If you’ve hammered out a great content strategy, the next step is to make sure that content is presented consistently, and that the quality stays great. It’s easy to let timelines slide and topics pile up. Here are some tips to help you make sure your content stays on target.
Create an editorial calendar
This can be simple; maybe just a different set of tasks on the calendar you already use. But decide, ahead of time, how often you will publish content, and stick to it. Whether that’s once a day or once a week, don’t skip around on it.
You can publish more often than you originally intended, as long as you continue to have quality content to share, but consider your committed goal an absolute bare minimum. Don’t skimp. Your audience will notice, and they’ll stop following you.
Choose your topics carefully
Your audience has a problem, and you’re there to solve it. You might be teaching them how to make a perfect meringue, or advising them on how to make the most of their tax credits, but they come to you for a purpose, and they expect that purpose to be fulfilled. The occasional vacation photo post, or cute story about someone’s kid can be an entertaining way to break up a monotonous week, but in general, you need to either keep to your mission statement, or change your mission statement.
If you’re doing something different—if, for example, your content is generally very lighthearted, but today you need to let your audience know about the passing of a leader in your industry—let them know in the first few sentences that the tone will be different today, and that you will return to your usual content tomorrow.
Respect professional journalists for the work they do
As creating and managing a blog becomes something nearly everyone can do, and nearly everyone has done, the impulse to think of content creators as amateur reporters is tempting. Avoid it. Especially in the world of business, reporters and journalists continue to work very hard to provide high quality reporting and neutral, unbiased information in a world that is not particularly grateful for the service they provide. PR Daily posted a great article of 15 things not to say to a journalist earlier this year. Read it, and remember it.
Creating content is easy; creating great content that builds your business and grows your audience takes a lot more work. The results, however, are well worth the time and energy.
Image Credit: Sergey Zolkin