You spend a lot of time generating fabulous content for your blog or your business. Do you schedule your content marketing so you have time to do it all successfully?
You want to get that content shared out with your audience. What good is your content if it doesn’t get read or shared? You will be wasting your time writing fabulous content if it doesn’t get read or shared.
Imagine spending eight to twenty hours righting the perfect post. Looking for great images, maybe purchasing something on Canva and then designing it for your blog?
After all that time, wouldn’t it be nicer to have it seen and read by more people?
Table of Contents
Scheduling Content Marketing
I know you feel frazzled after doing all the work for the post. But that’s only 20% of the job. 80% of it is sharing that content and other relevant content.
Content Marketing Rule of Thumb: 20% of the time to generate content, 80% of the time sharing content. That means you need much more time for planning your content marketing for others to find it.
What is Content Marketing Exactly? By Definition it is: “A type of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material (such as videos, blogs, and social media posts) that does not explicitly promote a brand but is intended to stimulate interest in its products or services. Social media is an integral part of content marketing.”
Start Monthly To Schedule Content Out
Schedule your content marketing starts out with a calendar. I use an Excel spreadsheet to begin mine each and every month and then go week by week to break it down.
Starting out with a small content marketing plan that you can increase or decrease is best. If you plan much further out you may get overwhelmed before you even start. Decide how often first you will create your content.
Create your content at least once weekly on your blog and maybe 2 or 3 contributor posts unless you are a Ryan Biddulph who probably writes in his sleep.
Do stay flexible as events in the past have shown us, the need to be flexible and pivot quickly when needed. Some months you may have more blog posts than others, as long as you stick to your minimum quantity that is fine.
Then fill out your social media schedule on the calendar. Figure out how many posts per week you want to have going out on each of the social networks.
For example, my husband was in a recent snowmobile accident and I had to attend to his medical needs. Thankfully I had scheduled my client’s social media posts several weeks in advance on Agorapulse as we were preparing to go on a vacation.
Start With A Title For Your Content
I like to start with a blog title. I know many others have said they end with a title. Pick which method works for you but have an outline of what and why you want to write about. (You can always change your title afterward as I suggest you do as titles can work magic.)
Next, think about images and others you may want to mention in your post. Decide how much time you will need to research. Leave yourself that time to do the research and create some images with Canva.
However, you can always outsource that part to a great designer.
Start Now or You Will Never Start
If you don’t start now you may never start. Starting something is always the hardest part. Procrastinators love to put it off till tomorrow, and tomorrow never comes.
I like to start by writing down ideas. Then I used to begin my blog posts in Jasper to help me write them. If I don’t have ideas Jasper had helped with that too. Jasper can give you ideas when you have writer’s block. They can also help you create incredible images. Finally, I import the Jasper verbiage into my WordPress and find or create the images.
Today, however I prefer The Right Blogger suite of tools as the AI can create more longer form content suited for SEO.
I like to see how a post will look with images, links, and so forth. That assures me I will finish the post.
Lisa, Inspire To Thrive
So, start at the beginning. It will ensure YOU finish the blog post to the end. And, you can always edit along the way. The edit button is one of my favorite buttons in WordPress.
You probably may even get excited about it once you see your new blog post for yourself!
Planning Your Blog Posts is Your First Step To Schedule Content Marketing
You need to have content to share right? So, begin with the content, set up your time, and then you will know what is left to do.
You should spend 20% of your time generating content. Having a really good blog schedule is really important to help keep you efficient. Your time is of high value.
You can keep it simple like the one below:
Schedule Your Content Marketing Next
See the above example to start scheduling your content marketing. Start by figuring out what you want to accomplish by the month. Then break it down by a week and repeat.
Once you can break it down by a day it gets easier. It’s always easier when you have a big task at hand and then BREAK it DOWN. It won’t seem so daunting and you won’t feel frazzled.
Where will you share your content? Will you spend money on ads or just use social media? You may need to write more for LinkedIn Pulse or Medium. Therefore, decide which places you want to work within and set the schedule accordingly.
Fabulous Content Marketing Tools
Having a great social media calendar is important but no doubt tools are a must for content marketers today. I love using Agorapulse. This social media management tool has been a huge timesaver for me.
