Content marketing is all about consistency. It’s the slow and steady work that builds your brand one blog, social media post, or article at a time. But how can you stay consistent when the ups and downs of entrepreneurship make it hard to predict what’s coming next? It’s a struggle every content creator faces and one that I’m currently working through. Ultimately, you’ll need to find your own system, but here are a few tips that I hope will help get you started.
1. Batch Your Work
There are so many resources out there on batch work and I recommend doing a deep dive! It’s a strategy for how to produce content (blogs, podcasts, social media posts, etc.) as efficiently as possible. Rather than creating one piece of content from start to finish, batching your work means creating multiple pieces of content all at once and focusing on each stage of the process. For example, brainstorming for all your blog posts for the next several months, then writing all of them, then editing all of them, then finding images for all of them, and so on. This increases efficiency and allows our brains to focus on the same type of task rather than requiring us to shift gears over and over again.
Here are a few articles about this that I found to be helpful:
How to Batch Work (and Save Yourself Hours) by Jenna Kutcher
Why You Should Create Content in Batches (and How to Do It) by Ali Luke
2. Set Aside Writing Time (& Protect It)
This year I’ve designated Mondays to work on my business rather than for my business. I don’t do client work. I write, strategize, and plan. It’s taken real commitment to keep this day protected. It can be so easy to justify bending the rules I’ve made for myself, but it’s almost never worth it to do so. Pick a time to write consistently and stick with it.
3. Don’t Wait for Perfection
I have had to lower my expectations a bit when it comes to producing content. I’ve had to risk putting things out there that aren’t exactly what I had originally intended or as polished as I would like. As many of us are, I’m incredibly hard on myself and that can keep me from just going for it.
That doesn’t mean I’m okay with being sloppy or thoughtless. I always want my writing content to be useful and I have no interest in putting something out that doesn’t add value. But I’m also learning to not wait for perfection.
4. Start Small
Better to be consistent and publish monthly than to commit to publishing daily, overextend yourself, and burn out. Start with something achievable and realistic, put systems in place, and then you can always add in more when you’re ready. Better to under-promise and over-deliver than over-promise and under-deliver.
5. Have Backup Content Pieces Ready
Even with all the planning in the world, we all have off weeks/months where we fall behind. There are times when we find ourselves staring at a blank page and the clock is ticking toward our self-imposed deadline. During those times, it’s nice to have a few backup pieces ready to go. This takes planning and foresight, and can also be an opportunity to publish articles on topics that don’t fit cleanly in a larger theme - sometimes a one-off post can even be a fun break for your audience! Take advantage of the weeks where you have more energy and bust a few extras out. That will make those chaotic weeks/months a little less so.
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