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Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money-sucking ads? My name’s Laryssa Wirstiuk, and I’ve learned in 7 years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya takes a holistic approach, leading with laser-focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million-dollar company, and now I’m sharing these systems and tactics with you. Here’s to standing out in the Sea of Sparkle.

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This is Episode #235, and today I’ll be sharing guidance for how you can initiate your jewelry marketing content topic brainstorm. If you struggle to keep up with regularly producing unique and value-driven content ideas for your jewelry brand, then this is definitely the episode you need to keep your marketing calendar full of strategic content that captivates your audience and aligns with your goals. In a followup to the last episode, which included a how-to for forming your one-page content strategy, this episode features a process that considers your target audience, your own personal interests and strengths, and your business calendar as well as the holiday calendar. I also share sources for inspiration, so you can see what other brands are doing to delight their customers with content. I’ll be covering: What to consider first before starting your jewelry marketing content brainstorm Some ideas for organizing and expanding upon your brainstorm Where to find additional inspiration to fill out your topics when you feel spent From now through early July of this year, I’m offering a free (yes FREE) six-month, podcast-guided program called “Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart” which will involve weekly audio and video lessons as well as companion PDF downloads for each new episode. Jumpstart members will also get a BONUS template for the one-page jewelry marketing content strategy, so you won’t have to start from scratch! If you want to sign up for the FREE full program right away and get the companion PDF download to this episode, visit joyjoya.com/jump. Link in show notes as well.

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But before we get to the solid gold, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video – so you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching “Joy Joya”. You can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. If you leave a review, I might read it on a future episode – please let me know what you think about this episode or about any other major takeaways you’ve had recently. Speaking of podcasts, did you know I also co-host another podcast with jewelry marketer Liz Kantner? It’s called Success With Jewelry, and we’ve already released 25 free episodes everywhere you listen to podcasts as well as on YouTube. We also have an Insider community, where we share extended episodes, hands-on guidance, and a plethora of resources. Visit successwithjewelry.com to learn more.

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Okay, my Sparklers! Let’s get into the next installment of Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart, all about brainstorming a wealth of strategic content that captivates your audience and aligns with your goals. Again, you can visit joyjoya.com/JUMP for the companion PDF to this episode and bonus resources to take you further.

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So first, the first thing’s first, what do you want to consider before starting your jewelry marketing content brainstorm? Surprise! You couldn’t have guessed that I would have said this right? Above all, you want to consider your Audience Personas. They are everything. They are the foundation of all the things you should be doing. Back in episode 229, I talked about Audience Personas. And for those of you who are signed up for the free Jumpstart program, you know that you got a sample persona example and a template. And this individual that I used in the example is called Professional Paula. So I will give you a high level summary of Paula because I’ll be using this person as an example throughout the episode to refer back to. So Paula, there’s a lot more to her. She’s a very multifaceted individual. But I just want to kind of give you the summary. So Paula is between 35 and 40. She’s single but actively dating, living in a cool, trendy city like Austin. She works in a professional career like finance, sales, or business development, etc. She’s making multiple six figures. Paula’s interests include communicating with her family, even though they don’t live close by, spending lots of time with her closest girlfriends and going out with them regularly shopping online, utilizing apps for convenience like food delivery, grocery pickup apps. She loves dressing up and putting on makeup, and she enjoys following fashion trends. She will buy from a brand if a girlfriend recommends it to her and/or if she sees one of her girlfriends wearing it or utilizing it. But she may hold back from buying if shopping is too inconvenient. Or if there’s an aspect of shopping that’s annoying or takes too much time. Because she’s all about things being easy. She’s a busy lady, she wants things to be convenient and seamless. So as we keep moving forward through the episode, just keep Paula in the back of your head, try to imagine what this person might be like.

