Being consistent with content creation is one of the major challenges of companies and businesses that want to reach out to their target audience.
Even if you have a big marketing team full of great ideas, how do you feed the content hungry machine of social media? And if you’re running a lean operation, how do you even find time to develop content that will speak to and touch your intended audience?
Lock it in. Put it on your content calendar!
In our previous post, we talked about creating a content calendar to help map out your content strategy for the month, a quarter or even a year. This is a great way to plan and classify your contents into evergreen, medium-term and short-term themes, which will also enhance the variety and quality of your contents.
Having a content calendar with detailed notes on topics, owner or writer and the actual deliverable will also help in sharing the workload (among your marketing team) in case a team member is not able to deliver on time for whatever reason.
If you already have a content calendar littered with ideas, there is still the challenge of developing and creating the actual content. You know what we mean, right? It’s one thing to identify and plot all your content topics. But writing, filming or recording those contents is still another thing.
What we’ve found in dealing with all different types of clients is that some people are good at sticking to their calendar or any planned activities. But some people are not.
Steven Covey said, “The key is not to prioritise what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”
So, how do you make sure that you deliver on what you have put in your content calendar? One of the things that worked for many of our clients is to set aside a particular period of time – e.g. a day or half day – dedicated to content creation.
Block it off!
If you’ll be writing an evergreen article that will require some research or interview, you may need to set aside a day to gather all the information before you can even start writing. And if you will record a 3-minute video clip, give yourself at least half a day to polish the script to make it a smooth process. And of course the recording itself may take at least a couple of hours, so give yourself plenty of time.
By blocking off and dedicating time to the actual content creation, and not just putting notes on your content calendar, is a practical way to be consistent with content production.
Just do it! Get your next content piece started
In her book The Artist’s Way, author and teacher Julia Cameron uses what she calls Morning Pages as one of the tools to encourage creativity among those doing the course. The idea behind it is to write three pages of long hand writing every morning for the entire duration of the 12-week course. Strictly stream of consciousness – you can write whatever comes to mind on any morning.
Cameron explains that it’s not really what you write that is important. It’s the act of writing every morning. That is important. It builds consistency and discipline.
The same is true with content creation. If you set aside and dedicate a certain amount of time during the day or during the week (despite your busy schedule), it will go a long way to make you more consistent with your content creation.
These are just a few of the basic and simple steps you can take straight away that can help with your content creation. If you have any question or if you want to discuss any of the items we talked about, please contact us on: 1300 630 883.