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A content calendar is an easy way to preserve your most scarce resource as a business owner: your time. It is an effective tool for coordinating content creation and helps you manage your weekly workload into clear, manageable assignments. The key is to create content ahead of time to give yourself time to do it right while you are busy running your business. 

In my world, I spend one day a week on content creation, and I have a master content calendar for my team that schedules the four types of content we publish each week: blog posts, The SBL Buzz Newsletter, Boss Tip Videos, and The Smallbizchat Podcast. In this article, I’ll explain how I manage my weekly content using a content calendar (and how you can, too!).

10 Tips for an Effective Content Calendar

By implementing a content calendar, you will spend less time wondering what to create and instead focus on developing the creation itself. Here are my 10 tips for creating a content calendar that will keep your ideas organized and your content flowing.

1. Define Your Goals

When planning your content, it all starts with your goal. Is your content meant to generate brand awareness, drive leads, refer traffic to your website, drive sales or possibly grow your follower count on Instagram? Your goal will determine the type of content you’ll need to develop. Pushing out content without a clear purpose will not benefit your business. Start by deciding what your customer needs to know and where they hang out online. The answer to these questions should be used to determine the right social channel and content formats. 

2. Use a Template 

There are many free content calendars online. Choose one that will work best for you. Your content calendar can be as simple as a google form or a basic excel spreadsheet. The calendar should have a share option if you have an individual or a firm helping you develop content or doing social promotion. Your content calendar should include at least the following information:

• Topic
• Type of content
• Channel where content will be published
• Date and time for publishing
• Republish option (Example: a video interview can be turned into a podcast or promoted in a newsletter and your blog.)

For content calendar templates, examples and ideas, check out this HubSpot article.

3. Choose Your Channels

Once you have a detailed customer profile and have identifed the social channels your target customers use, you’ll be able to to define the kind of content you should create. You should also consider the type of content your potential customers prefer. Keep in mind that some people like to read, others like to listen, and some prefer to learn from watching videos. Consider publishing the same content in different formats to cross-promote the content to a wider audience. To maximize your efforts, you should only focus on one or two social media sites to build an online community. It’s best to survey your target or existing customers to learn the types of content they prefer. Make sure that your content calendar is not just a social media calendar; it should also include other content, such as expert articles, guest blogs, and podcast interviews. 

4. Brainstorm Content Topics

A good way to figure out the best content topics is to develop an exhaustive list of challenges your target customers face. What do you want to teach people? How can you demonstrate your expertise? Focus on creating high-quality content. No one will hire you or view you as a thought leader if your content is just ‘okay.’

5. Decide on Publishing Frequency 

Determine how often you can realistically publish new content. As creating content is time-consuming, choosing a publishing frequency that works for you is important. You should develop enough content to regularly drive traffic to your website and bring value to your customers. Can you publish content 2 to 3 times per week or should you opt for just two posts per month? Whatever you decide, it’s a best practice to post content on the same day and time each week.

6. Start Filling in the Content Calendar

Start with topics you want to hit and any national holidays significant to your market. For example, I always develop content to celebrate National Small Business Week in May. Then you’ll need to start to fill in the blanks with relevant content, including:

• Blog Posts: This is where you share your story and build trust with your target audience and teach your core content to highlight your expertise. 
• Visual Content: Use short-form videos or pictures from events, behind-the-scenes, products, marketing campaigns, and projects to engage your target audience. People are always interested in funny behind-the-scenes details of how your business operates.
• Series Posts: Create a series by developing two or more pieces of content to educate your target customers on a specific topic. 
• External Content: This includes expert articles, op-ed pieces, guest blogs, or podcast interviews.
• Seasonal Events: Are there special events or holidays celebrated in your industry? For example, if you sell spa packages for couples, you might develop content on the 10 ways to celebrate your sweetie for Valentine’s Day. 
• Client Stories: Celebrate happy clients in your content. Highlight client reviews and testimonials or develop full case studies on the results you have achieved for clients.

7. Develop Evergreen Content 

Evergreen content is content that retains relevance long after it is first published. Evergreen content is search-optimized content that continually stays “fresh” for readers. The best thing about evergreen content is that it is also easy to reintroduce your older timeless articles and blog posts to your audience by adding links to your newer content related to similar themes. Here are the common evergreen formats. 

