your updated content plan for 2026: create for your brand, not the algorithms

The more creative you are, the more ideas you have, and that is such an amazing, beautiful thing. But sometimes what happens is something starts to work really well. And instead of shifting and pivoting and moving strategically, it's almost like the creative brain takes over. And you just want to stick to the content planner. You just want to execute all these ideas. But you have to stop and pause. And that's why I like looking at things week to week or either by a weekly basis. So you can see, well, what is my audience and what is my community telling me and how can I shift and pivot accordingly? This is what I like to call balancing the creative brain and the C-O brain. I'm Alyssa, and welcome to the Inspired Media Podcast, a space for creators, creatives, and entrepreneurs who know they're meant to do more than just stop the scroll. So we're putting the spotlight on the unspoken truths and unconventional takes on how to truly build a standout brand online. Now, let the show begin. Oh, hey, Vesty, I heard you want to take your content to the next level this year. Well, you've come to the right place because in 2025, I have seen and heard probably every single content plan, schedule, routine under the sun. And they all lack one very important thing in tension. So in today's episode, I'm going to walk you through how to DIY your own content plan. So you're creating and posting with clarity, confidence, and intention this year. Now, before we get started, please note, this is a content plan, not a content strategy. A content plan is the doing work of content. We're going to be talking about scheduling, planning. We're not going to deep dive into full strategy today. I have a ton of other episodes on that that you can catch up on. I have resources. I have free content out there for you. And I can always do. And spoiler alert, I will do another version for 2026. But today, I really wanted to focus on creating a plan for your brand, not for the algorithms. Because yes, there are multiple algorithms on this platform. So when you hear someone say, the algorithm changed, algorithm update, algorithm, algorithm, algorithm. I'm like a bestie which one. Which one are you talking about, Mr. Mr. algorithm expert? Because the reality is, nobody really is an algorithm expert. We're all trying to figure it out because there are multiple algorithms. And since 2021, it is the same regurgitated disappointing advice that you don't even get real results from. So in 2026, you are not going to fall for that. That type of thinking sets you up for failure. And also, every quote unquote rule that I've heard about the algorithms, and you have to do this, and you have to do that. This platform only likes this. This platform only likes that. There's always someone that finds success doing their way. So instead, we're building a plan that strengthens your brand, your skills, and your long-term growth over these vanity metrics. So let's get into the plan. OK, wait, actually, I lied. I know I said I wasn't going to give you any strategy advice, but I have to give you strategy advice, because this is really, really going to help. You actually come up with a plan that feels so you coded. But with so much love, respectfully, your content ideas are not that special. It is why and how you say it that makes it special. This is the power in showing your personality online. Now, if you're like, wait, Alyssa, I have so many parts of my personality. I don't know which one to show online. OK, let's simplify this. If we were to create a movie documentary about your life, what would your character description be? What character description would we need forecasting to find the best person to play you? This is the way I want you to start looking at yourself versus your brand. There are now two separate entities we're dealing with here, you as a person and your brand. It is OK that our audiences and our communities don't know everything about us. That is totally OK. And in fact, I think that's healthy. So we're dealing with two separate entities. And what I want you to focus on is what parts of you are you going to make at the forefront of your content to build your brand? It's not about being fake. It's about what they like to say, strategic authenticity. Because if I gave tough love, elder sister, and chronically online, chaotic, bestie, the same script, it wouldn't matter. Because how you say it is how the audience is going to see your personality. And that's what makes you memorable. That's you coded content. OK, now let's get into the plan. First thing I want you to do is I want you to make January your control month. Or whatever month you're listening to this podcast, this is going to be your control month. This is the month where you're going to be posting for practice, not performance. You can't make better posts if the idea of posting is unnatural. It's not ingrained in your lifestyle in an organic way. It's something that you really have to put so much effort into. That's why you have your control month. Next, I want you to choose a sustainable posting cadence. This is the number of times you were going to post per week for the next month to three months. I don't want to hear any more of this. You have to post five times a day. You have to do this. You have to do 20 times a day. OK, because usually what happens? OK, five times a day. Maybe you do that for what, a day or two. And then next week what happens? I look at your feed. Oh, ghosted. Oh, ghosted. OK. And then you're like, oh no, I feel guilty about ghosting. OK, let me post one post. And then a few days later, then I'll post another post. And then I'm going to go again. And then you're going to get reinspired again, because someone's going to yell at you saying that you have to post five times a day. And then we'll happen to consistency. Oh, we lost the plot. We lost the plot with consistency. That's why we have a control month. So for you, if you are just starting in your content creator journey, or maybe you work a 9 to 5, or maybe you're a really busy founder, and you haven't yet really nailed down a strong, sustainable content workflow. If three times a week