Follow This Content Strategy Plan for Success

When consumers purchase a subscription app, they expect fresh, new content on a regular basis — and it’s up to you to deliver! While it may seem overwhelming at first to continually crank out new content, strategy is everything, and we’re here to guide you.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Every creator has two types of customers. It’s important to understand both and cater your content to each.

Those who want structured content want to follow a program with an end goal in mind; programs and challenges are best for these fans.

Those who want unstructured content like to pick and choose workouts; categories are best for these users.

For more on identifying your target audience, click here.

This Is Your Content Strategy Plan

We know having an app is exciting and you may want to launch with a complete channel including multiple programs and workouts. But that’s not the best strategy for two reasons:

  1. It’s a lot more work and prohibits you from launching quickly

  2. If you offer all your best stuff at launch there might not be anything to keep subscribers coming back for more after their free trial is up

The most successful creators start with a base bundle of content, then add new content frequently.

There are two key ingredients to your success as a creator:

  1. Posting content frequently and communicating that routine to your subscribers

  2. Building a complete channel over time, which we’ll outline below

Here’s exactly what you need to do in order to be successful.

Launch Your App With This Content

Category

We recommend starting with one category with at least five workouts to launch by creating a category called “Workout of the Week” or “My Week.”

To create a “Workout of the Week” or “My Week” category, follow our steps outlined here. Then, begin adding your short-form workouts to that category using the steps outlined here or long-form workouts using the steps outlined here.

You can choose to name the category something other than “Workout of the Week” or “My Week,” if you wish. The idea is that you get into the routine of publishing new content to your app on a regular (aka weekly) basis, while at the same time getting your users accustomed to your publishing cadence.

Note: You’ll need to refresh the content in this category every week — workouts will stay in your “Workout of the Week” or “My Week” category unless they’re archived.

Program

If you’d rather not launch with a “My Week” or “Workout of the Week” category, you can choose to launch with one program instead. We recommend starting with a gym or at-home program, no longer than two to four weeks. Learn how to create a program and add workouts to your program here.

Note: While your program should be between two and four weeks long, we recommend scheduling your workouts to drip release them, which helps create anticipation for new workouts with your users! If you release your entire program all at once your subscribers won’t have anything to look forward to/keep them coming back.

Creator Examples

Juice & Toya’s “Workouts of the Week”


Boss Everline's “The Foundation 4WK”

Nina Agdal's "Two-Week Sculpt"


Morgan Tyler’s “My Week”

Add This Content to Your App Post-Launch

After launching your app with your “My Week” or “Workout of the Week” category, you need to develop a strategy for keeping your content fresh. The key to a successful subscription business is to always offer your fans something new!

Our most successful creators develop and stick with a regular publishing cadence. For example, when posting weekly workouts to the category in your app, you must also communicate that to your fans and stick with it.

Over time, you should build a complete channel that consists of:

  • Your “Workout of the Week” or “My Week” category — where you publish new workouts every week

  • Three to five programs

  • Three to five categories

For more tips, check out our Content Checklist, with our recommendations for creating your 30-, 60-, and 90-day content roadmap. And if you need a refresher, read about how to add more value to your app here.

Playbook’s Creator Services

If you find yourself stuck creating content for your app, we’re here to help!

We understand that content creation can be time consuming and you might not have enough hours in the day. That’s why we offer a number of Playbook Creator Services, including Program Design and Program Buildout.

With these two services, we'll create a four- to six-week program around the theme of your choice and build it out for you in the app from start to finish.