• Listicles: A typical listicle post will prominently feature a number in its title. For example, Top 25 Small Business Coaches to Follow on Twitter.
• Tips: People love to read actionable tips that will allow them to generate quick results.  
• How-to: How-to content is popular in any format. What do your customers want to learn?
• Videos: Video content converts better than any other content online, especially if it’s how-to advice.
• Checklists: Checklists are used effectively to help your customers move through critical tasks quickly and easily.
• Tutorials: This is not a simple list of tools. To make it valuable content, you must add tutorials with screenshots, videos, tips on how to get started, usage hacks, and insightful commentary detailing the pros and cons of pricing.
• Resources: People want to know the best resources to help them accomplish their goals. Make a list post of your favorite relevant resources.
• Product Reviews: Product reviews or book reviews are content people enjoy.

8. Have a Repurpose Strategy 

You don’t always have to create content from scratch. Old blog posts can also be reused and updated through different channels, such as turning them into short-form videos, podcasts, or infographics. Your potential customers may look for information on various platforms, so it can be a good idea to present similar content in different formats. Not sure where to get started with repurposing content? Check out my article How to Create a Repurpose Strategy for Your Best Content. 

9. Review Your Plan

There is no hard and fast rule on how long in advance your content should be planned. But I can tell you it’s a good idea to develop content at least a month or two in advance since you are still running your business. It might be a good idea to review the content calendar regularly to help you stay on track and plan for the quarter ahead.

10. Monitor Your Content 

After spending a bunch of time and money developing content, it’s important to measure your publishing schedule against the results. Use your Google Analytics to see what is driving referral traffic to your website and what is the most popular content on your site. It’s also important to track shares, comments, and engagement. Also, you’ll want to evaluate how many opt-ins you generate from your lead magnets and social shares. Sales are the most obvious metric to track. Be sure to ask all new customers how they heard about you or send a survey after the sale.

Flexibility Is Key!

These ideas will get you started creating a content calendar for your small business blog. Once you know what content interests your audience, give the people more of what they want! Don’t be afraid to change the format of the content based on what you’re seeing in your analytics. Or the publish date/time/, the frequency of posting, or anything else we discussed here. Your content calendar will give you structure, but to maintain consistency, you’ll want to review regularly and adjust as needed.

Do you have additional tips about creating a content calendar? Let us know about them in the comments!

A social media strategy is a gateway for how you interact with potential customers, create brand awareness and build trust and loyalty. It can supplement your marketing plan, allowing it fly high or flounder if no plan exists or is poorly created. 

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Creating a memorable brand takes time but there is no way to become best-known in your niche without building.

To discuss branding strategies and using Youtube to tell your brand’s story, Jim Boykin, founder and CEO of Internet Marketing Ninjas, and Ann Smarty, IMN’s analyst, were joined by Truman Hedding, the branding expert with years of digital marketing experience.

Truman Hedding is a growth hacker, PPC  and video marketing expert, speaker and a successful agency founder.

The story that you are telling today needs to support the story that you will tell tomorrow and be consistent with the story that you told in the past.

This can really make or break your long-term success: Thinking that your story is just being told through one ad that you create.

Brands tend to forget that they are telling the story over time, often reaching the same people.

As Simon Sinek put it, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy WHY you do it“.

The most powerful branding advice is to tell the story of why they are doing what they are doing.

Youtube is the best channel to tell that story

Youtube is the best platform when it comes to making your story seen and heard by the target audience.

Youtube has the most powerful targeting tools that is based on Google’s vast data classifying people based on their browsing and viewing records.

Youtube offers similar targeting PPC does, but because it is mostly top-of-the-funnel platform, it can also help you reach the same people again and again based on their previous interactions with your ads.

You can create sequences using Youtube to control the narrative and get a direct response from your potential customers.

The very first thing to do when building a brand is try Youtube advertising.

To create an effective Youtube ads…

Make the most of the first 6 seconds.

There’s no single recipe beyond that: You will have to test different ways to draw people into your ad and trigger some action.

TikTok is another video marketing tool that can help you tell your brand’s story effectively but you need to have the right product that speaks to your audience.

Contact ninjas if you need help creating a strong recognizable brand!

WAZE: ID Target Market, How BS works, 2 Rules, Customers, Measure, DataBase, Surveys, Focus Groups, Analyze the Data, Potential Customers, Staff, Everywhere Else ???

It doesn’t matter if you are launching a new product, service, or company. There are always challenges in BrainStorming creative ideas that will help you take the business to the next level. As an entrepreneur, you will always need many innovative ideas for new products, services, processes, or business models.

Good Idea or knot? Tons of great ideas can help a company reach its goals. Ideas are not in deficiency. But, only some are worth taking the time to implement. These are the ones that will help a company achieve success, whether they involve innovation or a strategic change in direction.

Always Improve. The more important problem can be you as an entrepreneur. Do you want to innovate and be always one step ahead of your competition? If you know that your job is continuous improvements and innovation, you will probably have enough innovative ideas for the next several years. Here is a definitive guide to BrainStorming innovative ideas for your company.

