As a small business, online content productivity may not be at the top of your list of things to do. But in today’s online world, it should be.
If your website is sitting there accomplishing no more than a simple brochure, you are losing online customers and relevance. Blogging works. But its quality content that pushes you far above your competition. And if every blog post feels like the largest chore on your to-do list, it will be the one chore that is pushed to the wayside every time.
To increase your online content productivity, the easiest way is to start your own editorial calendar. Magazines do it. Large websites do it. Why not you?
To get started, you’ll need an easy two step process.
Step 1: Create a monthly editorial calendar of topics or themes for the coming year. This is your basic structure.
Step 2: Create a weekly editorial calendar for every month to flush out topics you want to go into more depth on.
That’s it. Easy enough, right?
The benefits of doing it this way are many, including:
Focus – This simple step means you can focus in on an entire years worth of promotions, which ultimately will help your business in more ways than one.
Perspective – Looking at one year at a time divided down by months gives you key goals and objectives for the entire year.
Consistency – Having a plan in place automatically gives you more likelihood you’ll follow through. Consistency wins the race every time.
Scalability – Whether you are a one person shop or a company with 50 employees, this easy system can add value to any size business.
Now lets get into how to set up your two step system.
Step 1: Monthly Calendar
Set up your calendar in a place you can refer back to it every week. You can start it for a calendar year, or simply start with the next full month coming up. Choose a theme or topic for each month, and add in relevancy for what you’ll be doing with your business for that month. For example, a catering company may do a lot of parties during the month of December. They may choose “Planning Great Holiday Parties” as their November topic to start bringing in potential customers for the holiday season.
Be sure you choose a topic that has depth to it. “Planning Great Holiday Parties” can easily be split out into a variety of different topics, giving you something to write about every day of the week.
Step 2: Weekly Calendar
With your year full of monthly calendar topics completed, its time to focus in and narrow down on what you truly wish to talk about.
Identify topics that provide ideas and details that fully support your monthly topics. With our “Planning Great Holiday Parties” in mind, let look at how this can be broken down into weekly ideas.
As a catering company, they may work with individuals for home holiday parties, holiday weddings, offices for holiday luncheons, and large companies for large corporate holiday parties. If these are their four sources of primary business leads, they can incorporate each of these topics into week long themes. From there its easy to see how you can write anywhere from one to five articles on each individual topic.
Above all, remember your editorial calendar is a work in progress. While you should always have your weekly calendar completed a month or so out, you can make changes as you go along. If you discover a new niche you would like to pursue, or suddenly offer a new product or service, it’s easy to change direction, and keep everything in your online content system on track.
Your calendar system will only be as good as the time you put into it. Don’t do this in a rush and forget about it. Instead, dedicate time to it and get it as complete as possible. If you write, it will aid you in your daily tasks. If you outsource it and hire a ghost blogger to do it, it will be an easy way to keep you both on track, relevant, and on topic to help you with your business throughout the year.