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So after you consider your Audience Personas, you also want to be considering your competitors’ content. If you remember from Episode 230, then you know that one thing that we want to be studying about competitors is how are they communicating the story, their brand’s story? And through which platforms are they doing that? So for example, social media, email marketing, content marketing, like a blog through in person events, through PR, through partnerships, etc. And you may even want to go back to that competitive research that you did, and make a list of some of the content topics that your competitors are covering. So like, what are the things they talk about on social media when they’re not just talking about their products? So I don’t mean like them promoting their products. But what other kinds of things are they sharing, like, how to style jewelry? Are they talking about specific holidays, I would say make a list of those content topics, especially the ones that appeal to you, or that you can also see yourself using for your brand. But I definitely don’t want you to copy them or plagiarize them or just like scrape them. I want you to think about how you can borrow but also adapt the competitor’s approach and put a unique spin on it that has your brand DNA all over it, or that takes it to another level. So you kind of want to think about how can I one up these people? And of course only do it with things that makes sense for your brand. But you want to be doing things better, and more personally to your brand.

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So in addition to checking in with those Audience Personas, checking in with your competitor content, also know your voice and unique perspective. We’ve already talked about this in past episodes, but it’s something you want to keep going back to. Have any changes happened? Has there been any evolution in your voice and unique perspective? As you’ll hear me say later in this episode, any jewelry brand can share a guide to layering necklaces. But if you’re gonna do that, why are you sharing it, and what’s your unique perspective and take on the topic? How are you going to adapt a generic topic and make it uniquely yours? Just taking the content and plugging your products into it as if it’s some kind of template is not going to cut it. If you do that, and you say you tried my method, you did not try it because that is not what I’m advising you to do. You need to find a way to make the entire concept your own in your voice. Okay, we’re not just substituting products here. And know that this is the living and breathing document. And when you do the brainstorm, you may not end up using the entire brainstorm. But it’s really good to have a central place where you can add ideas and build upon them in this brainstorm or like somewhere adjacent to it. You also want to, if you have them, or you remember them, keep a running list of notes from last year or from previous years. So if you happen to know any have any notes or insights into content that performed well, in previous years, you may even want to have a section just for that with some further details about why you think it performed well, so that you have a record and reference of that moving forward. And if you’ve never done that, before, day one, you’re starting right now, every piece of content that you put out there, if you have like a major takeaway from it, or you see that it performed wildly well with your audience, or maybe it just bombed, you want to make note of that, because I can guarantee you if you’re not keeping track, a year’s gonna go by, and you’re not going to remember what happened. And you may end up repeating the same mistakes in a worst case scenario, or you’re not going to be able to take what’s already good and build upon it.

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Also, even if you can get through this brainstorm that I’m going to explain to you how to do, you can get through an entire year, which is amazing. If you can do that, you’ll still – this is not a set and forget thing – you’ll still want to revisit, revisit it on a monthly basis, because things will change in your business, you will forget about stuff, things will come up with your customers, maybe there’s just stuff you want to add into your calendar as it kind of happens. So the brainstorm and the plan can go out for a month, I mean, for a year, if you can get that far. But you’re not just leaving it there, you’re going to be checking in with it, at least on a monthly basis.

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Okay, so now I want to share some ideas for actually doing this content brainstorm. And then for organizing it and expanding on it so that it starts to take shape, it starts to make sense, it’s not just totally arbitrary. So wherever you want to do this, you can choose if it’s like a Google Doc, if you want to do this on paper with a pen or pencil, that’s fine. In a Word document, whatever you like, I don’t have a preference for that. Choose your preferred brainstorming place.

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But I think it’s important to have sections, so that you can like categorize the ideas as they come to you. And what I find the most helpful for a content brainstorm is to one have a section that’s just called “evergreen”. And if you’ve never heard that term before, that refers to content that retains relevance all the time. So it’s not time sensitive, it can remain a go-to resource for a long time. So you want to have that evergreen section. And then you’re gonna have the time sensitive topics and the time sensitive topics, obviously, because they’re time sensitive. We’re gonna categorize them, usually by month, I find that to be the easiest. If you want to start this brainstorm maybe by season, if that works for you, that’s fine, but I think month typically works the best. So you’re going to have a section for evergreen, then you’re going to have a section for every month of the year: January through March blah, blah, blah. This will give you some structure in the exercise, so that you have places to plug in information. And you’re not just left with like a total dump of a brainstorm. So now that you have all the sections, the first thing you want to put in this document is your business related events and important dates. So things you should know about your business that are time sensitive. These include any sales you’re going to be having, photo shoots you know you’re going to be having, new products or collections you’ll be launching, any in person events you’ll be doing, shipping cut off dates for major holidays, time that you personally want to take off so that you need to be pre scheduling things. Anything you know that’s it either going to be customer facing or even take your own time and attention away from marketing. Put all of those into the document. And also if you know you need certain lead times for things I know around the holidays, everything that needs to get like super micro scheduled because there’s so much going on.

