1 Minute Marketing: Planning Your Blogging and Social Media Content Effectively

Keeping up with all the places your business needs to be on the web can be tiring, especially when you have the rest of your business to run. From blogging to social media to newsletters, the most efficient way to produce copy is to have a plan drawn out. Creating a content calendar is the most straightforward way to do so.

A content calendar provides you a guide to the content you will create several months in advance. The calendar can be made in a document or spreadsheet — select topics for future blog posts or newsletter articles and plan them out month-by-month. You don’t have to stick strictly to the calendar if another good idea presents itself. It’s meant more as a guideline to help ensure your content is posted regularly.

Not sure what topics to talk about in your blog? The best topics will depend on what your business does for its clientele. If you need inspiration, consider these areas for blog topics:

Answer frequently asked questions
Create how-to articles on how to perform a service themselves or maintain their products
Highlight new products, updates in your business or industry news

Blog posts will appear on your website, but what about the content for other channels? If you have social media accounts for your business, you can break these blog posts up into bite-size chunks for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more. Even if you only update your blog once or twice per month, you should be able to regularly write social media posts from each one. Just remember to respond to comments you receive from readers — this will encourage more engagement with your content.