How To Schedule Your Content Marketing
You spend a lot of time generating content for your blog or your business. Do you schedule your content marketing so you have time to do it all?
You want to get that content shared out to your audience. What good is your content if it doesn't get read or shared? You would be wasting your time writing it.
Imagine spending eight to twenty hours righting the perfect post. Looking for great images, maybe purchasing something on canva and then designing it for your blog? Don't you want to get out there for all to see?
I know you feel frazzled after doing all the work for the post. But that's only 20% of the job. 80% of it is sharing that content and others relevant content.
Content Marketing Rule of Thumb: 20% of time to generate content, 80% of time sharing content.
What is Content Marketing Exactly? By Definition it is: "A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. Social media is an integral part of content marketing."
Start Monthly to Schedule Your Content Marketing Plan
Starting out with a small content marketing plan that you can increase or decrease is best. If you plan much further out you may get overwhelmed before you even start. Decide how often first you will create your content. Once weekly at your blog and maybe 2 or 3 contributor posts unless you are a Ryan Biddulph who probably writes in his sleep.
Start With A Title For Your Content
I like to start with a blog title. I know many others have said they end with a title. Pick which method works for you but have an outline of what and why you want to write about.
Think about images and others you may want to mention in your post. Decide how much time you will need to research. Leave yourself that time to do the research and create some images. You can always outsource too to a good designer.
Begin the Work Or You Will Never Start
If you don't begin now you may never begin. I like to start posts in Word and once I near the end I import into my WordPress. I like to see how a post will look with images, links and so forth. That assures me I will finish the post.
You probably may even get excited about it once you see it for yourself!
Scheduling Your Blog Posts is Your First Step in Content Marketing
You need to have content to share right? So begin with the content, set up your time and then you will know what is left to do. You should spend 20% of your time generating content. Having a really good blog schedule is really important to help keep you efficient. Your time is of high value. You can keep it simple like the one below:
Schedule Your Content Marketing Next
See the above example to start to schedule your content marketing. Start by figuring out what you want to accomplish by the month. Then break it down by a week and repeat.
Once you can break it down by a day it gets easier. It's always easier when you have a big task at hand and then BREAK it DOWN. It won't seem so daunting and you won't feel frazzled.
Where will you share your content? Will you spend money on ads or just use social media? You may need to write more for LinkedIn Pulse or Medium. Decide which places you want to work within and set the schedule accordingly.
Fabulous Content Marketing Tools
Having a great social media calendar is important but no doubt tools are a must for content marketers today. I love using the Buffer and Elokenz. Many other content marketers and bloggers swear by Hootsuite, Co-Schedule or Agorapulse.
The co-headline analyzer tool by Co-Schedule has been a life saver for me with writing my headlines. Actually it's free and you should give a try if you haven't already!
Find a content marketing tool that you feel comfortable with and that is in your budget.You can use other tools where other content marketers will share your content if you share their content. As long as their content is relevant to your readers feel free to use these extra services.
Of course many of these tools are free and some require fees for more shares with bells and whistles.
For instance some good tools are: Triberr, Flipboard, JustRetweet, ViralContentBee, to name a few. There are a ton of these type of content marketing tools out there. Find ones that you are comfortable using.
Analyze Your Content Marketing Efforts
Afterward begin to analyze what is working on the various networks. No doubt you need to kick it up a notch here or eliminate one there. Use your Google analytics to see where the traffic is coming from.
For example you can see how mine showed up recently. The order changes over time. For the first time Quora came up in the top 30. I'd been working more over on the Quora network recently.
Contributor Posts for Content Marketing
Aside from generating content on your own blog or website you need to schedule some elsewhere. It's a great way to get you in front of new audiences. Some of them will begin to follow you as well.
When you are on the networks like Triberr, BizSugar or JustRetweet you'll meet other like minded bloggers who you may inquire to contribute to their blogs.
I loved this quote: "Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds." Gordon B. Hinckley. This quote hold true for content marketing. It takes hard work to continuous work the cycle.
For this reason I hope having a content marketing schedule helps you to be able to work it without losing your sanity.
Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds. Gordon B. Hinckley Click To Tweet
Staying Sane in This Faced Paced Content Marketing World
Finally make time for fun and rest. This is necessary to regenerate your creativity that you will need to generate more content and curate others. You will need your energy to fill up your posts and shares with creativity and energy. Without it you can burn out.
Consequently I've seen many bloggers burn out over the years. Ultimately save yourself a little time for you!
How you stay sane with your content marketing efforts today? Are you using a content marketing schedule? I'd love to know more in the comments below!
