan this one, I'm gonna plan this one, I'm gonna plan this one. And what I just did by just clicking plan is I moved it from this blank stage, which is just entered into the planning phase. And so now that piece of content is on its way to be made. Now inside that same Airtable hub, if you've got graphics that you made in another post, you can reuse those. I mean, you could look at your list of graphics. You can, you know, download it, put it in another one. I mean, there's just, there's so many things that you can do, but literally the start of this entire hub is you've got an idea. I want you to stop writing shit down on a random piece of paper on your desk that gets thrown away and forgotten. 60 seconds after you wrote it down. Yes. like talking to my clients and having those little friction spots a few years ago, if they were using us like just a static spreadsheet, like you have reduced. All of the issues there, so you get your ideation and it gets out of someone's head, which is the literally the stopgap between creating, so they have a collection of ideas, then they know it is aligned because it is attached to either a business goal or a content goal, like that needs to be created,? So when they have that inspiration, When they sit down to write, they're also checking off that things are getting done based on business goals. And then it gets completed and organized in a manner that they can repurpose when it is done and used. So, the other thing I want to bring up is like, we're talking about Consistent content creation, , , which could be anything from social media posts to blog posts to case studies, but let me bring this to a different angle. This also helps you with things like launches. What people forget so often is all of the, like, , the pre launch, like, processing that you need to get, like, People even in the right mind frame to consider your launch. So this helps you say like, for example, we're recording this in the beginning of August. I'm going to be doing another live round of the testimonial toolbox, which is why I'm doing a lot of conversations about social proof and testimonials and, you know, creating content around them. So, I'm, I guess, I mean, I'm prepping you to know that this live round is coming so that you can think about all of these items of priority for your business. And then we're building on those topics. So if you have a content hub and you struggle to do that naturally, like within your own brain, that's what your hub is training you for. It's saying, Oh, look, you have created XYZ amount of content to prime people for your launch. or vice versa. You could say, well, I have a launch coming in November. I'm listening to this now, and I haven't really talked about this topic for a while, right? So you go to that content idea section, and those are the items you check off of priority, like those specific,, social media posts or blog posts. So, , It's not just creating content because you want to like rank or because you know you need content. It is to help you with things like sales launches. It is to help you with things like, social media campaigns or ads that you have going because you need the content before you can put money behind ads and you need the content before you can launch and reference things that are already created., but I want to bring up something else, because I think while we're talking, it's easy to visualize. the like social media posts or like blog posts as these examples. But just a couple episodes ago, we had, , Jocelyn on to talk about creating case studies with, , your clients in order to have that be like your main content, because it helps you with attracting new clients and showcasing the clients that you've already worked with. So if you're looking at Colie's Hub as an example of like, One, Ideation, Creation, and Organization. That you can treat it the same way. You can use your content form to put in all of the clients that you've worked with. So your clients are in some way like the pillar, like case studies clients. You, , Use the form you fill in a couple of details on the top of your head about like what were the big wins for these clients? So that way when it is time to do an interview, you pull up that ideation part and then you feel so much more confident going into the interviews. When it's time to then create the content based on the videos, let's say you're going to do a written case study at this point, you can then use the call, use the form that you had for ideation, and use the offers that you're showcasing within the case study for future clients. it's all connected, right? So it's not like you're starting from scratch at any of these points. So I want to bring up a point which is kind of gonna get us away, but I hope that it brings us back. When you really get heavy in the air table, You start to question where stuff belongs. I mean, this is a conversation that I have with myself. Sometimes I vox Erin and I'm like, Okay, like I've got this thing, I can't figure out where it goes. It's usually the opposite though. Like it's, it's usually me being like, but Coley, you told me to put this here. I want it to go there. And you're like, okay, well let's talk, talk it out so that way you can make the correct decision. Well, and there's not a correct decision. There's just a, which one makes more sense for your brain, which, you know, it's good to get other people's perspectives, but like affiliate sales is one that I struggle with because does it go on my sales hub? Does it go with the particular offer that I'm, I mean, there's so many places that you can put Those And you mean your affiliate, like for your own business or that you are the affiliate? Okay. Yeah. I mean, again, like it just brings up like this whole like, Oh my gosh, where does everything go? But I struggle with that. And then I also struggle with testimonial stuff. And here's why. I ask my service. My one to one