by Michael Noel | October 7, 2019

With all of the responsibilities that many business owners are faced with on a day-to-day basis, it is easy for the small things to fall through the cracks from time to time. Though content marketing may seem like a small, unimportant task for most, in this digital age where the majority of consumers are glued to their devices, content marketing is increasingly more important.

Many business owners may have an organization system set in place when it comes to paying bills, suppliers and employees. Implementing a similar system for content and social media management is just as important.

Preparing for posting content takes more than populating a calendar of when you want to post. You need to create a well thought-out plan.

For example, say you have dedicated time at 9 a.m. on Friday to create a social media post, but that’s as much thought as you have put into that post. Well, 9 a.m. rolls around and you have no idea what you are going to post. So, you start thinking about it, maybe even do a little research on a topic relative to your industry. Then the phone rings, and you’re off to the races again and get sucked into the milieu of running your business and the post never happens.

Preparing digital content is relatively simple if you create a priority management system that you can weave into your other daily tasks.

The first thing you need to do is create a list of ideal blog entries, videos and social media posts you would like to do.

Then create a priority system, like the ABC system, that you can organize that list into.

• A – This is a priority and must get completed immediately.
• B – This is one you would like to do, but have a little more time to research and develop before execution.
• C – This is the idea phase. This may never become a B or an A, but it is something you were thinking.

Now that you have the posts populated and categorized by priority, you should also populate the calendar of times you can dedicate to the development of the content and action steps you need to make to fulfill these tasks like taking photos or filming content.

Lastly, respect these tasks as if they were as important to any other business task because they are. If you schedule the time to complete these tasks, make sure not to schedule anything else at the time. Stay committed and focused to ensure that these tasks get done.

There are many tools out there to help you with project management, but don’t disregard the easiest, and free option – the good ol’ Outlook calendar. If you are looking for a more sophisticated system, there are options such as Hearsay Social, Hubspot, and Salesforce*. These systems will also inform you of the best times to post for your specific audiences.

Whatever platform you decide to use, the most important thing is to actually follow through. Depending on your industry, more than likely the majority of your clients are using digital and social media platforms on a regular basis. It is important to use these tools in order to engage and create other avenues to help build on those relationships and loyalties that will keep them a client even longer.

* The Florida SBDC at University of South Florida is not endorsing these particular providers. We have no relationship with them and they are three random examples.