I can not tell you how important it is to deliver consistent content. Whether you decide on a weekly, biweekly, or monthly schedule, it is important that your readers know what to expect from you and that you deliver predictably. A great way to ensure this happens is to take some time and plan your content for the year.
This may seem more challenging than it actually is so let’s break down 3 tips you can use to help you work out your content.
Plan Your Content with Your Existing Product Funnel
This is a fabulous place to start when you’re writing content. You want to be sure that you’re constantly touching back to your existing products throughout the year. This is also especially important if you plan to run any promotions or relaunches of these products. One mistake many entrepreneurs make is to only communicate with their lists when they have something to sell. There are few things that can turn off a loyal list like this so it’s important that you are talking about your product topics (without the hard sell) on a regular basis. That way, you have more flexibility if you do decide to do some promotions or more sales-focused content during the year.
Take a look at how many products you have and spread them out throughout the year. For instance, you could choose to do one primary focus per month or once per quarter depending on how many products you have to work with. You probably won’t write just on that one thing for the month/quarter of course, but you should be able to create content for the product a few times and perhaps work it in as calls to actions in a few other spots.
Use your planned launches
In addition to existing products, use any planned launches that you have coming up to help you plan your content. It can be very easy to get caught up in the overload of a launch and stop sending out content but pre-launch is often critical for content. You don’t want to stop sending your list stuff and then slam them with a bunch of sales emails. So, plan ahead and use the pre-launch period as a way to warm them up to what you’re going to debut. It’s a great way to create more content and also improve conversions since you’re preparing your list for what’s coming.
Think about the upcoming holidays
This may seem obvious, but you can also think outside the box for what you consider a holiday. You can definitely use themes for normal holidays to help you generate content but what about Cherry Pie Day (February 20th) or Popcorn Lovers Day (March 14th)?
These totally random “holidays” may provide a great tie into what you do. Sometimes the best content comes when you least expect! Plus, it can be refreshing to have a new take on your content. It can force you to think about your content in a way you haven’t before and the results can be interesting for both you and your readers.
So, today your challenge is to spend some time planning your content for 2014. Be as specific as you want to be!
