You need a 3-month content marketing schedule. It’s as simple as that. Why 3 months? Well, the world doesn’t stand still. So much changes, technology, clients, world events and you personally. Beyond this may seem like a good idea, but realistically life happens and some stuff you thought was a good idea when you made the plan, a month or so later may not be relevant. Let your plan evolve!
We’ve already mentioned our must-haves for 2018, so what do you do next with them? Don’t let yourself get into a weekly or daily panic about what you’re going to post and talk about on your blog and social media and your business will thank you for it.
Prepare
As with anything in life, you should prepare for your content marketing plan. It all starts with a stock take. Once you’ve worked out what you have and what you want to share you can prepare it for your marketing plan and set goals. You’ve had that lightbulb moment for a brilliant idea that’s going to add value to your audience, so what do you do with it next? Don’t let these ideas sit there, work out first of all if you have information long enough for a blog and if not, it’s probably perfect for one of your social media platforms. Sometimes, things just don’t work for certain platforms. So if you’re not quite sure what to do with it, you can ask yourself these questions:
We use tools like Trello for somewhere everyone can put all their ideas down. You can make lists and boards so at least all those braindumps you sometimes need to have are somewhere organised! You can prepare for a couple of months in advance and put those seasonal ideas on boards for each month that you can come back to. Then what do you do once you’ve prepared all your ideas and everything you want to talk about?
Plan
So you’ve done your stock take and you know what you want to talk about, it’s time to put it into a proper plan! Whilst Trello helps you to organise your ideas in one place, we have to admit we use another tool or two when it comes to publishing and sharing our brilliant ideas (even if we do say so ourselves). Every business is different so I’m not going to tell you that you need these sharing platforms but Coschedule and Hootsuite are a couple of personal favourites. You can plan what you want to post and create a schedule for everything in advance.
Publish
Using one of the tools we’ve already mentioned to set up a publishing schedule means you won’t forget to publish those important updates when you need to. If you’re anything like us, life can get in the way and unexpected events can happen but if you’ve set up your publishing schedule, they won’t get forgotten! It helps you to optimise to add value to your audience, which will include your clients, potential clients and hopefully those who are just interested in your business.
Track
Track what you post! It builds a better picture of what works and what doesn’t from the types of posts that you do to the times and days that are most successful. Your most important information can take centre stage and for fun posts with less urgency, you can save these for your quieter days to hopefully build momentum. So the other tools help you to sort out the when and where, but heading to direct platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and keeping an eye on your Google analytics gives a much more specific insight for what marketing is working best for your business.
Tweak and Test
First of all, tracking what you post is pretty much a test in itself. You learn the good, the bad and the ugly first hand. Then you take what doesn’t work and you change it. It’s a constant learning process. It could be your tone or the type of post. It’s the only way to refine your content. We’ve been doing this for 8 years so we hope we’ve learned a thing or have and have a little insight for this. We know what days and times do better and when we need a little pick me up for our stats. Content marketing has to change with the times, but keep the momentum going and you’ll figure out your rhythm!
Our final point, here’s a distribution checklist. It’s a step by step process that’s simple but effective. And your marketing that does really well? Repurpose it. It’s valuable information that people have engaged with for a reason. Don’t let it slip because it’s good!