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So if you’ve been in business for any period of time, you have insight into that. If you’re new to business, you can probably make some guesses. Put all those things in the document first and foremost, because they’re the most important, and you’re going to be kind of working around those things. And once you have those dates in, if you know, in the past, there was some type of content that you use related to these dates that worked really well. Or if there have been ideas marinating, marinating in your head that you want to try now that you’re like, going forward in a new year, plug all that stuff in, it doesn’t have to be finalized, it doesn’t have to be perfect. But at least you have like a record of what, what is like jangling around in your head. So after you get the business related stuff out of the way, you want to consider all the holidays that are relevant to your customers, or that have been important for you sales wise in the past. So obviously put those dates into the month specific sections. And again, if there’s like content related to that, that you want to kind of play with or that is unique to your brand, you want to put those as well. So, for example, maybe like Women’s History Month is very important to your brand. So you’re gonna spend that month writing out all the different stories you want to be telling around that time sensitive topic. Or maybe your brand has a really unique spin on Valentine’s Day like instead of gifting significant others, your brand prioritizes, self gifting and in like an irreverent way. So you can focus on Singles Awareness Day instead and say like why that aligns with your brand values. I also really love looking at National Day Calendar, which is a website that has all the like, normal holidays, but also social media holidays, the really random ones or you’re like, “Where did someone come up with this?” And I’ll put the link to that website in the show notes. There’s a lot on there that’s not going to be relevant. But if you kind of give each month a glance and see what what holidays are listed, you may actually find some things that could be fun to put a spin on for your brand. And I’m sure you know, I don’t have to tell you this: keeping up with content can really be challenging. So the more ideas you have to kind of go with, the better place you will be to produce brand specific content on a regular basis. And if National Day Calendar can give you an idea, I am all for it. I see a ton of brands, building their content off of like National Days. And they are able to do it in a very playful on brand way. And I love seeing how different brands are kind of able to adapt these silly, non holidays, let’s say.

18:38
So once you have all this stuff out of the way, now you’re going to want to consider your customers and the content that will serve them directly. So what are some questions that you get asked regularly by your customers? What would be in like a FAQ section? What do people DM you about? What do people email you about? If there are concerns, what are those? I want you to write those out in the “evergreen” section of your brainstorm. Unless, of course one of them is a time sensitive topic. And you need to plug that into like one of the months or seasons. And then also to get other topics because you’re gonna need a lot more than just what we’ve already covered. This is when you really start thinking about your Audience Persona, who this person is, what are their interests and their values, what’s important to them. And this is where you really need to spend time getting into their heads. So what do your customers love besides your jewelry, and how can you appeal to those interests in in adjacent way? If we go back to the example of Professional Paula, then we know she loves convenience. She loves saving time, she’s a busy lady. She prioritizes work, she prioritizes connecting with family, and spending time with girlfriends. She enjoys dressing up and going out, makeup, trends. And so knowing these things about Paula and your understanding about Paula will deepen the more time you’re in business and the more time you spend with her, these are some topics that would appeal to her interest. So I’m just going to list a few. One how to incorporate jewelry into traditions that you have with family members, even if they’re far away. Styling your looks for a brunch with girlfriends. Happy hour style from day to night looks. Save time getting ready in the morning with a jewelry uniform. How our personal jewelry styling concierge will save you time. Build your jewelry box according to summer trends, and work appropriate jewelry that isn’t boring.

