Common mistakes business owners make with awareness days

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Some people can be snobby about using awareness days to create social media posts. But if you think that you are probably using them wrong, so really, so what's the right way to use awareness days to create social media posts and other content for your business and what we mistake. Should you avoid when you are using them?

Well, that's exactly what you'll find out in this episode. I'm Janet Murray, I'm a content and online business strategist. I'm also the creator of the courageous content planner, along with a whole host of content. That will save you a ton of time

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on content creation for your business or brand. In this episode, I'll share five of the most common mistakes business owners make when using awareness days in their content.

So you can avoid making them. So mistake, number one, thinking you have to include the awareness day that inspired your content in the post or content itself. And we're still thinking you have to announce that awareness day at the start of your. For example, it's national sausage day. So tell me, what's your favorite sausage

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now I'm being a bit extreme here, but I have seen that kind of use of awareness days online.

And it's not very effective unless of course you sell sausages for a living or you are in the restaurant business or catering. And here's the interesting thing. You could still use national sausage day to inspire a piece of content. Even if it feels like it's got nothing to do with your business. And I cover that in my episode on how to turn awareness days into content without being cheesy cliched or sounding like everyone

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else I'll link to it in the show notes.

But you don't actually need to mention the awareness day that inspired your content at all. And nor do you need to use a relevant hashtag. Now using awareness days can sometimes allow you to jump on to a trending hashtag. And if you're not sure what hashtags are, they're basically like the social media equivalent of an index at the back of a non-fiction book.

They group together and show you where content on similar topics might be found, but creating super

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engaging content for your audience is far more important than using the right hashtags. And here's why hashtags can help get good content. That's already performing well in front of more people. Because people will actively be looking for content on a particular topic.

So an example of this would be recently I posted something because the hashtag autism awareness was trending on Twitter. That tweet got more engagement than my other tweets get. And I suspect it was because people saw that

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tweet was trending. So they were searching on that particular hashtag they were more likely to see that post, but it was a good post using that hashtag would not have made more people respond to and share and engage with that post.

If it wasn't a good post in the first place, so hashtags can help get good content. That's already performing well in front of more people. But they can't perform miracles. They can't turn poor or even average content into great content that gets loads of engage.

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Say mistake. Number two is only using awareness states that originate in the country where you live, because you mistakenly believe that you can't use awareness days in your content that originate from a different country to your own.

And it's just not the case. What really matters is that the topic is engaging for your followers, not where the date originates from. And I've lost count of the times that I've been asked, whether the dates in micro courageous content planner apply to the UK only, or the us only. Or can they be

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used for this or that country?

And the point is it doesn't really matter. There are only a handful of dates in the courageous content planner that couldn't be applied to any country at all. The only exceptions I can think of are things like mother's day or father's day, for example, which might vary in different countries. However, if you've got something relevant to say on the topic of mothers or fathers or something that relates to that, there's no reason why you can't post that.

On mother's day or father's day in the us. The key thing here is that that

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topic is relevant to your audience at that. So mistake number three, limiting the number of awareness days you use each week or month. And people typically do this because they believe that their content will get stale or tired if they don't.

But actually there's no limit to how many awareness days you can use per week or per month, as long as your content is engaging. And as long as it helps you to achieve your objectives, you can use as many as you like. Mistake number four is only using awareness days that have an obvious connection

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to your business.

And this is just a wasted opportunity. In fact, it's a waste of a lot of opportunities because using awareness days that aren't an obvious fit for your business can actually get you better results because your content is likely to be more creative, more original, and stand out than your competitors.

Mistake number five is not using some of the more lighthearted sounding awareness days. Like the examples I mentioned before world emoji day, lazy day or national laundry day, and people often

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stay away from these kinds of dates because they believe mistakenly that they can only use serious sounding dates, but there's no reason why you can't use some of these more lighthearted sounding awareness date.

And again, it can often be well worth doing so because it will make your content different. You will stand out from your competi. If you're not sure how to do this, don't worry. I do have some other podcast episodes coming up that will help with this. And I will link to those in the show notes. So there's how to use awareness days to create content without being cheesy

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cliche, sounding like everyone else, non cheesy ways to use awareness days in your content and how to use awareness days to create content without sounding like a copycat.

So please chill out about using awareness days in your content and instead get creative and have some fun with. So I hope you found this useful, and if you haven't yet invested in my courageous content planner, I will add a link in the show notes for this episode. And if you haven't heard about the planner, it's an a four desk diary you can use to plan out your content for the coming year.

It contains amongst many other things more than a

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thousand fill in the gaps, social media posts, those come with the curator's kit that is free with your planner this year. So you'll never stuck on what's post on social media. You also get a tried and tested content strategy to follow. So you can create more content in less time, along with templates for daily, weekly, monthly, and annual planning.

So, you know exactly what's posted on social media. There's also 30 fill in the gaps, content templates for blogs, email newsletters, and other essential business content. As it comes with a free audio training, which is less than 60

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minutes. And it will show you how to use the content planner to plan and create content for your business or brand, even if you've never created or managed to stick to a content plan before.