service clients very different questions than I ask my course. Inside my course, I have, , feedback module forms after every single module, but those live inside the hub that manages that course. So while it would be really smart, I think, depending on what you do, to have just a testimonial hub, because I can think of all of the things that you would put inside that hub. For many of us, it makes sense to be next to other things. So for example, your clients. If you are going to end up sending a feedback questionnaire to almost every single one of your clients and it's going to be like attached to their sale, the offer that they bought, all those things, maybe it makes sense to put it inside of your leads and clients or your sales hub, whatever it is that you're calling it., but you were talking and I was like, Oh no, this is the thing. So in Airtable guys, if you wanted to ask for testimonials or like you want to ask a questionnaire for feedback so that you can identify the people that you want to interview. Then you're going to have a field that's like, should I interview them? You could just make it a simple yes or no. And when you click yes, maybe it moves them to a different status, to a different table, so that you can look at all these people in the same time. Maybe you're sending them an automated email that's like, Hey, , I looked at this, This feedback that you gave me, and I would love to hop on like a 20 minute call with you and get some additional information. If you are interested, here is my scheduling link to get on the schedule. Guys, you can automate that. And then when they do the schedule Hey, if it's TidyCal, or Acuity, or Calendly, or something that is zappy or friendly, Newsflash Guys, Dovzato, honey, but none of those are friendly. The CRM, uh, schedulers are just not friendly, but you can zap that appointment right back into that hub so that you know that they have scheduled an appointment. You have the call. You now have a link in Riverside or a link in Zoom from that call. You can put that inside of your hub. Then once you have transcribed it, you can have a transcription that can either be a link or you could stick it directly in Airtable. I mean, it's up to you. I hope that you guys are following what I'm saying. Like every single piece of content related to a bigger thing can have a place inside of that Airtable hub. And then you never have to go searching again., we all spend so much time. Wasted in our business looking for stuff and like if you don't do anything else after this episode if you just sit down and you think about all the things that you search for on a daily basis on a weekly basis and you put all of it in Airtable, I will be so happy for you. Yeah. So when I first created the testimonial toolbox, I had made the testimonial trackers as part of that, that people could collect testimonials and organize them. Cause that's the key to the toolbox. It's like you could buy, there's many trainings out there on how to like ask for testimonials. I mean, you don't even need a training. You could just Google like testimonials questions. But the, that I, what I always say to everyone is like, That's not enough. Like, I, I, like, do you know and all of the legal ramifications of testimonials? And I will say, I'm not a lawyer. I really like to disclaim that, but there is a section on thinking about these are legal things you need to consider,, or you cannot do based on different countries regulations for testimonials. There's the, uh, Okay, you've collected them. Like, what the F do you do with them? Like, you know, where do you actually put these things? And what do you do if a client gives you like 14 paragraphs of like, and that's their testimonial? And some, and someone else gives you like one sentence, but to get back to the trackers, I built them in all of the like main project management Software so that people could do whatever the heck they want wanted with them on the easiest approach for them And I originally started tracking my own testimonials in asana I had been like just storing them in my google drive. It was just going into like wasteland at that point I mean, Let's just be honest. Everything in my business is getting moved into Airtable. That Airtable bug that Colie mentioned is a real thing., but To bring it back to exactly what you said after I finished talking is where do you put these things, right? So as a business that also has service based clients and clients who are either students or like purchasers of a product, I have them in two different locations right now. Like you, when it comes to like, , like a course, let's say, I have the testimonial section, like the forms and the collection tool within the course. Yes. For my service based clients, I have a testimonial hub that is, like, strictly the hub. Now that I am working on the content creation and organization, that's the question. Do I keep it there, Or do I move that service based clients into the content hub because I will then, you know, part of that goal is making the case studies for them. I haven't figured that out yet. Like, we're talking about this in the episode, but that's, I guess, I'm happy to share that because you don't need to have it all figured out. It is easy to move things in different areas. Like, if I decide putting it in the content is the wrong choice, okay, cool. I'm going to move it into a different area because I'm within the same platform and I can take the data and use it how I choose to use it, versus kind of like starting over again and trying to move it into a different platform and it doesn't make sense. So, yeah. That's going to be something I have to figure out. So I bring these all up to say, like, you're going to be able to figure that out as you work on it and as you build., but. We're not here to tell you how to do that. We're here to just kind of help you figure out like that. This is a good idea for