I’ve been asked this question by several people who have started looking at their content and trying to develop a plan for how they go about it. And the easy answer to this question is: that it depends!
Yep, so helpful I know!
I look at content planning as a bit of a guideline, more than an important structure when it comes to blogging. So, while getting far out ahead is great and can save you time in the future, there are downsides to this approach too.
Daily
Daily posting is a drag and not something I would encourage regularly unless it’s in addition to content that has been scheduled already.
The reason I say that is because, for most of us, we have more important things to do that to try to schedule time to post something each day. It’s extremely easy to get distracted and miss out on posting for the day and it can put your whole plan out the window.
However, some people can make this work for them.
Weekly
Scheduling content weekly can feel very time consuming, as each week you need to put time aside to schedule the next week’s content.
But it is a lot easier to deal with for most than daily. Its one time block put aside each week to cover 5-7 days’ worth of content. It also allows for easy adaptation of content to target the trends that are happening each week that sometimes you don’t get to do if it is scheduled for longer out.
Monthly
This is my preferred method for scheduling and planning content.
The reason why I like this method is that you can still put aside a chunk of time to get this mapped, written and scheduled without it feeling overwhelming and still being reactive to trends, questions and other things that you feel should be addressed sooner rather than later.
6 Monthly
This method was brilliant for me, until it wasn’t.
I managed this for the start of the year and had content scheduled until June but then didn’t take the opportunities of down time to top up my content. Meaning that once it hit July, I didn’t really have content ready to go and I’ve been on the back foot since.
I now need to shuffle things around to work out a good time to do my content planning in my schedule to get myself back on track.
The other issue I came across was when I wanted to address something more urgently, that it meant that I either posted outside of my regular schedule or I had to adjust other content so it fitted into the new line up better.
It was also harder to remain authentic with my message as sometimes it’s easy to work out when something was written based on when it was posted.
Yearly
I know a lot of people who recommend this to their clients and to me; it just doesn’t work with being authentic.
Have you ever seen an event happen and then someone’s social media post that was scheduled comes out and makes you cringe? I’ve seen this more times than I would like to.
It’s easy to schedule a year in advance, but it’s hard to necessarily remember what has been scheduled leading to these cringe worthy situations. And those situations can turn potential clients off becoming actual clients.
When I work with my clients on content, I deal with a client who prefers weekly scheduling but most of my clients will allow me to handle it monthly.
Weekly can be stressful if they’re away, or if I am wanting to have things done before going away. But I will work with them and try to keep the balance they want. We both know to communicate when there is difficulty in meeting schedules for particular reasons.
Monthly, though, allows me time to work with my clients over what kinds of topics we’re looking at covering, what ties into their marketing for the month; and balance availability for the month.
Not sure if you can come up with content for a month at a time? Or don’t want to put aside the time to do so,
book in for a discovery call now and let me guide you through it.
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