is all you can do, three times a week is all you can do, and you're going to commit to that in January. This is the control month. This is where people mess up. They get really excited trying to do all the things, and they never even learn what consistently, truly, truly feels like within their life. So this is why I want you to choose a sustainable posting cadence. We can grow from this, but you can't grow from something that you didn't establish. So I'll use the example of three times a week. Amazing. Three times a week, you're going to just repurpose for Instagram and TikTok again to get into the habit of what it feels like to be playing around and posting on both platforms. I don't want to overwhelm you with your Instagram strategy versus your TikTok strategy, not yet, 'cause this is our control month. Now you have your sustainable posting cadence. Next, you're going to choose your content pillars. Content pillars are not inspired to entertain. Content pillars are the main topics to consistently talk about on your page. And I already know what you're going to say. Aliza, I have so many interests, interests. I have so many things I want to talk about. I could talk about 20,000 Gajillion Bajillion things. I know. You are multifaceted. You're multi-hyphenate. You have a lot of experiences and things you want to talk about, which is amazing. But for this control month, I want to challenge you to pick the three to five main content topics that are going to be your main content pillars. The if tomorrow, Ted Talk said, hey, I need you to do a two-hour Ted Talk. And you need to send us like three to five topics. And we're going to choose from those topics. You better be ready to do that Ted Talk on those three to five topics next week. That's how passionate you are. That's how knowledgeable you are. That's how heavy of a stakes, if you will, these topics are in your life. That's what I want you to choose. And that's what I want you to stick to for this control month. Does that mean you're only ever going to talk about these select things? No. But again, we want to be strategic about it. Adding on too many things leads to chaos. And in fact, it's disrespectful to your own intelligence to talk about so many things surface level. When I know there are select things that you could go deeper inside the wider. Select your content pillars, three to five. Now let's get to building your schedule. So you're going to take your content cadence, you're going to take your content pillars, and you're going to sign one content pillar per day. So for example, if you're posting three times a week, and you have three content pillars, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Monday, content pillar one, Wednesday, content pillar two, Thursday, or Friday, I should say content pillar three. You're going to repurpose that whole thing over to Instagram and TikTok. And I want you to treat this like a science experiment. Remember in science class, when in lab class, we'd have our experiments, right? We have a control subject, and then we have like variant one, variant two, variant three. Because we have that control, we can see how different variants actually affect the thing that we're experimenting. This is the way I want you to think strategically and almost scientifically about your content. If you are throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks constantly within your content, you're never going to actually figure out the patterns that you need to lean into or take away. This is why the control month is so incredibly important. And I really don't hear a lot of people talking about this because I think a lot of people are either very lax and very free, and like I'm just going to do whatever I want, or they are kind of just like super focused on like only doing one thing one way. We're here, we're really actually taking a very strategic and again, like scientific approach of, well, I don't want to guess anymore. There's so much out of our control when it comes to content. There's so much guessing that we have to do. Like again, we don't even fully understand the exact way that these algorithms work because there's multiple algorithms. So this is something that we can actually control. So again, going back to the example, Monday, Content Pillar 1, Wednesday, Content Pillar 2, Friday, Content Pillar 3, that's going to be your weekly schedule. You are going to use that weekly schedule every single week, there you go. You have a full month blueprint, not a full month of content ideas specifically, but you have a blueprint to guide you. Now's where you get to choose your content formats, face to camera, voice over, carousel, whatever you want to be testing based on your content creation goals, you choose the formats. I'll give you another example. So I'm going to use someone that is a really busy founder. Okay, they know content, they've been on camera, but they don't have a really strong content workflow to be building their personal brand outside of their business. So they're like, okay, I have the capacity to post three times a week. I have my three content pillars, and I really want to get better at face to cam specifically, but I'm also super busy. So the content plan that I would give them, knowing what I know is, okay, you want to get better at face to cams, let's do two face to cams, and then one, either carousel or quick trendy B roll with some text overlay as your third post, because that's what you can stick to for this control month. And I want you to even pause this part of the episode and really figure out what's my sustainable posting cadence, what is the type of content that I want to lean into, what's the type of content that I need to improve on, and now we're getting really, really specific with what you need to create every single week, as opposed to waiting to feel inspired, as opposed to scrolling for a trending audio, figuring out what I should post, as opposed to just ghosting because you feel overwhelmed, this is going to give you that clarity. Confidence comes from clarity. If you don't know what you're doing, you're not going to feel confident about it, but the more clear that you can get, the more confident that you can get. And then what