ideation, creation, and organization to use a tool like Colie's Organization Hub so that you can get started and then adjust as necessary. I mean, Erin, everything that you said was just so amazing and beautiful. I want to say, I, like you, have my testimonials split like that, but since we have consistently in this episode talked about the difference between a free plan and a paid plan, here's another difference for the listening audience. If you are on a paid plan inside of Airtable, you can link or rather sync between two apps. You cannot do that if you are on a free plan. You can sync it like one time to basically copy one of your tables from one hub to another, but the sync doesn't remain active. So whatever you do in like the first hub that that table was in, it doesn't continue to update the second hub. If you want that connection to remain active, you have to have a paid plan. But coming back to what you're saying, if you're going to keep that main testimonial hub, you could always take the testimonials that you're getting from your course hub. And now that you're going to be on a paid plan, you could sink a table of testimonials into the bigger testimonial hub, and then they would be there. And so, and every time you got a new one, it would just sync it over to your bigger testimonial hub. Now, because we're specifically talking about content, podcast, blogs, and then all that other crap. I feel like the decision on where your things will go depends on the importance of the content creation. And for a lot of us, it depends on whether or not that is like your top tier content. Because for, right now for me, my podcast is where everything else comes from. So that podcast I have is going to remain separate for the foreseeable future. I actually can't envision a reason why I would take all of that and try to integrate it into something else. I do have an episode list. I do have a content creation table inside of that hub that I personally use. I could always sync that. to my content organization hub so that all of the podcast information is available inside of that hub. But if you have like one content channel, one marketing channel, that is where you start creation for everything and then you're repurposing your recycling processes come from that, that might need its own hub depending on how complicated your process is or how many people have their hands in that content creation. Yes. I think I've just kind of been, I started my career with the big brands, so it's very hard for me to see some like micro things within business. Like, you know, micro as an example that you were saying before of like, am I actually asking for the sale enough or just using that as an example? I see things very macro from the content organization. So my brain is telling me. Oh, but you need, this needs to influence this. So I think for me in particular, I'm going to have to do the paid plan for my content, likely have a couple different hubs, but find a way that one of them is the main source. So like you mentioned, , just podcast for an example. Just to stay neatly organized, especially because the guest management is part of that, like that will be its own hub. But I will need to bring it into this organization tool so that I can double check the SEO stuff, right? Because not only do I do show notes for each episode, but some of the episodes get their own SEO. I do not want to use the same SEO keyword for those blog posts. So I also don't want to be switching back and forth out of different, like, hubs within Airtable. I want to be able to see the data that I need. So While I don't have the exact, this one touches that one, or this information syncs here, I think that's going to need to be what I need to do in order to stay organized. But I could never, ever, ever do this in a spreadsheet. Ever. Like, I, I know that. And I couldn't do it in a project management tool either. We're showcasing the different ways that we use things in our business only to showcase to you what's possible. but that doesn't mean it's, What you need or what you have to jump into. Jump into the tiny stuff. Even if you use Colie's like form as just a way to collect the ideas that you have because let's say , I remember when I had my last child I had I was very , full of ideas in my pregnancy in the third trimester and I was also like hell no am I Writing a thing. I, I refuse.. Well, if that's you and that's like the point of your life you're in or anything like that, maybe you're in a launch, but you keep coming up with new ideas, that's what you use it for then, right? Like, use it as a place to drop your ideas that are organized for later. Or if you know that like Airtable is a tool you use all the time, maybe it's the like organization part where you're pulling from all of these like separate entities where you have your content right now so that it's stored in one place. There's no right or wrong way. Maybe this is like we end the episode with my favorite words, like it depends. Like what is working for you? Like just start somewhere small and build on it in a way that you or your team. But by not having any of these things, like, I think you're really doing yourself a disservice. Like, it's not very often that I recommend something, like, strong in, on the podcast, because I really do think it depends for each business. But I, I can't think of a business that creates content in any form doesn't need this. Like, I think when you're creating content without being organized, you're digging a deeper hole for yourself because you're spending so much time, energy, or finances with the content creation. And not being strategic or organized is, it's never going to get you the benefit of all of that effort that you've created. Mm mean, cause it takes us so much time and energy in order to like create a piece of content and especially for something like Instagram, where it just, you know, it has its shining