Get off the content hamster wheel with these top tips for planning your content marketing
We all know being consistent with your content is important. So what happens when you go on holiday, the kids are on half term, you get sick or some other unexpected but urgent and can’t be ignored thing happens in your life?
Your content likely gets pushed to the bottom of the pile.
If this happens you lose the momentum. You come back to it a few weeks later and find you’ve lost a few fans in your absence and you also have no idea of where to start to pick it back up again, so a few more weeks pass before you're back in the swing of it.
I’ve spoken to endless business owners who only like to create content that is authentic, so they only create stuff when inspiration and creativity is flowing.
This is not a sustainable strategy in my opinion. Although I’m all for authenticity, but let’s look at some other options so that you don’t lose consistency.
Consistency forms your long term marketing strategy. Consistency is needed to build your reputation, your online presence and also the trust you are building.
Marketing is a slow burner, it takes time to build an engaged audience.
So, what is the balance between planning ahead and making sure you’re creating content that engages.
1. Have a strategy
This includes being really really clear on your goal and what you want to be known for, knowing your audience, knowing your brand purpose and values. More on this in my blog about getting the basics in place breo even thinking about a content strategy.
This helps you to plan what content to create that helps you be known, liked and trusted.
But also your strategy helps you to map out your unique customer journey and what content you need to create to move them from stranger to full blown fan. What do you need to need to pull people in, nurture them and tell them about what solutions you provide for their problem.
When you have all this the inspiration and creativity comes a lot easier, you’re not starting from scratch every time and racking your brain to think about what to create.
If you need any more reasons to create a strategy check out this blog Three Reasons to Create a Content Marketing Strategy.
2. Batch create your content when you’re feeling most creative.
When inspiration strikes create as much as you can. Or if you need to ‘get ready’ for your videos create a load of videos in one go. Or if you’re in the mood to write don’t stop at one blog post.
Awareness of when your most creative times are will help you to plan ahead.
I have two weeks in the month when I ‘feel’ like doing video or Lives.
Some people are better first thing in the morning when their brain is fresh.
Whenever it is, find your flow.
3. Use tech to make your life easier.
There are tools for everything these days, tools to plan, repurpose, schedule your content.
For planning I’m a Trello kinda girl but everyone is different. It might be spreadsheets, it might be asana.
The good thing about Trello is you can upload your images and text all onto one card, so when you’re ready to schedule it’s all in one place. You can set the date to publish too so you can see it in calendar view and it will notify you when the deadline is approaching.
I’ve just recently started looking into switching to Monday, which is very similar to Trello but allows me to upload larger files and I can see my content calendars in calendar view without paying for Premium.
For scheduling I use a range of tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite and Facebook (sorry Meta) Business Suite. There’s different tools that work better for different social media platforms.
Like for Instagram there’s Preview or Later which helps you see the grid so you can plan it. (Top tip here, don’t try to curate your Insta feed too much, you can waste so much time and it ends up stifling your creativity and responsiveness when it’s needed)
I use other tools for automating too such as IFFFT and Zapier.
I create small how-to videos for my newsletter readers, if you're interested in how to use these tools join my mailing list.
I love helping business owners get to grips with this stuff, planning and repurposing and scheduling is all part of my super power, so if you need some help book a call and you can tell me all about it, I’m a great listener!