There are many components that come along with marketing and they all work together to create the ultimate marketing machine. No component should be sacrificed because of lack of time, or resources. It is possible to tackle each, it’s just about creating a schedule and sticking to it.
Here are our suggestions for how to organize your time for marketing.
Social Media
Budget 1 – 2 hours per week
Your presence on social media allows you to stay top of mind among your followers, prove that you are an expert in your field and contribute to improving your SEO. Yes, social media can seem overwhelming, but with a plan in place, it is extremely manageable.
Put it in your calendar
Assign one day of the week to scheduling your social media. Put it in your calendar and treat it like a deadline for a client. No excuses.
Use a social media management tool
A social media management tool like HootSuite allows you to schedule posts ahead of time and monitor your mentions.
Create Twitter lists
Twitter lists allows you to easily find information worth sharing. We recommend creating lists like competitors, clients, useful industry news etc. These lists can then be added into HootSuite and scheduled with the click of your mouse.
Know your hashtags
Do your research and understand which hashtags are important in your industry. Tools like RiteTag allows you to see the frequency of hashtags so that you can format your posts appropriately.
Use mentions in your hashtags
If you are sharing someone’s content make sure to also include their Twitter handle, or tag them on Facebook. Give credit where credit is due.
Save a backup of all posts
We save all social media posts for VA Partners and our client’s in a content calendar. This is to protect ourselves in case something happens to our social media management tool, or if we want to go back and look at what we have shared in the past. It’s just one extra step to ensure we are staying organized.
Blogging
Budget 2 – 3 hours per week
Blogging doesn’t solely have to be the responsibility of one individual. Make it a team effort and alternate between team members. This will help accommodate everyone’s busy schedules and give your readers a variety of content. On our team for example, everyone has their own strengths and this is communicated through our various blog posts.
Note: we post new blogs every Tuesday and Thursday.
Decide on a blogging schedule
Think about how many times per week/month you want to post blogs to your website. Once you have decided on this, choose which day(s) of the week you want to post and stick to the schedule.
Choose topics weeks in advance
We use our monthly team meetings to brainstorm blog topics for the upcoming month. By doing this, we aren’t left scrambling. Our blog topics and authors are scheduled up to four weeks in advance.
Have a team member manage the process
On our team, I’m the person who manages the blogging schedule. As I mentioned above, we have our content planned in advance, but sometimes a friendly reminder doesn’t hurt. I send an email to everyone every Friday to remind them of the blog schedule for the following week. When it comes to posting, there are members of the team who have a stronger knowledge of WordPress and they are able to post their own blog posts. For those that aren’t as strong, we partner up and schedule blogs for each other. We also have a minimum of one person proof read and provide feedback for each blog.
Develop a category and tagging strategy
Sometimes the category and tag section of the website can get a little wild which is why it is imporant to develop a strategy early on. Choose categories and tags that will be used multiple times. Think of the categories as file folders and the tags as hashtags, but don’t go overboard on those tags!
Newsletter
Budget 1-2 hours per month
Like everything else mentioned in this list, be consistent. Having a newsletter that is sent out regularly, is important because it shows that you are organized and allows you to keep track of who interacts with your content and in what capacity.
Set a schedule
Send out your newsletter at the same time every month. We like to send our newsletter out on the first Tuesday of every month.
Sign up for a newsletter tool and create a template
We like to use MailChimp because it’s easy to use and can be easily integrated into WordPress and other tools that we like to use. Once you choose a tool to send out your newsletter, create a template. Use the same template every month and update it with relevant content. We like to share a mix of both VA Partners and third party content in our newsletters.
Create a draft and share with team
Share the newsletter with your team members before it is scheduled. It’s always better to have an extra set of eyes to catch something that you may have missed.
Website
Budget 1 hour per week
Your website is extremely important to the success of your business. It is working even when you’re not. Your website is never truly complete as there are always ways to improve.
Check for broken links
I like to use the broken link checker at least once a month to fix broken links on the website. Broken links can affect your SEO, but also provide a bad experience for visitors to your website.
Use Yoast to ensure your pages and posts are optimized
We like to use the Yoast SEO plugin to our advantage. It assists us with ensuring that our web pages and posts are properly optimized.
Reporting
Creating monthly reports allows you to see where you have improved and areas that still need improvement. This is helpful for setting goals for the coming months.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is great for analyzing traffic to your website and how individuals are finding you. Become familiar with Google Analytics and how to use it.
Moz
Moz is also one of our favourite tools to use on a regular basis. Moz allows us to see which keywords we are ranking well for and even the words we aren’t. We use this information to our advantage when coming up with blog topics. It’s simple, just choose keywords that you want to rank better for and tailor new content based on these words.
If you need help developing your online marketing plan, contact us! For further marketing tips and resources, download our white papers.
