With six distinct blogs on different websites, each catering to a unique product, staying on top of things can get pretty intense. And let's not forget about the talented group of writers who contribute their brilliance to our blogs, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, spinning a whole load of plates.

At least that's how it used to feel until we discovered a game-changing WordPress editorial calendar. And let me tell you, it's completely transformed our content management experience.

It's called the Strive Content Calendar, and I couldn't wait to share its magic with fellow content creators and blog managers like you.

After using Strive for the past few months, I've come to realize just how invaluable it is for streamlining the content management process.

Ready to rev up your content game? Let's go!

Here's why you probably need Strive

If you're immersed in the world of content creation or blog management, you understand the vital role played by blog content calendars. These invaluable tools serve as the backbone of your operations, enabling you to:

• Track and organize topics
• Structure ideas
• Assign tasks
• Schedule posts
• …and so much more!

Now, if you're as organized as we are, you know that your blog content calendar is just a piece of the puzzle. Enter the mighty main content calendar, where you manage not only blog posts but also a myriad of other content types, such as guides, infographics, ads, and PDFs, all neatly organized by topic.

At WishList Member, we rely on Asana to construct and maintain our colossal main content calendar, which effectively captures the bigger picture. However, we encountered a couple of challenges along the way:

1. The sheer size of our main calendar made it too cumbersome for a practical working blog content calendar.
2. Not all our esteemed writers are housed in our office premises, granting them easy access to Asana. This led to a time-consuming cycle of back-and-forth emails and Google Docs exchanges when assigning topics to external writers.

Thankfully, our salvation arrived in the form of the Strive Content Calendar, which swiftly resolved these hurdles and presented us with a seamless solution. Allow us to shed light on how Strive effectively transformed our content management woes.

Now onto the best part: the Strive Content Calendar

The Strive Content Calendar is a remarkable WordPress plugin, just like WishList Member. This means it seamlessly integrates into the WordPress backend, creating your very own blog content calendar right where you need it most.

This ingenious solution directly tackles my two primary concerns:

1. By housing the blog content calendar within the WordPress backend, each of our six blogs has its own dedicated calendar, distinct from our main calendar. This streamlined approach simplifies the management and organization of topics, ensuring an efficient workflow. (Curious about how we amalgamate all the blog calendars into our Asana main calendar? Keep reading, we'll reveal our secret!)
2. Each of our writers has access to the WordPress backend. With Strive, our blog content calendars are now nestled within WordPress itself. As a result, it's now a cinch to assign, review, and process posts for all involved! No more back-and-forth Google Doc sharing. (We'll delve into more details about this later on!)

Plus, Strive's drag-and-drop functionality just adds to its overall incredible ease of use:

Want to change the date of your post? No problemo! Strive lets you effortlessly rearrange posts to your heart's content, swiftly moving them between scheduled slots and the unscheduled drafts sidebar. Each relocation instantly triggers automatic scheduling within the WordPress editor for seamless organization.

This feature stands out as a personal favorite, but the Strive plugin boasts a whole array of other impressive offerings. Let's take a look at some more.

More of Strive's great features

In addition to its user-friendly setup and seamless integration, Strive is tooled up with impressive features designed to save you valuable time. Such as…

Effortless content revisions

Getting your blog to rank highly and stay there requires regular content revisions. However, the revision process can be a real headache. You certainly don't want to disrupt the SEO performance of a live post that already has substantial value.

Enter Strive's Revisions feature, the ultimate solution to streamline your revision workflow. Upon installing the plugin, you'll notice a “revision” option linked to each published post. Accessible via the frontend admin bar in WordPress or your list of posts in the backend.

This feature works its magic in two simple steps:

• Clicking the “revision” link generates a new draft of the post, separate from the published version.
• As you make updates and hit “Publish,” Strive seamlessly merges the revised version with the original. The result? An optimized article without the hassle of confusing redirects. Your SEO juice remains intact, while you save precious time.

Notably, the Strive calendar view prominently labels revisions, allowing you to easily track the ratio of new-to-updated content.

Alternative Pipeline view

While the Calendar view serves as my primary workspace, the Pipeline view gives you a big-picture perspective. By clicking the Pipeline tab, you get visibility into the statuses of all your posts in a single, organized space.

This prevents any posts from slipping through the cracks, providing a holistic snapshot of their progress. Whether they are scheduled, in progress, ready for editing, or not yet started, you can easily identify and manage each post's status. Additionally, you have the flexibility to toggle between row and column layouts based on your preferred workflow.

