More than a few businesses and organizations struggle to keep their communication current. Websites are littered with ancient news updates and social media accounts sit silent. It’s a good sign the organization is too busy to keep up.
Or they’ve gone out of business and closed up shop.
Either option communications a pretty strong message, and neither is very good.
I get it. I’m a writer and I have a hard time keeping my own stuff current. I even gave up blogging on this company site for a while.
But it is possible to create quality, consistent content and keep your communication current.
5 Ways to Create Consistent Content
Here are five tips to make it happen (and how I implemented them myself):
1. Come up With a Plan
The very first step is to create a plan of action. What are you going to communicate? How often? When and where? Who’s going to create it? Nail down all the details.
What I did: I sat down and drafted a list of the type of blog posts I wanted to do and created a schedule to make it happen.
2. Make It Easy
Your plan is probably pretty optimistic. Go back and make it realistic. If you’ve had trouble communicating on a consistent basis, diving into a three-times-per-week schedule is not likely to stick. Start small, and if you can manage that, then do more.
What I did: I planned on doing just two posts a month. Sounds super easy, right? That’s what you want. Something eminently possible.
3. Put It on the Calendar
Whoever is in charge of creating the content needs to put it on the calendar. Block out the time to do it, like you would for any other meeting. Remember to account for the time any approval process will require.
What I did: I love to do lists, but if I don’t put it on the calendar as an actual block of time, it doesn’t happen. So I set up blocks of time on the calendar and made them recurring events.
4. Just Do It
When the time comes to write your content, just dive in and do it. As intimidating as it might seem, you’ll quickly discover one of two things: Either it was easier than you thought and you’ll be done in no time (score!) or it wasn’t fun, but you got through it and now you can do anything (also score!).
What I did: I had some time free up, so I sat down and did the writing ahead of schedule. Now I’ll admit, writing comes pretty easy for me. But carving out time for writing about my own business is less easy. You just have to bite the bullet and do it.
5. Make Your Own Motivation
One of the challenges of consistently communicating is there seems to be little downside to skipping it. It’s not like you get paid for posting on social media, so it feels painless to skip it. That’s not true, as inconsistent and lackluster communication will come back to bite you. So it helps to find some other motivation. Reward yourself with a treat or incentivize your employees:
- Do your communication writing in a coffeeshop with a snack.
- Take an extra break for every blog post completed.
- Offer a bonus for whoever writes the most content each month. (And if that’s you? Give yourself the bonus!)
What I did: I’ll admit, I didn’t give myself extra motivation. But the idea of a cookie at the local coffeeshop sounds pretty good. I’m totally doing that next time.
Need Help?
If you’re really having trouble with communication, there’s a secret sixth tip: Hire someone else to do it.
Communication is important enough to invest in. If you or your team can’t find the time, make sure it still happens by outsourcing it.
Or maybe you can do parts of it, but editing a blog post, adding images, and posting it to your content management system sounds exhausting and the whole process fails right there. Outsource it.
You won’t be the first to outsource content. This is the work we do.
If you could use some help with consistent content, let’s connect.