21:14
Some of the examples I just shared will end up being evergreen, and some of them will end up being seasonal, like I shared an example about summer trends: that would probably be good for early June content. So then once you kind of have these ideas, you’ll want to plug them into your brainstorm where they feel the most appropriate. So once you’ve exhausted all your topic ideas, or that you’ve come up with your team on how do you keep going with this, because you’re gonna want more, I promise you. So when you’ve exhausted everything, then you’ll want to try some of the following resources. One, the most straightforward would be to do a Google search. So open up Google search for the types of products and/or product categories that you carry. So for example, if you have colored gemstone toi et moi rings then – hopefully I said that right – then do a Google search for that and then see what comes up. It doesn’t even have to be like a competing jewelry brand website, you could also look at publications. So for example, when I searched for that keyword, I got a lot of product pages. But I also saw an article from the New York Times called “The ‘It’ Ring for Engagements: Toi et Moi Styles”. If I were you, and I carried that type of ring style, I would take a look at that article and then see how can I adapt this approach to a storyteller of my brand. What can I do better? What can I do more authentically, in my own voice as a leader? Almost like a thought leader in this product care category? What is the article lacking that you’d want to say? And boom, there’s a topic for you. You can also check out the website answerthepublic.com. And I’ll put that link in the show notes. This is a resource that tells you what people are asking about based on one to two words that you feed it. So for example, I typed gemstone rings. And it gave me a ton of content ideas related to that, that people are asking about on the internet like which gemstones represent your personality, are gemstone engagement rings, tacky, and more. All these things people want to know. So if you can provide valuable information about the topics, then you are golden. You can also check out Google Autocomplete. So what that means – nothing fancy. You literally go to the Google homepage, and you start typing something, you’ve totally seen this before. And it gives you some suggested phrases to type into the search engine. So what I did, I started typing “gemstone rings for engagement”, and it gave me like five or six different suggested topics to search for related to what I typed, like what stones are good for engagement rings, different types of gemstones for engagement rings, popular gemstones for engagement rings, etc. So that could give you ideas for topics to pursue as well as ways to phrase the topic based on how people are searching for it. Other things you can do. Hashtag searches on Instagram related to products and product categories or niches that you cater to with your business. You can use Milled.com for email marketing inspiration, that is a database of email marketing campaigns from a lot of different brands, all types of industries. So you can search for keywords in there and see how other brands are communicating that message in email marketing. You can do similar to the Google Search tactic, except you can do it in YouTube. Or you can go on Reddit and kind of browse different subreddits about jewelry or about niches that you target and see what people are saying or asking there. That’s a really great place to find content inspiration.

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Okay, that’s it for now on this topic, much more to come in future episodes. If you want the companion PDF download, some action items, exercises and other resources related to this episode, check out JoyJoya.com/jump. Before we get into The Gold Mine as well as my jewelry marketing news roundup, I want to share a case study of a jewelry brand I think embodies what I just spoke about. Okay, let’s get into a case study. These are my thoughts about how I’d apply the lesson to a jewelry brand in the wild. This brand is not my client, I don’t have insider information. I’m just sharing my observations.

26:38
So I want to talk about Brilliant Earth I’m sure you’ve heard of this brand before. They are known for wedding jewelry, ecommerce, first brand direct to consumer. Brilliant Earth has a comprehensive and informative blog, which can be found through their primary navigation menu, under the “About” section. When you get to the blog page, you can sort their posts by recency or by popularity, and you can also narrow down by category, like “styles and trends”, “love and wedding”, and “news and mission”. I love this blog because you can tell a lot of planning went into the content calendar, and you can also tell that they’re prioritizing a mix of evergreen and time-sensitive posts, as well as considering what’s trending in terms of information and what customers probably ask them all the time. They’re seeking opportunities to put their own spin on things. One recent topic was “Dirty Gold: What It Is and How to Help”, which is likely a topic that has gathered more attention recently. Or it might be something their customers ask them about. They also have a lot of evergreen posts regarding how to style jewelry, like “how to layer necklaces” and “15 necklace styles everyone should know” and gifting like “Top Fine Jewelry Picks For The Aries In Your Life”. And they have practical advice for people getting married, which is a lot of people who are shopping Brilliant Earth, like “what to do if your ring is too big” and even “21 must-ask questions before marriage”, which on the surface has nothing to do with jewelry at all. I DO have one critique though. Even though they’re covering a lot of relevant topics that their audience would want to know, they’re not really putting a unique Brilliant Earth spin on it or connecting it back to their values. What I mean is – anyone that sells necklaces can really share a guide for how to layer necklaces, but why is Brilliant Earth specifically sharing this? What’s their unique take on it? Just wanted to share that as a great example! What do you think? Let me know in a podcast review or YouTube comment. Okay, let’s get into THE GOLD MINE!

