Would you like to go into 2020 knowing exactly what content you are going to be producing? If you’re setting goals for next year, you should also be putting together a content plan. It takes the guesswork out of what you are going to create and makes sure your content helps you towards your goals.
Publishing content on a consistent basis will help you build your brand and your business. If you’re thinking that this is yet another thing to do, then don’t worry. I’ve got lots of tips and tricks to share with you to make the process simple and show you how to do it in less time.
Review your content from the past 12 months
How has your content performed over the past 12 months? If you haven’t been keeping an eye on your analytics, now is the time to deep dive into them. Focus on these key questions:
- What has been your most popular piece of content?
- Which topics got a lot of engagement?
- What type of content works best for you?
- Which social media platforms are people coming to your website from?
If you haven’t started regularly producing a blog post, video or a podcast, look at your social media analytics to see what your top posts have been about and the style of content you put out.
You want to do more of what works. If you’re creating content around a topic and getting tumbleweed but something else is getting a lot of traffic, you know where to focus your efforts.
You want to do more of what works. If you’re creating content around a topic and getting tumbleweed but something else is getting a lot of traffic, you know where to focus your efforts. #Youpreneur Click To TweetKnow your plans for next year
If you haven’t read my guide on how to set goals for next year and chase them down, then make time to do that. It will help you with step two of your content planning process. What are you going to be focusing on in each quarter of the next year?
Write down the key activities happening in your business during 2020. Do you have launches coming up? Are you running an event?
Now write down the months of the year and put key events next to each one. You might have gaps, you might not, but now you can see you have a framework of things to talk about. Start thinking about what questions people will ask you in relation to those topics.
If you have one key topic each month and you can come up with four or five questions about it which you can answer, you have a piece of content for every week of the year. This is exactly how I plan my content.
How to publish content daily
You need to be publishing daily. Now before you say, “Chris, hang on a minute, once a week is one thing but daily? That will take far too long.” Hear me out. Publishing content daily does not mean you have to be constantly creating new content. What you need to do is make more use of what you’ve already got.
You might now have a list of 52 potential pieces of content you can create, or you might have 12. However far you have got, you know you have potentially one piece of quality content you can produce a month or ideally once a week. This can be repurposed, which means using it in lots of different ways. If you want to know more about how to do this, then check out my guide to content repurposing.
You can easily publish content daily by using material you have already created.
Batch your content
Another way to save time when you’re creating content is to do it in batches. If you have to shoot a video every week, chances are you will spend several hours a week doing it. But if you expect yourself to shoot four videos in one day, you will find you get into it and can get it all done a lot quicker.
Batching content is an efficient way to work. I like to do all my creative work first thing in the morning. There’s another tip for you!
Outsource to make your content shine
You do not have to create all your content yourself. People often say to me that they don’t have time to edit a podcast or that they are frustrated by all the extra things they must do to publish an article like SEO and finding images. This is where outsourcing comes in.
Doing all the technical things which, let’s face it, you may not be very good at anyway, is not a good use of your time. You have other things to do. But there are highly skilled people out there who can do it for you.
Virtual staff can help with everything from researching topics to creating great looking graphics for social media and even repurposing one piece of content into several others. If you’re wondering what a VA can do for you, then check out the resources on outsourcing at the end of this article. It is the most efficient way of sharing your knowledge and expertise with the world.
There you have it: how to plan your content for 2020 and get it done without spinning your wheels.
Chris founded Youpreneur® in 2015. He is a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker and author of the bestselling books “Virtual Freedom” and “Rise of the Youpreneur”. He hosts our podcast, live events and coaches our clients inside the Youpreneur Incubator. Chris is based in Cambridge, UK.
