Hi!

It’s a cloudy Sunday evening, but it’s still glorious.

Why?

I took the weekend off.

Why is that newsworthy?

Well, it’s kind of the first time in almost a year I’ve taken some personal time off. As in, not-even-opened-my-laptop time off.

And you know what?

It was AWESOME.

Could I have been working?

Sure, but I understand my limits. I realized I needed to close the office door to maintain my productivity and momentum.

I used my time wisely…away from work.

Anyway, I’m rejuvenated and ready to start the new week!

And I’m starting with a letter to you.

First of all…

Thank you so much for completing the tiny survey I sent out. You took time out of your busy week to answer my questions, and that means a lot to me.

If you didn’t get a chance to answer my 6 questions, never fear! I saved you a link.

Click here to take the tiny survey.

One thing I learned from the survey (that wasn’t at all surprising) is this:

A huge challenge to staying active and posting consistently on your blog or social media channels is…

…a lack of time.

I get it.

Business obligations abound. And sometimes, content marketing gets pushed further down the priority list than you’d like.

Oh, boy, do I get it.

What if I told you that you can begin to increase your content marketing with as little as half an hour a day?

30 minutes a day to stay top of mind and engaged with your prospects and customers…

The key to not getting overwhelmed is to focus on one channel at a time and not attempt to be all things all over the interwebs. (At least not yet.)

If you’re tossing your hands in the air saying content marketing can’t be done because you simply don’t have the time…

Try this.

Here is a sample schedule you can follow to perk up your content marketing without losing your sanity:

(You get to decide which day of the week you begin.)

* Day 1 Spend half an hour looking over questions submitted to your website from your customers to get topic ideas. Pretend someone is there in front of you asking that question. (PRETEND IT’S ME!) Answer that person out loud and jot down your thoughts.

* Day 2 Write one short blog post or record a 1-3 minute video answering that question. Upload it on your website. This doesn’t have to be fancy. You’re getting into a habit. Finesse will come later.

* Day 3 Batch schedule 7 posts on ONE social media channel for the week. Link one of the posts to your blog post or video. The other 6 posts can be shared links from related pages or groups or websites. Add a personal comment to each and ask an open-ended question of your audience.

* Day 4 Spend half an hour replying to any comments on your blog post and that one social media channel. The ultimate goal of this exercise is to build a content habit to increase awareness and engagement. You can break this half hour up over several days if needed. Five or ten minutes is long enough to reply to a few comments.

* Day 5 Spend half an hour in social media groups or forums where your prospects and customers hang out. Look for additional topics that are important to your audience.

* Day 6 and 7 If you’re like me and work 7 days a week because you love what you do, you can spend half an hour each day jotting down topic ideas for future blog posts from your FAQs or forums.

Bonus: Every time you’re on social media checking out the feeds, open a blank word document. Spend half an hour copying and pasting the URLs of any posts you think your audience will find interesting.

When it’s time to batch your posts for the week, you have a ready-made list of perfect items to share. If you find more than seven, batch two posts per day, or even three. Just stay within your half hour. Set a timer and make a game of it.

Here’s another thought to get the ideas flowing.

Give each day a theme when batch scheduling your posts. Monday could be ask-the-audience. Tuesday, share a great resource. Wednesday, a poem or relevant quote. You get the idea.

Try this for a week or two and get into a content-creation rhythm. Once you realize the effectiveness of your half hour per day, you’ll be able to streamline your content creation and add more social media channels, one at a time.

If you’d like to brainstorm with me on other ways you can incorporate content marketing into your busy week, let me know! I love finding ways to make your job easier.

I’m looking forward to your success stories.

Connecting with content,

Beverly

PS If you’re struggling with finding enough time to add content marketing to your busy week, try my 30-minute approach. I can’t wait to hear what happens!

PPS If you have any questions you’d like me to answer in future letters, hit reply and ask away.

Time Is Precious