you're going to do, you have your weekly content plan, you have your content pillars, you have the content formats that you want to do. Now you're going to brainstorm, plug and play your content ideas using the structure that we have set and post consistently for a month. I challenge you to post consistently for a month using this plan, because by the end of the month, if you're truly consistent, you're going to find out a couple of things. You're going to get to see the top performing posts, lowest performing posts, best performing content pillars, maybe content pillar one, performed way better than content pillar three. Maybe content pillar two was really, really fun for you, but it wasn't super engaging for your audience. Maybe the first time you did a face-to-cam video, it took you two hours, and now it's taking you 30 minutes. Maybe you like to yap about in your car, and that feels really natural to you, but when you're sitting at your desk, it doesn't really feel natural. Maybe you like filming with coffee in your hand, track all those things, because this is how we're going to intentionally pivot content based on what happened this month. This is our control month, and I'll give you another example, and I'll bring back the kind of fake founder creator example that we've been using. Let's say for her, she did it all, okay? ♪ Yay, I love her, you must do, thank you ♪ ♪ You made a consistent posting, we love ♪ Okay, now what's next? Three times a week, we had her three content pillars. Let's say for her content pillar one, just super outperformed everything else. Her face-to-cam videos also outperformed everything else, but she knows she's really busy, so keeping that kind of shorter trend to your style really helped your content workflow just to keep her consistent and keep her accountable. Okay, so knowing what we know from that control month, this is what I would tell her to do in this month too. So let's say one of her content pillars just outperformed all of them. It was content pillar one, it just outperformed. So that means Monday, Wednesday, Friday, content pillar one is gonna take over Monday and Wednesday, content pillar two is gonna take over Friday, and we're gonna get rid of content pillar three for now, and maybe we only executed on stories, but because it didn't really resonate and it didn't really perform that well, we wanna lean into what's really performing well, what's really engaging, what's really valuable for her audience. I'm also gonna look at format. Face-to-cam videos did great, awesome. The trendy stuff was easier, great, we're gonna keep that. Now we're in month number two, she feels really good, she has a plan, she's like, you know what? I think I can do a little more, okay, let's do a little more, and that's how we add on another video to her content cadence. That's how we go, okay, let's push for four, let's push for five, and we do it consistently. Do you see how there it's actually building on top of what you're doing as opposed to getting so overwhelmed with all this information that everybody's throwing at you, and then you don't end up actually executing, you don't actually end up creating something that's consistent and that works for you in your lifestyle, and content then just feels like a chore or something that you need to check off your to-do list. This is what I mean by having an intentional content plan based on strategy and data. Now I know a question I get asked a lot, but list up, what if I have a spur of the moment idea, what if I have this trend that I wanna do or something just really fun, I wanna throw in there, oh my gosh, do it, I'm not gonna tell you not to do it. Here's what I will say though, on the strategy perspective, don't get lost in the sauce, don't get lost in your tiny 20,000 bajillion, bajillion ideas. If you have an extra idea, add it on, try not to take it away from the initial plan, because just like in our science experiment, if we're adding on too many things, we can't see what's happening on all of the variables. There's too many things going on, we can't spot the patterns. So extra ideas are an add-on, not an excuse to just go willingly and like posting to post. 'Cause then you're just gonna end up back where you started, and that is not why you were here. So there is the content plan. Understanding it's not just what you say, it's how and why you say it, you coded content, having a control month, picking a sustainable posting cadence, picking content pillars, intentionally, posting consistently for at least a month for practice, not performance. And please, keep me updated by the end of this, how this is going for you, and what shifts some pivots and things have you noticed doing it this way, as opposed to an older way of doing your content planning. Also, I do have a free notion content calendar that I will link below for you, so that you have no excuses whatsoever, and you have a tool that can really help you bring this to life. Okay, and the very last thing that I'm gonna leave you with, as you are executing on your content planning, as you are doing this control month, as you are shifting and pivoting each month based on what you're learning, and where something's working, give yourself enough flexibility to lean in to what your audience is telling you. This is actually a really big learning moment from the last year, especially with a lot of my more seasoned creator clients, because the more creative you are, the more ideas you have, and that is such an amazing, beautiful thing, but sometimes what happens is something starts to work really well, and instead of shifting and pivoting and moving strategically, it's almost like the creative brain takes over, and you just wanna stick to the content planner, you just wanna execute all these ideas, but you have to stop and pause, and that's why I like looking at things week to week or at a bi-weekly basis, so you can see, well, what is my audience and what is my community telling me, and how can I shift and pivot accordingly? This is what I like to call balancing the creative brain and the CEO brain. Okay, the creative brain is responsible for innovation, the shots, the music, the editing, the delivery, the vibe, the aesthetics. Like, yes, of