moment, what maybe for 30 minutes, maybe for a whole day of Instagram really likes it. I mean. It's cool. If we're all putting out good content and people aren't having the opportunity to see it, we should be putting it somewhere that in six months we can look at it and be like, Oh, you know what? I put that piece of content out there. I don't think it was seen by very many people. Let me try again. Let me try a carousel this time. Let me try a video. Let me try something else so that I can get this idea and I can kind of get a bigger return on the investment of the time that I took in order to create that piece of content. Yeah, and then when you create content and you do practice this recycling and re recycling and reusing of content, it's also going to give you that, like having the organization system will give you a visual indicator of things you're missing. So like I had, I mean, I think that there should be evergreen social posts. An example of such is I just hit my business anniversary of being a full-time self-employed person., no longer thank you. No longer do I write like a post off the top of my head. Every single year, I pretty much copy and paste the same post I have every year. And if necessary, I add a fact to it. Like this year, for example, I think I had written that I could not for the life of me remember what year I was actually in, because. I technically started working for myself the year before I went full time. I was working, I moved down to a part time position in my previous traditional employment because I had a baby. And I also started to take on clients, multiple clients on my own. So I always celebrate my full time, , business employment in August and then my part time in October. So last year I would, people would be like, well, how long have you been in business? And I'd be like, eight or nine. Like, I don't, I don't. I don't know. So when it came to Akka's, I had to do some math. Like, I'm like, wait, how long? Let's do some subtraction, like old school, line the numbers up on top of each other. And then I figured out it was eight years full, full time. But that's what I think I'd written in one of my posts was like, Oh, actually finally figured out how long I've been in business. But I just added that one sentence to the same post that I share All the time. And that's healthy and okay. Like you get the full content approval from me on that. So in that case, when you're organizing it and you're putting that into your like storage hub, you know, for me, every August, I'm going to pull that back up and just kind of reuse it. But it also, to bring it back to what I was saying is, if I find that these different pieces of evergreen content don't actually have any type of story or sales element to it, then I need to figure out. What, why am I posting it? Right? Cause not everything has to be sales. That's what we've talked about a lot. Me sharing my business anniversary. I don't need to have a call to action that says like, now buy from me. Right? That could be that like evergreen story element, but I need to make sure those are balanced because like you said, you actually have to ask for sale if you want to remain in business at some times, so having it visually laid out gives you the information to know whether there is a balance or whether you have adjusting to do, right? And I mean, I keep saying asking for the sale because I feel like I talk about that a lot on my podcast, but the balance is also super important for those of us that have multiple offers. And if we don't have like multiple service offers, maybe it's the idea of our digital products versus our service offers. Like if you have talked nonstop. about your service offers for two months and you haven't once mentioned that you have a digital product and it's been three weeks since you made a digital product sale. Maybe that's why, Yeah. Totally. not know that that's why unless you are able to visually see what kind of content you've been posting quickly., making it to where you can look at what's important to make a data driven decision is what Airtable is also spectacular at. It's what it excels at. 100%. Okay. So for my takeaway from this whole conversation is that if you're still listening, just stop what you're doing and go purchase Colie's template., Colie, what is your final, like, takeaway for the audience or suggestion for them? I just want you to dip your toes in Airtable. And either way, you can come hit me up on Instagram. I'm at Colie James.. And, you know, Erin has, bless your heart, Erin. Erin has probably told you to buy my template like a million times during this show. Guys, the template is 9 and it's 9 Maybe we should have started with that. I mean, maybe it's just, this is my Liz Wilcox moment. I'm going to write an email that says, can I have You should. I mean, I made it this so that I just want everybody to like see what I constantly rant about. And if it's for you, great. I've given you a little stepping stone. You're going to catch the airbag. and I apologize in advance, but if it's not for you, I mean, you've only paid 9 and I would argue that even if you look at this content organization hub and you're like, okay, Airtable is not for me. It's probably going to give you some ideas of what you could put in Asana or ClickUp or wherever else it is that makes your heart happy to organize, ideate and create your content. I think that it's a really good point. Like, even if you think, like, I really don't want to do Airtable, but I would like to be organized, let me have some ideas on how I can get organized. 9 is a really easy way in to see how other people organize things. Alright, we're good. We're done. Thank you, Colie. Long episode, but now everyone please go get air table. Yeah, it's at coleyjames. com slash Airtable. I'm real inventive, guys. I, I pat myself on the back all the time. Alright, we'll leave you there and I'll see you again next week.