Posting consistently matters.
In their excellent book, Content Rules, Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman write that if you want to keep people coming back to your website and social media channel(s), you need to create “new, fresh, and relevant content.” They explain it this way: “The moment you stop publishing is the moment you start losing your community.”
Content that doesn’t change is referred to as “static content.” And static content won’t help your digital presence. If you want to show up for your audience in the digital world, you need to put content out there without sacrificing quality.
1. Post less frequently
Some new content is better than no new content.
Posting to your company’s LinkedIn page once a day and posting to your blog twice a week can be intimidating. And that intimidation can encourage inaction.
That’s why, if you’re just starting to post to social media, I recommend initially posting less frequently and then ratcheting up the frequency as you find your groove. So, for instance, you could start by posting to LinkedIn once a week and put up a new blog post once a month.
As you get more comfortable with creating content, consider slightly increasing your frequency.
2. Take notes of what you’ve read
Great marketing content is often educational. As a small business owner, you’re constantly learning about how you can better serve your customers. When you come across something particularly interesting, jot it down right away. You can then come back to it and determine if you should turn it into a post.
3. Create a backlog of content
This is a tried-and-true method of making sure you can put out content consistently. I like to try to keep at least a month’s worth of blog content ready, in case I’m not able to work on it for an extended period.
You can do the same with social media posts. While LinkedIn currently doesn’t have a feature for scheduling automatic updates (you’ll have to use Hootesuite for that), Facebook does.
Here’s how you can schedule a post on Facebook:
- Go to your company’s Facebook page
- On the left side, under the Manage Page heading, click Publishing Tools
2. On the left side, click Scheduled Posts
3. Click the Create Post button
4. Choose a publishing date
4. Take notes from your own experiences
Say you have a meeting with a customer, and you share with them something that you believe would help your other customers. Write that down after the meeting. Then, come back to it and determine whether that would make a good post.
5. Reimagine your existing content
If you create a longer piece of content, such as a blog post, you can break out some of the key points into a series of Twitter posts. Try combining multiple blog posts into a downloadable e-book. If you have a podcast, convert some of your blog posts into your show.
