Keeping a Consistent Content Schedule for Your Site
Time and time again over the last decade of blogging, video making, SEO, and website creation it’s been proven that a regular posting schedule goes so incredibly far towards the goal of building and maintaining an audience. For businesses of all types, an engaged and interested audience means making more money, having a stronger brand, and getting access to the most powerful form of advertisement available: Word of mouth.
Unfortunately, keeping a content schedule is much easier said than done, at least for the vast majority of businesses. With that said, though, there are some pretty solid habits you can implement that will help you ensure you’ve got a solid posting schedule, and some of them are a bit different than you might immediately expect! We’ve built a guide here that can help you incorporate time-tested methods for building a solid posting schedule and truly growing your audience.
Step One: Don’t Go It Alone
This tip is particularly important for small companies with leadership who are tightly tied to the day-to-day business of the company: Don’t go it alone! Hire a writer, video maker, or designer instead of trying to do it all in house. If you’re not at the point of company income where you can bring content creation talent on-board as an employee, contract the work out. While a salary and benefits are the best way to encourage top-notch, on-brand, and high-value content, freelancers can deliver unbelievably good work, especially if you aim high. There are professional freelancers out there who can absolutely do great for your company, so if you’re struggling to keep up the stream of content, seek out a skilled freelancer.
You’d be amazed by the quality and quantity of content you can get on a reasonably priced contract!
Step Two: Invest in Tools
There are countless content management tools out there, designed specifically for businesses like yours. Mobile tools like Dropbox, Google Docs, and Podio which allow collaboration and coordination of content to sites like Squarespace, or WordPress. The internet is chock full of innovative systems that can make getting your brand out there easy.
One of the biggest stumbling blocks to a consistent content schedule lies at the very beginning of the process: Establishing your online foundation. While a custom website is always going to be the best in the long run for your business, don’t let your company’s content schedule fall to the wayside because of the initial hump of setting things up. Use these easy tools to get your blog, YouTube account, and social media accounts up and running so there’s one less thing to think about.
Step Three: Get Accountable
In the end, no matter what tools you’re using, you’ve got to ensure that someone actually posts the content! The best way to ensure you’re stuff makes it to the wide world of hungry readers and viewers is to ensure you’ve got a central content authority for your company. It could be an agency you contract out to, a freelancer, or someone in-house, but someone needs to be explicitly set as the designated content manager.
What happens to so many companies is that the content gets made, the website is set up and maintained, but then it all falls into a nebulous schedule of actually posting the content and ensuring it goes up.
Going out of your way to ensure that there is someone specific whose job it is to post your content and that there is a specific time to post it will build an environment of content accountability. No more conversations about whether anyone remembered to ensure your latest video uploaded correctly to YouTube or whether your latest blog had the right images before it got submitted to the feed.
A strong content schedule means a vibrant, thriving connection to your customers and your fans. It means having a brand that is more than just a logo and a product. There are millions of products available online to customers, but the ones that stand out are those that are able to cross the digital threshold and connect to their lives. To connect, you need content, and regular, scheduled, high-quality content will no doubt win major gains for your brand.