Your social media strategy has been set. Pages have been built. And, for the first few months, the “shiny new object” of your organization’s social media practice kept everyone motivated to produce strong content on a daily or weekly basis.
But then work gets in the way—new client proposals, business travel, budget forecasts and plan development for the fiscal year ahead. And more quickly than you even realize, the company’s social media content has gone stale and finding the bandwidth to reprioritize can seem overwhelming.
Below you’ll find a few simple suggestions for keeping the content pipeline full without having to reserve nights and weekends for writing.
- Block time to draft multiple blog posts at once. Find a hole on your calendar and block at least an hour to draft posts not only for the upcoming week, but the one after that also. You’ll need to stay nimble enough to quickly develop content when timely issues break, but most industries lend themselves to scores of evergreen content that can be written in advance and updated slightly just before publishing.
- Create – and stick to – a social media editorial calendar. This tool works well for blogs, in addition to Facebook posts, Tweets, YouTube videos, Flickr albums and more. Dedicate an hour to mapping out content for the month ahead and you’ll breathe a sigh of relief every Monday when for the most part, the week’s posts have already been written. But do remember that someone still needs to be monitoring for and responding to incoming comments and questions, as well as jumping on relevant trends or any issues that are brewing underneath the surface of the social channels.
- Think beyond the written word! Many of us forget that we can also rely on photos and a stellar caption for quick, eye-catching blog posts. “Wordless Wednesday” is a popular movement in the mom/female blogosphere that utilizes just one interesting photograph and a word or phrase for that day’s post—a great option for organizations with strong visuals, such as a consumer product manufacturers or nonprofits (with client consent of course).
- Develop a “weekly roundup” schedule. One day each week, such as Friday mornings, recap the company’s top post of the week based on Web traffic or comments along with outbound links to top industry stories/blogs from the same time period. Readers will eventually become accustomed to turning to your organization as a resource on that specific day to help catch them up on what they might have missed during the week.
- Secure guest bloggers. Aim to have credible guest bloggers submit content as far in advance as possible – depending on the topic – to fill the coffers on weeks when you or your team cannot dedicate an ounce of bandwidth to social media. For example, you may want to send out a tailored email at the start of each quarter to five or more potential guest bloggers to ascertain their interest in contributing content, providing a few topic ideas and general guidelines for length, accompanying visuals and timing. Be sure also to request that he or she cross-promote your blog on their social media channels once the post is live.
What other tips do you suggest for keeping up a regular blog schedule?
~Alexis
Posts