However, if you are a solopreneur with one blog you may prefer MissingLttr.
Many other content marketers and bloggers swear by Hootsuite, Co-Schedule, or Buffer which I used to love. Find the one that you are most comfortable with and stick with it.
The Right Blogger Headline tool has been a lifesaver for me in writing my headlines. Actually, you can try it for free.
Find a content marketing tool that you feel comfortable with and that is in your budget. – Lisa, Inspire To Thrive.
You can use other tools where other content marketers will share your content if you share their content. As long as their content is relevant to your readers feel free to use these extra services.
Of course, many of these tools are free and some require fees for more shares with bells and whistles.
For instance, some good tools are Triberr, Flipboard, and ViralContentBee, to name a few. There are a ton of these types of content marketing tools out there. Find ones that you are comfortable using.
Analyze Your Overall Marketing Efforts
Afterward, begin to analyze what is working on the various networks. No doubt you need to kick it up a notch here or eliminate one there. Use your Google Analytics to see where the traffic is coming from.
This screenshot below was from a few years ago when I first wrote the post. Now, today for the first time ever, I see Facebook is ahead of Twitter for Inspire To Thrive for traffic. I found that amazing since I don’t spend much time over there but have been creating stories on Facebook.
For example, you can see how mine showed up back in May 2020. The order changes over time. For the first time in 2022, Quora came up in the top 5. Today it has dropped back some.
Then in 2022, you can see where the referral traffic was coming from below. However, notice that Quora was the #1 source of referral traffic still. But note, that 85% of traffic is organic now in 2023 and 2024. (Organic traffic was 75% last year).
Notice how other search engines have grown and generated traffic too?
I had been working consistently over on the Quora network for the past 5+ years. When this blog post was first written in July of 2017, Quora was #15 in the spot of referrals.
Oftentimes, you will notice where you spend your time is where the traffic will come from. However, I stopped last year with the changes that took place on that Quora network.
An ironic note is that I don’t participate over on Facebook but the MissingLettr scheduling tool draws traffic from there to my site. As you can see it increased over the 2-year period. It’s a fabulous tool for solopreneurs with others to share your content as well from there.
I’ve switched from Facebook to LinkedIn recently with MissingLettr and added Instagram to schedule content.
Today you’ll need to set this up in Google Analytics today to track your where your traffic is coming from. You can watch my video on how to do it here.
Contributor Posts for Content Marketing
Aside from generating content on your own blog or website, you need to schedule some elsewhere. It’s a great way to get you in front of new audiences. Some of them will begin to follow you as well.
When you are on the networks like Triberr, BizSugar, FlipBoard, Growth Hackers, Blog Engage, Listly, or Viral Content Bee you’ll meet other like-minded bloggers who you may inquire to contribute to their blogs.
I loved this quote: “Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.” Gordon B. Hinckley. This quote holds true for content marketing. It takes hard work to continuously work the cycle.
For this reason, I hope these ways to schedule your content marketing help you to be able to work without losing your sanity.
Don’t Forget The Power of Video
Video isn’t just an option in content marketing; it’s essential. With the rise of YouTube Shorts, even quick clips can draw traffic to your channel. I noticed the other day my YouTube traffic came mostly from my shorts videos.
This helps engage viewers, expand your reach, and boost your visibility. Short, snappy videos grab attention and keep users from scrolling past. They allow you to highlight important parts of your message in a format everyone loves.
Think about how often you watch a short clip on your phone. Don’t miss out on what video can do for your marketing efforts. You can easily schedule YouTube videos in the YouTube studio.
I use Fliki AI that creates short and long video content from a blog post. You can also edit the videos and pick your music. It adds the captions for you making it very easy to use.
Summary: Staying Sane While You Schedule Your Content Marketing
Finally, make time for fun and rest. Rest is necessary to regenerate your creativity and you will need to generate more content and curate others.
You will need your energy to fill up your blog posts and share with creativity and energy. Without that rest, you can burn out.
Consequently, I’ve seen many bloggers burn out over the years. Ultimately save yourself a little time for yourself. Schedule that time for you, like you would with your content schedule.
How do you stay sane as you schedule your content marketing? Do you take breaks often?
Are you using a content marketing schedule? I’d love to know more from YOU -via X @Lisapatb