Customizable Checklists

Crafting a well-structured blog post involves juggling numerous details, from grammar and style to meta-data and image settings. This challenge becomes even more pronounced when working with new writers.

Strive's Checklists feature comes to the rescue, eliminating any guesswork and ensuring consistency. Simply compile your list of essential details under the Checklist tab, and you're ready to go.

Whenever someone works on a post, they can access the checklist directly from the WordPress editor, and check off items as they progress. This not only streamlines practical writing tasks but also serves as a valuable tool for your process.

Clear Post Statuses

Post statuses play a vital role in organizing your content workflow. How do you know if a post is in progress, ready to edit, or edited and ready to go? Strive's Post Statuses feature offers unparalleled clarity in this regard.

Unlike the default WordPress setup, where it's challenging to differentiate between posts requiring edits and those ready for publication, Strive introduces a crystal-clear solution.

The Strive plugin enriches your WordPress environment with the following intuitive post statuses:

• Not Started
• Writing
• Editing
• Complete
• Published

Each status is associated with a distinct color, providing a visual cue throughout the Strive Calendar. Updating a status in the WordPress editor triggers an immediate reflection in Strive, and vice versa. This feature enables efficient organization, ensuring that you never lose track of your posts' progress.

These are just a few of the remarkable features that make Strive an indispensable asset for optimizing your content process. Now, let's delve deeper into how Strive can revolutionize your blog workflow management.

Streamlining Your Blog Workflow with Strive

In this section, I'll walk you through how the WishList Member Content Team effectively uses Strive to manage our blog post workflow. With several writers contributing to our six distinct blogs, maintaining an organized and controlled workflow is super important.

Thankfully, Strive provides two great features that simplify the process and ensure seamless organization. Let's explore how we leverage these features:

New Drafts

Located on the right side of the Content Calendar page, the “Add New Draft” is your launchpad for your next blog.

When clicked, it opens a pop-up window where you can effortlessly input all the essential details required for a post.

We make use of the Title field to indicate the assigned writer by including their name before the post title.

The magic happens when you click the Add New Draft button at the bottom of the window.

Strive automatically creates a new draft in WordPress, populating all the entered information into the WordPress Editor. This integration between Strive and WordPress eliminates the need for time-consuming data transfer, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow.

When you create a new draft, Strive auto-generates a dedicated box in the Unscheduled Drafts column, conveniently displaying all pending assignments for our writers. This feature enables clear visibility and easy access to ongoing tasks.

Streamlined Workflow with Color-Coded Progress

Strive's vibrant color system not only adds visual appeal but also serves as a powerful tool in our blog post process.

Each color represents a specific stage in the workflow, allowing us to effectively communicate the next steps and responsible individuals. Here's how we utilize these colors:

1. Not Started (Red): When I create a New Draft, it automatically adopts the Not Started status with a striking red color. This signals to the assigned writer that the blog post is ready to be written.
2. Writing (Orange): Once the writer begins working on the draft, they transition the post status to Writing, accompanied by an eye-catching orange hue. This change lets me know that the post is in progress.
3. Editing (Yellow): When the draft is completed and ready for review, the writer updates the post status to Editing, represented by a vibrant yellow shade. This notifies me that the post requires my attention for further review and revisions.
4. Complete (Green): After I finish the edits and consider the post ready for publication, I switch the status to Complete. The post box promptly transforms into a reassuring green color.

Green plays a vital role for us, as Strive offers an optional setting that automatically publishes any Complete (green) post according to its scheduled date and time in the WordPress Editor. This feature significantly saves time. However, it necessitates diligent checking of dates and times whenever we “go green.”

Finally, once a post is successfully published, it transitions to black, indicating that the entire process is complete.

By employing this color-coded system, we maintain an organized workflow, ensuring clear communication and seamless progression throughout the content creation process. Let's explore more valuable features and benefits that Strive brings to the table.

Seamless Integration with Your Main Content Calendar

Strive's individual blog content calendars simplify our blog workflow tremendously. However, what about our main Asana calendar, where we track all the deliverables associated with our topics?

Transcribing each WordPress post into Asana would be a tedious and time-consuming task. Luckily, our remarkable Dev Team devised an ingenious solution using Zapier.

Through a custom Zap, triggered whenever a new draft is created in WordPress, the draft seamlessly transfers into our Asana content calendar, specifically the “New Blogs” section I established.