Introduction

When you’re busy with your own projects and promotion, there’s not much time to think about innovative ideas for your company. You need to keep an eye on the competition, but what can you do? You need ideas.

You’re running a business. So why are you wasting time BrainStorming ideas that won’t work? That’s a waste of your time and money. The time that you could be spending on creating innovative ideas that will generate revenue & more profits. Don’t spend your days thinking about things that may not work. Go out and create the next BiG idea. There are many ways to get started.

Every company needs innovative ideas to stay ahead of the competition. But they don’t come from anywhere. They often arise out of everyday situations and can be generated by anyone – a group or even an individual.

How can you come up with unique ideas to innovate your company? You must be open-minded and willing to listen and learn from the best minds.

1. Identify your target market

What’s your ideal Customer’s Profile? Before you start BrainStorming innovative ideas, you need to identify your target market. To do that, think about the following questions:

• What problem does your product solve?
• Who is the person that needs your product to solve this problem?
• What is the ideal client for your product or service?
• What kind of person is most likely to need your product?
• What is the person most interested in learning about your business?
• What is the thing that would be the most helpful to this person?

Once you’ve narrowed down the target market, you’ll better equip yourself to brainstorm more relevant ideas.

Target Market. If you have an idea involving any technology, you need to have a target audience in mind. Who will use the product? And who should that be? Is the idea for something that will benefit only a specific demographic, or can it appeal to more than just one? Think about the people interested in your product and what they’re likely to want out of it.

2. BrainStorming: How It Works

BrainStorming is a very simple but powerful tool to generate new ideas and innovations.

How can you use BrainStorming effectively? To build a strong idea, you must first generate a lot of ideas. In the BrainStorming phase, you need to put yourself in the mindset of your target Customers and understand what they need. The goal here is to come up with lots of ideas. Think about different ways to solve the problem and what’s in it for the target Customers. In order to truly understand your Customers, try to imagine yourself in their shoes. Try to think about the world from the perspective of your audience. What is it like to be them?

Collective Creativity is the nature of BrainStorming. Ideas are generated through a free-flow conversation (ie from your Team & Feedback from your Customers). People in your Team are given time to talk freely (without judgement) in monthly meetings (just write it on your White Board & discuss it when all the ideas are out). They share ideas, opinions, and insights without interruption. This method of BrainStorming is effective in generating a diverse set of ideas because pre-existing rules of logic don’t constrain people. Because there are no guidelines, participants may discuss anything without fear of judgment.

Identifying & Solving Problems. BrainStorming doesn’t just happen in a meeting; it happens when people sit down to solve a problem. One of the best ways to make BrainStorming work is to simply ask yourself some questions.

• What are the problems we’re trying to solve?
• What are our goals? What’s the best way to achieve our goals?
• What does success look like?

3. The Two main Rules of BrainStorming

1. Don’t change the subject. You want your group to stay focused on the topic, so if you feel a strong urge to start a conversation about something else – don’t. Resist it !!!
2. Don’t interrupt the flow. If someone starts talking, just listen. Once the discussion starts rolling, no one will interrupt to get their turn, so let it continue.

4. Ask current Customers to Brainstorm “Innovative Ideas” for you

If you’re trying to brainstorm ideas, start with your current Customers. Your existing Customers have already had the chance to see how you can improve your product or service by using it. They have a vested interest in your success. By starting your BrainStorming process with the ideas that come from feedback of your current Customers, you will be able to focus on the most urgent actionable ideas.

Your current Customers are the most relevant sources of innovative ideas. They are using your products & services. Often they are in continuous interiaction with your business. So, they know what you need to improve or bring something new into your products, services, processes, & business model. Why not start with them ??? The following are Steps you need to take to implement a systematic approach to generate ideas from your Customers:

5. Implement a “process” to measure Customers’ satisfaction

Develop & implement the process to measure Customers’ satisfaction and their feedback as experience working with you. To track Customer satisfaction, you can collect data from your sales team and directly from the Customers, then use this information to generate ideas. You might want to ask your for feedback about your product and service quality. Is the problem easy to fix? Have any new issues cropped up since you last asked your sales team? These questions are important to help you pinpoint your weaknesses and what you need to improve to win the business.

6. Create a DataBase for the Customer’s feedback

This should be a DataBase that includes all the data you collected in your research. It should include any surveys and focus groups activities you conducted and any notes you took about the Customer’s behavior, personality traits, and preferences. This database can help you better understand how to improve the product’s usability & functionality + also allow you to personalize & target your messaging to specific groups of Customers.

