Time Management and Content Marketing
What do Time Management and Content Marketing Have to Do with One Another?
Everything.
Developing a clear, concise and effective Content Marketing program has its challenges and the better you are at time management, the better your results will be. This is because researching and writing large quantities of high-quality, unique content takes time. Lots of it. (This is great news for me, because this is a large reason why many businesses choose to hire content creation services like mine).
Let’s assume, however, that you are at the beginning of your business life cycle – the point where ideas and potential far outweigh working capital and cash flow. Right now, creating content isn’t simply a matter of return on investment (ROI) – it is a matter of survival. In other words, you need to do it on the cheap – so hiring an outside firm is not an option.
The challenge, of course, is that marketing isn’t the primary hat you wear. Instead, you are responsible for handling day-to-day operations, closing sales, and maybe even creating the widget you just sold. All pretty time intensive stuff. The busier you get with basic operating tasks, the less time and energy you’ll have to devote to marketing. Without a plan, your content marketing efforts may end up relegated to the “nice-to-do” pile versus the “absolutely-must-do” pile. Before you know it, six months or a year have passed and your website is still a static five page (boring) brochure – and you don’t have a single search engine optimized article “sales agent” out there generating interest on your behalf.
The best way to prevent this is to write down realistic, specific and measurable goals at the outset of each week. Then, look at your daily calendar and block out the time you will need to accomplish this just like you would for any other mandatory appointment. (Tip: Give yourself a little extra time cushion when you are first starting). For example, you could decide to add 3 new articles to your website per week. This goal is realistic – you can easily research and write three new articles per week. Three is a very specific number and is also very measurable. Come the end of the week, you will know without question whether or not this goal was accomplished. It might not seem like a lot – but over the course of 6 months – that will translate to 78 new optimized pages on your website – or 78 backlink opportunities if you submit your content to article directories. Within a year – that is more than 150 articles out there working on behalf of your business versus zero if you don’t make a conscious decision to get started.
That time is going to pass anyway – you might as well make the most of it.
Til next time,
P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. Also, be sure to sign up below to receive more on this and other Content Marketing topics!