The Zap automatically assigns the corresponding task to me, ensuring I receive an alert about the presence of the draft. From there, I simply navigate to Asana and effortlessly drag the post into the appropriate topic section.

It's an absolute triumph, streamlining our workflow and eliminating the need for duplicate efforts.

The Takeaway

The Strive Content Calendar is an invaluable asset for creators. It offers a wealth of features and benefits that can revolutionize your content management process all at a very reasonable price.

For only $7 per month, you gain access to all the remarkable features we've discussed and more. Not to mention, the first two weeks come free of charge.

Consider the value of your time, which is estimated at around $100 per hour. With Strive, you'll be paying less than half a cent per hour, making it an incredibly cost-effective solution. Factor in the time-saving advantages it provides, and it's an absolute steal.

Ready to experience the power of Strive firsthand? Click the button below and embark on a test drive that will transform the way you manage and organize your content.

Start optimizing your content process with Strive today!

TRY STRIVE CONTENT CALENDAR FOR FREE FOR 14 DAYS

We value your feedback and would love to hear about your experience with Strive. If you decide to give it a try, please share your thoughts and insights in the comments section.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

“People buy on emotion and justify with logic.”

You can't get five seconds into most marketing advice without hearing it (probably for the 1,000th time). Problem is… it's wrong. Or, at the very least, incomplete. And, frankly, not knowing how it's incomplete is the missing link for a lot of marketing and marketers.

So, let's start at the beginning…

Why do most advice-givers say people “buy on emotion”?

Well, because emotion IS a part of the decision to buy. A critical part. Maybe the most important part. In fact, neuroscientists have studied it and found that people whose brains are damaged in the area that generates emotions are incapable of making decisions.

“Um… I thought you were telling me buying decisions aren't based on emotion? Not really helping your case here, Johnny Boy.”

As with anything, details matter.

What the research actually says is “Decision-making is a complex process that requires the orchestration of multiple neural systems.” Patients who have damage in certain emotion-related parts of the brain have “difficulties with decision-making”, but they're not fully incapable.

That is, emotion is a critical piece of the puzzle, but it's not the only piece.

In fact, Aristotle identified three components of persuasion: pathos, ethos, and logos.

Today, you might hear those referred to as emotion, believability, and logic. Which brings up an interesting point…

Why does believability matter?

Pretty much everybody agrees that believability is important. In fact, you've likely heard the same advice-givers who go on about “people buy on emotion” rail about the importance of believability.

But, believability isn't emotion.

Interesting.

The point I'm making isn't that emotion doesn't matter. It absolutely does. It's that there's more to it… and I argue that logic is actually what pushes people over the edge to buy. It's that critical missing piece for most marketers.

So, enough of me playing coy. What am I actually saying here?

I believe there are three things that go into buying decisions:

• Desire
• Believability
• Rationalization

Think about any buying decision you've ever made. It's actually pretty rare that you see something, want it, and just immediately buy it. Maybe the king size Snickers bar at the grocery store checkout, but anything more than the occasional (or not so occasional) impulse buy?

There's more to it.

If emotion is all that mattered, hype would work. You'd see some amazing claim that you'll instantly lose 30 pounds in five seconds just by taking this pill and you'd buy it without thought.

That's not what happens.

The moment you hear a claim like that, you think “yeah right” — and you don't buy. The emotional appeal is there, it's believability that's missing.

So, how do we get to logic as the basis for buying?

It's that moment of uncertainty… when you've heard the emotional appeals and you do kinda want the thing. You've been given some evidence and the thing seems credible. And you're sitting there, finger on the mouse, debating if you should go through with it.

What pushes you over the edge?

Probably something like this:

• “Well, I can always return it if I don't like it.”
• “I've gotta do something because what I'm doing now isn't working.”
• “I better just get it while it's half off.”

Sound familiar? Those are rationalizations. They are logical appeals. They are the justifications we use to say “screw it” and go for it. So, the saying “People buy on emotion and justify with logic” is close.

But, it's really that “People desire based on emotion and buy based on logic”. The justification comes before the purchase.

Why does that matter?

As a marketer, you want to provide those justifications. In fact, I'd argue that's what a sale is: “Well, it is half off right now” and what urgency is: “I better just get before the price goes back up”. Limited-time offers provide a built-in and compelling justification.

Again, notice those are logical appeals not emotional ones.

Aristotle had it right all along.

Yes, you need emotion. You also need believability… and you need logic in the form of justifications that push people over the edge and get them to click that buy button.

