5 Tips for Staying Consistent with Your Content
Coming off of a crazy month, I know as well as anyone that adhering to a content schedule for your business is hard. Even with the most robust and detailed content calendar, once you get off track, digging out can be a real pain in the you-know-what. But just because you missed a week of social media posting or forgot to update your blog this month, doesn’t mean that you’ve missed the boat and should give up on content creation altogether. Small business owners in particular wear a lot of hats, so try not to get discouraged. Just pick up and start again—eventually it gets easier, especially if you stay organized. The question for most people, however, is how? To help you stay on track, we have a few tips to make keeping up with your content schedule much easier.
How to Stick to a Content Schedule
- Brainstorm Content in Advance. Thinking about your content on a quarterly basis allows you to plan out your blog and social media posts well in advance to avoid that awful feeling of writing under pressure without a topic in sight. By dividing up your content into subject matter buckets, you can brainstorm ideas and map them out ahead of time in a spreadsheet or editorial calendar. Then, when you have an idea or come across good information to share, you can track ideas for future posts all in one place. The best part is that you can brainstorm content from anywhere—even from in front of the TV.
- Write blog posts in batches. Sitting down every week to write a new blog post can be tedious, and, let’s face it, it’s easy to blow it off for other, seemingly more important tasks. Rather than scrambling at the last minute to get a blog post together each week, write all of your blog posts for the month at one time. Once they're finished, go ahead and schedule them on your website. After that? Enjoy the stress-free life until it’s time to write them again! We recommend having your blog ideas thought out and written before the first day of the month—work backward from there to budget the time to put them together. Remember, once you get into a groove with the writing, it’s a lot easier to hammer out your blog posts and social media content.
- Create Themes. Creating daily content themes works great for blogs, and even better for social media. Run promotions on Mondays, share tips and ideas on Tuesdays, post blogs on Wednesdays and so on. This way, you are narrowing down your subject matter into topics, which makes it much more manageable, and easier to come up with the copy. As you develop new ideas, just drop them straight into your editorial calendar and go from there.
- Do what works best for you. If certain types of content writing comes more naturally for you, there is no need to totally reinvent the wheel. Blog about what you know and keep it short and concise. The same rules apply with social media: don’t just post to post. Come up with a schedule that is manageable and attainable and post content that you would like to read.
- Give yourself a break. Until you get into a groove with your content, don’t be too hard on yourself. Do your best, stick with it as you are able, and eventually it will get much easier. The words will flow better and the ideas will keep coming. If you’re stuck, don’t force it. Take a break and come back with a clear head later.