So, how do you create a DataBase of Customer feedback? It’s fairly straight-forward. Most importantly, you need to make sure your feedback is accurate. Ensure you’re tracking all of the important data points for your company. After you get that, it should be relatively easy to organize the data into a Spreadsheet, or a Customer Relationship Management system, or wherever else makes the most sense. If you don’t a CRM system determine the costs benefits of having one (ROI).

7. Use Surveys to measure Customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction isn’t always easy to measure, but asking Customers how they feel about your company’s services or products can give you insight into what you can do to improve your offerings.

Use “free” Survey Tools to help you create a Customer Survey that fits your needs and lets you track survey responses. Surveys can be extremely helpful. They are usually inexpensive and easy to execute + help companies understand how well their Customers feel about the products and services they provide. They also help companies build better Customer Service and increase Customer satisfaction, which drive more revenue. Yea !!! Isn’t that one of our most important goals ???

If you need to assess Customer satisfaction, do so after the Customer has used your service or product for a significant amount of time – at least one month, but three is better. Call them at 1st + 3rd month, then Email them an Annual Customer Survey. ( I can help you with one. Contact [email protected])

8. Organize Focus Groups with your most important Customers to find Innovative ideas

Focus groups are incredibly useful in helping to understand Customer needs and wants. However, you must understand the dynamics of how you can manage them to ensure you don’t just hear what you want to hear. That’s why organizing them with a clear focus & agenda is important. To get the most out of them, you should make sure you have someone skilled at facilitating this type of group, who understands the dynamics of human interaction, and who can manage group dynamics.

9. Analyze the Data from your Customers

Collect & Analyze. Use the data you collect, pick the best ideas, then test them out. Once you’ve reviewed the analysis need, you’ll want prioritize the best ideas to implement. Customer Behavior data is one of the most powerful sources of new insights about your business and market. There are two types of data you need to collect:

• Quantitative data (like how many times a specific page of your site is viewed, what words or phrases consumers use to search your site, and so on)
• Qualitative data (like what consumers say in online forums).

Using these tactics, you will always come up with innovative ideas for your company.

10. Even your Potential Customers as a Source of Innovative Ideas

1. a) What if you want to expand your market thru promotion? b) What if you want totally different products and services or c) drastically improving your current products & services? When you consider these options, you will need to include your potential Companies who are not yet your Customers are close to you or are part of your target or ideal Customers.

• Talk to your potential Customers. What are their wants & needs? or
• Survey your potential Customers for the same info, then
• Collect & analyze these ideas that are coming from your potential Customers to determine where you should focus.

11. Your Staff Members are also a Source of Innovative Ideas

Production or Execution Personnel. Your staff members are persons that run and manage all processes that make up your business, so they interact with your processes on the everyday level, and in such a way, they can be the best sources to improve and change the processes. If your staff members aren’t keeping up with your company’s innovation curve, it can affect your ability to stay ahead of the competition.

Marketing & Sales are in frequent interactions with your current & potential Customers. Again, they are the first persons who can hear something new, and this feedback can become one of the best source of innovative ideas. You should . . .

• Develop & implement processes for Suggestion systems in your company.
• Communicate with your staff members and encourage them to share their innovative ideas.
• Organize periodic meetings with your staff members to share these ideas (ie, monthly).
• Award & Recognize and Reward your staff members that share the best ideas for improvements.

12. Everywhere Else ???

The last group of places where you can try to find innovative ideas is everywhere else. Under everywhere else, I mean reading books, scientific journals, scientific research, websites, forums, social media, magazines, and so on. We cannot live without being inspired.

Inspiration comes from everywhere. It can come from other people, books, magazines, and websites. We can get inspiration from those sources and use them to inspire us. There is no end to the ways that we can be inspired. The world is full of possibilities for us to be inspired. But we should also use our imaginations to create new ideas and things. As long as you keep innovating, your company will remain competitive. That is the only way to go, grow !!!

Reading allows you to learn more about new things, and inspires you to come up with new ideas. You can read science articles, technology articles, business articles, and so on. Stay up to date with the latest information about the topics you are interested in. You can find useful information that can easily be used as innovative ideas in your company. So, start building habits to collect and process information from everywhere. Become a Learning Machine who’s output is new ideas !!!

Conclusion

It’s not always easy to know where to start when you’re trying to brainstorm innovative ideas. But it’s a critical skill that all entrepreneurs need to master – if they want to make any meaningful progress at work and be successful.

BrainStorming helps you find innovative ideas that can change your company or organization in terms of strategy, growth & development, marketing & sales, and many other aspects. As a result, BrainStorming is one of the best techniques help you to generate new ideas !!!

Comments: Do you know any other techniques for BrainStorming?

fm Entre-in-a-Box 6-22 enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4.biz

For similar Posts, click on Startup Ideas.