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If you’ve been following this podcast, you know that I launched THE GOLD MINE in August as a secondary episode every week. Moving forward, I’ll be doing THE GOLD MINE as a segment in my weekly Sunday podcast. This week’s episode is all about: what to do if you can’t afford marketing support, and you’re doing everything on your own? How much time should you be marketing yourself, and then what do you do if you really don’t have that time? This is a real issue for so many solopreneurs out there; I know because I encounter them everyday. They’re busy running the operations of their business and/or at their benches making jewelry or designing new pieces, and they sure as heck don’t have time to do marketing. Or maybe they do have some time, but it’s not a top priority because they’re working with the product and with customers. Or they’re putting out daily fires. Does this sound like you? You post your Instagram post first thing in the morning or last thing at night, and you’ve checked your marketing box for the day. Or you spend an hour or two one day/week putting together your email campaign. Well, there’s a general rule of thumb that you should spend 20% of your time doing things that are actively growing your business, whether that’s doing outreach to potential retail partners, marketing activities, etc. If you work a 40-hour work week, then 20% of your time would be 8 hours in a week. So if you work five days per week, then about 1-2 hours per day should be spent on marketing. Are you actively carving out that time? Are you literally scheduling it into your day? I would go further than that to argue that 20% is just for maintenance mode, so if you’re not where you want to be, or you’re hoping to scale to the next level, then that number needs to be about 30-50% dedicated to business development and marketing. There’s got to be a way for you to carve out that time, whether that means getting up a little earlier to do that work before things get busy during the day, or staying a little later in the evening. It just requires discipline. But if you absolutely 100% don’t have the time it takes to devote to business development and marketing, then your only other option is hiring someone to take some of that burden off your plate. You have a number of options for this: a virtual assistant, but you’ll have to do a lot of training and overseeing, so it will still take time but not as much as doing it yourself, the most affordable approach. Hire a part-time person who has some experience, will probably require less effort from you but cost a little more. Hire an outsource marketing director or chief marketing officer that not only does some of the taks for you but also does it strategically, so you’re not the one trying to figure out the strategy and direction. Most expensive, but you save time and money in the long run, so it’s an investment in your future. If you want to gain traction in your business, there’s simply no way to avoid having to invest in either time or money, and if you really want to make strides, then you’re going to have to do both simultaneously. If you’re not acknowledging this fact, and you’re not 100% aware of what it takes to make progress, be sure that you’re aware that many of the frustrations you’re having in your business is likely because you’re not giving enough time and attention to the things that really need your time and attention; it’s like not giving enough water to plants. Tell me in a YouTube comment or podcast review if you can relate to this. Do you have trouble starting? What do you feel holds you back from starting?

40:37
Okay, let’s get into the news roundup, where I share three relevant articles related to jewelry or marketing. The first one comes from the McKinsey Insights blog, and it’s called “Great merchandising never goes out of fashion”. So this article discusses the importance of effective merchandising in the retail industry and how it can drive sales and improve customer experiences. I’m sharing this because I think it has so much to do with brand storytelling, and knowing your audience and speaking to them in a targeted way. Effective merchandising, like marketing, surprise, surprise, involves understanding customer needs and preferences and then using that knowledge strategically to create compelling product displays and store experiences. And this can happen both in a brick and mortar store and online. So don’t think it’s just limited to the in store experience. Merchandising, when it’s done well, can also improve brand loyalty and drive repeat business as customers are more likely to return when you’re offering a personalized and engaging shopping journey. I really liked this one quote, “Over recent sales cycles, product life spans have contracted, putting a premium on newness. The trend is also playing out among brands.” So basically what that means is customers, as distracted as we are by digital information, I think everyone just looking for new, new, new the next new thing. As a business owner or marketer, you probably get the feeling that everything needs to be new. But the cool thing about merchandising is if you’re not able to pump out newness all the time in the form of product, when you’re doing merchandising, and marketing and storytelling, well, that newness can actually be achieved in the way you present products. Merchandising and marketing are super deeply connected. And in many ways they can satisfy this craving for newness from the consumer. My main takeaway is, I think too many jewelry brands ignore how merchandising and marketing need to work intimately together to tell a story. There’s a huge misconception that products have to be new, new, new, because that is what customers want. But what if the story that you’re telling is the thing that makes everything feel new? And what if content is the thing that makes everything feel fresh?