Give it a shot the next time you sit down to write some sales copy. I'm confident you'll see a jump in the results you get. I mean, it can't hurt, right?

Speaking of boosting the results you're getting… can you imagine what you'd learn if you had a bird's eye view of over 110,000 membership sites? How much bigger you could grow your membership?

That's the position we're fortunate to be in and we created a free video training that'll teach the five most impactful marketing secrets we've learned from all that experience. Surely, there's a thing or two you'd pick up that'd help you increase your results. Get free access below:

You've probably seen his “hierarchy of needs”. It's become a bit of a staple in marketing circles. The problem is, it's not based on any actual research. Maslow just kinda made it up based on what he thought.

Fine. That's how lots of theories begin, but eventually they need tested. Maslow's have been and the results have been mixed at best.

That's why psychologists like Henry Murray and David McClelland kept advancing Maslow's original ideas.

McClelland, in particular, conducted numerous studies using the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The TAT isn't a perfect test, but as ScienceDirect puts it, it “is useful in revealing a patient's dominant motivations, emotions, and core personality conflicts”.

McClelland used it to refine Maslow's needs theory.

What did he find?

That, in reality, it's really only three needs that dominate human behavior. Three needs that animate 90% of how and why we act the way we do. Useful for those (like you and I) attempting to motivate others into action?

Uh, yeah.

So, what are these “three needs”?

1. The Need for Power
2. The Need for Achievement
3. The Need for Affiliation

McClelland found that of all the different needs identified my Maslow and Murray, 86% of people were dominant in one or more of these three needs. Evidence,  data, something you can trust.

Quickly, what exactly are each of these needs?

The Need for Power

When people hear “power”, they automatically think of control and evil despots like Stalin and Hitler. That can be part of it, but it's more about impact. It's the ability to influence the world around you — people, objects, etc. Imagine a baby who throws a ball and then giggles uncontrollably. It's her ability to control something outside of herself that makes her light up. That's the Need for Power.

Phrases you might use in your messaging to appeal to this need are things like:

• “more control…”
• “change the world…”
• “have tremendous impact…”
• “dominate…”
• “greater influence…”

You speak to their need to impact and influence the world around them because, for people high in the Need for Power, that's what motivates them.

The Need for Achievement

This need is more like it sounds — the desire to achieve things. Set a goal, work toward it, and ultimately achieve it. People high in the Need for Achievement want to engage in that simple process over and over again.

A little nuance, though. If a goal is too easy, it won't bring the satisfaction they're after and it won't motivate them. If a goal is too hard, they'll assume they can't achieve it and, again, it won't motivate them.

So, the goal has to be “just right” in order to motivate people high in this need. But, put challenging but achievable goals in front of them and they'll grind them out one after the other like a machine.

Phrase you might use in your messaging for this need are things like:

• “mastery”
• “achieve your goals”
• “challenge yourself”
• “show what your made of”
• “be all you can be”

The final need, then, is…

The Need for Affiliation

As McClelland says, this is “The need to feel a sense of involvement and belonging within a social group.” This one's more well-known. Social networks have illustrated people's need for connection and belonging.

Today, many products and services include communities, Facebook groups, live events, virtual events, and so on.

Still, it's important to include in your messaging. Phrases you might use include:

• “join a group of like-minded”
• “connect with other”
• “we're one of you”
• “welcome to the family”

And, so on. And, of course, including community-type elements in your products and services when and where appropriate.

So, how do you use all this?

Well, consider that virtually all (good) copywriting is “reason-why” based. You're giving people reasons why they should take the action you're asking them to (subscribe to your mailing list, buy your product, join your community, etc).

So, any basic argument can be broken down into two parts:

1. Take this action
2. Because reason why

The three needs tell you what those “reasons why” should be. They should speak to the three needs because that's what motivates people to act. That's what will make your writing, speaking, whatever kind of messaging you're doing… more persuasive.

Yes, you still have to prove these kinds of claims, provide evidence, get attention and all that… but getting the appeal right in the first place is critical. Otherwise, people just shrug and say, “Eh, who cares?” It doesn't animate them.

So, the next time you're sitting down to write some copy or whip up a video script, forget Maslow and remember McClelland. Your copy will thank you for it.

That said, this is just one of the many marketing secrets we've learned working with over 100,000 other online business owners like you.

Want to know the five most impactful secrets we've learned? To ramp up your marketing, blow through your income goals and creating a thriving membership community of people you love working with?

If yes, check out our free training below where we'll share those secrets with you: