04 Feb Stop writing status updates

Stop writing status updates

When Facebook and Twitter first came out, plenty of people asked, “Why do I care what my friend ate for breakfast?” Fast forward a dozen years and its still being asked. I still love seeing a good, well lit, photo of a lobster dinner (Clearly craving seafood while I type this) but those random, spur of the moment posts don’t typically generate a ton of engagement and more importantly, you can’t plan for them. So if nothing happens for a week or two, you’re not in front of readers, followers, or connections.

That’s why you need to plan. Schedule out your themes for the month. What message are you trying to get across? What content is going to subliminally back that up?

Marketers love to talk content calendars. We talk about them in meetings like thy are the holy grail. What sometimes get’s lost is that they far too often focus on generating new content. While you should be trying to generating something new fairly consistently, don’t be afraid to recycle content in different forms. I mean Gary Vaynerchuk has built up an insane, cult like following by sticking to that exact strategy. Use an old tweet as an Instagram post, a podcast as a blog post, an old presentation as a video. Reusing content seems like something that is super easy to comprehend, but if that was the case, why do so few brands do it? The answer is actually even more simple. They aren’t planning for it!

For the record, not every post, tweet, or story has to be methodically thought out, but it can’t all be done on the fly either. Plan out a few new, cornerstone pieces throughout a month, mix in some recycled content, and sprinkle in those heat-of-the-moment posts and you’ve got a recipe for content success.