Hello, hello! I wanted to share my tools for organizing and outlining my marketing & social media schedule. Organization is KEY to maintaining consistency and avoiding overwhelm. And consistency will drive results (More money! More clients! Less wasted time!).
1) First up—Set your Goals:
I have set up broad goals for 2016, but focus on each month at hand to avoid overwhelm and be able to pivot when needed. My Jan 2016 Marketing Goals:
• Blog weekly, with a focus to drive clients to my mailing list.
• Post daily (weeks days) on Instagram
• Use Facebook ads to drive clients to my mailing list, when I have awesome information or a give-away to share.
2) Gather organization tools—yours for FREE:
• 52 Week Blog Planner + Post Ideas PDF
• 365 Day Instagram Planner PDF
3) Drill down on specifics:
• For both my blog + Instagram I’ve jotted down 5 few specifics I want to focus on. They vary by platform, but include: session shares/sneak peeks, organization tools + information posts, inspiring light, personal posts (snippets of my “everyday”, as well as personal photography projects), inspirational quotes + wall art/home decor ideas
• Start with the information you KNOW + then fill in the gaps. From January to May, I am sharing images from one of my Summer/Fall sessions each Tuesday. This takes care of both my weekly blog goal + I will share one of the images from that post on Instagram that day. During busy season, I share a sneak peek the Monday after my session, so I would schedule that post in as well.
• I find it helpful to take a peek at my personal calendar. Am I planning a vacation? Doing something fun with the kiddos? These would be great shares on Instagram.
• Fill in the gaps—Refer back to the specifics from the planning PDFs. I’ll plan to share snippets my “everyday” or quotes every few weeks.
4) Plug the information into your master calendar:
• I use Google Cal, and as you see along the left nav in the image below it is one of many calendars I use to keep organized. I can hide each one as needed or keep them all open to see everything that is going on. They all sync to the calendar on my iphone (I use the Calendars app by Readdle).
• Color code different activities—Email newsletters, blogging, Instagram, Facebook, etc… This is great to see where you are putting in your biggest efforts + what areas you may have overlooked.
• Adding a time will enable automatic pop-up reminders which are helpful (both in your Google calendar if you have it open, and your phone). I schedule many of my activities for 1 p.m., because if the grandparents aren’t here, it is nap time (for the little one, not me…although that would be nice!) and I know I can jump on my computer then.
• Don’t forget to add in date/time to plan out next month’s marketing calendar. I like to do this one week before the new months starts.
5) Schedule ahead:
• I have my blog posts from my Summer/Fall sessions written 1-2 months in advance + automatically scheduled to post each Tuesday. Batching these posts (writing + scheduling 4-8 at a time) is a huge time saver, and helps me maintain consistency with blogging. If life gets in the way (which is so often does), I know I already have these posts scheduled to go. I’ll go into greater details on batching at another time, as it is a post of it’s own!
• Jetpack for WordPress automatically re-posts all of my blog articles on Google+. Awesome way to hit another platform without actually having to be there.
• Latergram schedules my Instagram posts, or at least those I can plan ahead of time (many of my “everyday” posts are taken on the fly with my iphone). Latergram does not automatically post for you (no apps do at this time due to Instagram restrictions), but it does get everything queued up and ready to go. Plus gives you the added bonus of seeing what your feed will look like, which is great so you can balance the visual aspect of your feed.
• I’m looking to automatically schedule my blog posts to Facebook as well in the future, I know there are a few WordPress plugins that do this…
• A quick note about auto scheduling: Although awesome to get your work + ideas out there and a huge time saver, don’t forget the power of being present in social media as well. Make sure to jump on to the platforms you are active in a few times a week to answer questions, ask questions and engage with your audience authentically.
