You spend a lot of time generating fabulous content for your blog or your business. Do you schedule your content marketing so you have time to do it all successfully?
You want to get that content shared out with your audience. What good is your content if it doesn’t get read or shared? You will be wasting your time writing the fabulous content if it doesn’t get read or shared.
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?
After all that time, wouldn’t it be nicer to have it seen and read by others?
How To Schedule Your Content Marketing
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 other relevant content.
Content Marketing Rule of Thumb: 20% of the time to generate content, 80% of time sharing content. That means you need much more time for planning your content marketing out for others to find it.
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.
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.
Do stay flexible as events like the recent pandemic have shown us, the need to be flexible and pivot quickly when needed. Some months you may have more blog posts than others, as long as you stick to your minimum quantity that is fine.
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. #blogging
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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. (You can always change your title afterward.)
Next, 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 with Canva.
However, you can always outsource that part to a great designer.
Start Now or You Will Never Start
If you don’t start now you may never start. Starting something is always the hardest part. Procrastinators love to put it off till tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes.
I like to start by writing down ideas. Then I begin my blog posts in Jasper to help me write them. If I don’t have ideas Jasper helps with that too. Jasper can give you ideas when you have writer’s block. Finally, I import them into my WordPress and find images.
I like to see how a post will look with images, links, and so forth. That assures me I will finish the post.
So, start at the beginning. It will ensure YOU finish the blog post to the end. And, you can always edit along the way. The edit button is one of my favorite buttons in WordPress.
You probably may even get excited about it once you see your new blog post for yourself!
I like to see how a post will look with images, links, and so forth. That assures me I will finish the post. #bloggingtips
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Planning Your Blog Posts is Your First Step to Schedule Your 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. Therefore, decide which places you want to work within and set the schedule accordingly.
Fabulous Content Marketing Tools to Arrange Your Content Marketing
Having a great social media calendar is important but no doubt tools are a must for content marketers today. I love using Agorapulse. This social media management tool has been a huge timesaver for me. However, if you are a solopreneur with one blog you may prefer MissingLttr.
Many other content marketers and bloggers swear by Hootsuite, Co-Schedule, or the Buffer which I used to love. Find the one that you are most comfortable with and stick with it.
The Sharethrough headline analyzer has been a lifesaver for me with writing my headlines. Actually, it’s free and you should give it 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, ViralContentBee, to name a few. There are a ton of these types of content marketing tools out there. Find ones that you are comfortable using.
Analyze Your Overall 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 – May 2020. The order changes over time. For the first time, Quora came up in the top 5.
Today you can see where the traffic is coming from. Now, notice that Quora is now the #1 source of referral traffic. But note, that 79% of traffic is organic now too. Notice how the StartPage search engine has grown and generates traffic too?
I’d been working consistently over on the Quora network for the past 5+ years. When this blog post was first written in July of 2017, Quora was #15 in the spot of referrals. Oftentimes, you will notice where you spend your time is where the traffic will come from.
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, Growth Hackers, or Viral Content Bee 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 holds true for content marketing. It takes hard work to continuously work the cycle.
Without doing the hard work, you just have weeds!
For this reason, I hope these ways to schedule your content marketing help you to be able to work without losing your sanity.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds. – Gordon B. Hinckley” quote=”Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds. Gordon B. Hinckley”]
Staying Sane While You Schedule Your Content Marketing
Finally, make time for fun and rest. Rest 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 blog posts and share with creativity and energy. Without that rest, you can burn out.
Consequently, I’ve seen many bloggers burn out over the years. Ultimately save yourself a little time for yourself! Schedule that time for you, like you would with your content schedule.
How do you stay sane as you schedule your content marketing? Do you take breaks often?
Are you using a content marketing schedule? I’d love to know more from YOU in the comments below so we can discuss it!
Jasper AI can help you write content fast!