course, we love that, we need that. But your CEO brain is the one that looks at the data and says, what's working, what's not, where do we lean in? Where do we pull back? The creative brain is also more emotional, and I find that the CEO brain is logical and strategic, and in your brain, you're balancing these two sides. Let me give you an example to really paint this picture. So I had a client last year, and one of her videos really started to pop off, and it was a video that I told her you need to post this. She posted it on stories, it was a very low effort, whatever video, and she was like, oh no, no, no, no, I can't post this, it's not polished, it's not aesthetic, it's not cute, and I'm like, oh, okay. But you're gonna post it anyway, a little pure pressure with love, if you will. She posted it, 100,000 views in a matter of a few days, and then 200,000 views, it was growing rapidly. So immediately, I was like, okay, wait, we need to pause, 'cause even though we already had a content plan for her, like a bi-weekly content plan for her, very similar to what I just walked you through, I was like, wait, this thing is working, we need to shift, we need to pivot, we need to really quote unquote capitalize on this moment. And I came up with some content ideas, hey, you should do a face to cam version, answer some questions you have in the comments, do another version of it, do a part two, and gave her the advice. Ultimately, she went on the route of just doing other content ideas that she wanted to bring to life. And if you ever work with me, as your strategist, I'm going to always advise you, but at the end of the day, this is your account you can do what you want. I'm just gonna advise you, hey, this is what I think, but you get to choose, you are the CEO of your own brand, you get to choose what you wanna do. I like to kind of say in a way of like, I'm the babysitter, but you are the parent of the brand and of the page. So I just had a call with her last week, and I said, do you know that that video hit a million views? She did not know. She did not know why. Lots of different factors. It's Q4, it's all the craziness, holiday season, stuff happening in life. There's so many things that we're tackling and that we're juggling, but she didn't notice that that video was doing so, so well. So it was one of those teaching moments where I was like, okay, this video was doing really well. It's at a million views. I still think we can capitalize on it. I still think that you should do a part two. I think you should still bring to life all the content ideas that we talked about. But I want you to remember that when stuff like this happens, you need to be flexible with your plan and you need to not let the creative brain take over and say, hey, like I have all these ideas I wanna try out, let the CEO hat come in and go, wait a minute, but this is really working. How can I lean into this so, so well and milk it for what it's worth? Because that opportunity, once it's gone, I mean, yes, we can do things to kind of bring it back, but the best thing that you could do when something is hitting, when something is quote unquote going viral, when something is doing really well with your community, is lean into that. This is something that dancers on TikTok do so well. And I know a lot of people make fun of dancers, okay? And a lot of people say it's like quote unquote the easy way out, whatever, whatever, but we can always learn, right? We can always learn from every single type of creator outside of our industry, especially. What dancers do so well is they will find a dance. They will do it. It'll pop off and they keep doing the same dance over and over and over and over again. They change the outfit. Maybe they accent a different part of the music. Maybe they're in a different location, bathroom kitchen, garbage, whatever, but they keep doing the same thing. They keep getting the best numbers and they milk it for what it's worth and they shift and pivot and they move on to something else. That is where your CEO brain has to take over. Your CEO brain says, hold on, create a brain. I know you got a lot of ideas. And they might be really, really good ideas, but this is working right now and we need to lean into this or else we're not going to get the same results if we wait too long. Don't be afraid of repetition when something is working. And I know sometimes it's very hard to do because we're constantly balancing the creative brain and the CEO brain. But we need to have that creator CEO IQ, I guess, to know who's going to be taking over to make the best decision for your brand and for your page. This is a skill I really want you to master going into 2026. And it's actually one of the words I'm taking with me into 2026 mastery. And underneath that, I put hard work got you there. Deep intention will take you further. And while we're on the topic, let me just give you the three words that I'm taking with me into 2026. And if you don't have your main vibe words for 2026, I would love to offer these up to you. Mastery is one of them. Focus choosing what matters and ignoring the rest and fun. Take the pressure off. This is supposed to be fun. And you know when you're having more fun, your energy on camera is just 20 times better. And there you have it. There is your intentional content plan that I want you to bring with you in 2026 or whenever you're listening to this. Maybe it's the beginning of 2026 for you. Maybe it's the middle of the year and you're going through a revamp or a rebrand wherever whenever this serves you. I hope this was helpful. If you have any highlights, any big learnings, anything, please share with me, tag me on Instagram, TikTok @inspiredmedico, send me a DM, send me an email. I'd love to hear about your progress. And if you've never tried out a quote unquote control month, I would love to know how this shift and change has helped your content. Will you add it to make it work for you? What you took away? 'Cause again, this is all customizable according to what's gonna work for you and your brand. I'll be dropping some resources, some other podcast episodes. I think would be super complimentary after this one in the show notes. but as always, break a leg.