43:37
The next article comes from Vogue Business, and it’s called “Explaining luxury’s new brand identifiers”. So this article is all about how luxury brands use visual signatures to cultivate recognition and loyalty. Actually, last week in the news roundup, I shared an article from the New York Times about indie jewelry brands that kind of cultivate exclusivity and community through their uniquely recognizable details. And this article kind of reminded me of that a little bit, I wanted to share it. So the new way of luxury and storytelling is not about logos or anything overly tacky. Instead, it’s all about visual signatures. So this is like the inclusion of motifs or the adoption of certain colors. Those things are in and a quote from the article is, “A sea change in consumer attitudes has prompted the return of quiet luxury, diminishing the appeal of shouty marketing.” “Colour association has also become a renewed popular play. Luxury jeweller Tiffany & Co is famously associated with a robin’s egg blue, which features across its packaging and marketing, including its latest high-profile collaboration with Nike. Luxury footwear label Christian Louboutin is loved for its signature red soles, while citrus orange is the hallmark for luxury brand Hermès. All three companies have had their signature colours trademarked.” So fundamentally, these luxury brands are grappling with this need to move away from like, the logo based recognition, and to speak to the like, temperature of the times and be simultaneously loud and quiet. My main takeaway is, it’s a really interesting concept to think about this if you’re a jewelry brand, especially if you’re on the more luxury side. So how can your brand storytelling be loud and quiet at the same time? How can you make a splash, but also be classy and subdued? Regardless, differentiation in the marketplace is so important, whether you’re communicating that visually, or through other modes of storytelling.

46:11
And then the last article I want to share today comes from Forbes, and it’s called “4 Reasons To Unleash Your Archives”. So one Forbes author shared a really interesting tactic for authentic brand storytelling, and that is unleashing your archives. This person said, “treasure your archives as assets”. That means preserving the journey of your brand, how it started, how you’ve evolved, where you came from, and also, not being embarrassed about those things, even if they’re messy, or you’ve come a long way. Realize that your journey and evolution are what makes your brand unique, including your jewelry designs, your mission and purpose, how you’ve grown, even if those things seem insignificant or scrappy to you. One quote from the article, “A successful brand story is built from the series of events that ignited your company’s founding and expresses how that narrative still drives your purpose today. Crafting an authentic brand story, instead of an overt sales pitch, is hard work—but not if you recognize your archives as a source of storytelling gold.” Your journey, your archives are the truest testament to your evolution and the key to brand authenticity. You can win trust by not being afraid to share. It also gives you a reason to look back and maybe give you insights about the direction for the future of your brand. It can give you ideas for content like Throwback Thursday or this day in history. And if you haven’t been holding on to things from the past or the beginning of your brand, start treating everything you do today as an archivist would and begin like holding on to those things, knowing that your brand is going to grow and change. And maybe you’ll want to show these things in the future as a sign of vulnerability and authenticity. My main takeaway is this is a no-brainer strategy for brand storytelling, especially if you’re already a few years into your business. And if you’re a new business, then start to think about this moving forward. How can you document your journey or save parts of your storytelling that may be compelling in the future?

48:48
So that’s it for today. Did you have any questions about Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart? You can always email me Laryssa that’s laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you love this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’re completely new to digital marketing then you want to purchase and read a copy of my book Jewelry Marketing Joy. Visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai