There are two types of people in the world: those that plan, and those that don’t. I have to confess – I’m a planner.
I love lists. I have lists for my lists. My desk is strewn with notebooks for different subjects, there’s my diary (A4 ring-bound week to view) open at all times, and I’m sure I keep those lovely people at Post It Note HQ in profit.
Now here’s the thing. I can plan client work: blogs, social media posts, monthly newsletters, website updates ….. but when it comes to my own marketing, I’m crap at it! It’s always a case of ‘mañana’, and then before you know it, it’s been two years since you posted a blog on your own website.
Please don’t judge me!
With the start of a new year, I thought I’d do things slightly differently, kick myself up the backside and put Wordy Bird first for a change. And do you know what? It wasn’t as overwhelming as I’d feared.
Let’s break it down.
Step One
I invested in the beyond-excellent Entrepreneurs Marketing & Social Media Business Planner 2023, written by my good friend Colette from The Small Business Equaliser – https://www.smallbusinessequaliser.com/. Colette has made the daunting task of marketing planning manageable. Her planner is broken down into sections covering all aspects of marketing, in a month-by-month layout. It’s also made me reassess my ‘why’.
Step Two
For the last twelve months I’ve been having a monthly ‘marketing mash up’ with the fabulous Hannah from Golddust Marketing. She’s kept me on track, come up with some amazing ideas, and pushed me out of my comfort zone. So, gathering up all the emails and notes felt like a sensible place to start my 2023 planning. Which led to ….
Step Three
Social media posts. The bane of every business owner’s life, including my own. A blank calendar with 365 days stretched out ahead can be an intimidating prospect. It’s that pesky elephant, demanding to be eaten all in one go.
Following my own advice for once, I broke the 365 days down into months. Over the next couple of hours, I wrote every post for the month of January. Everybody works in different ways, but I found it easier if I concentrated on all the Mondays first, then Tuesdays etc. until the month was in the bag. A bit of time on Canva soon had images created for each post, and by the end of the day, everything had been scheduled across my main social media platforms.
Step Four
Blogs. It was with sheer horror that I realised I’d not posted a blog since January 2021. Shocking. Unforgiveable. So, again, digging out notes from various 1:1s over the last few months, looking at awareness days/months and generally seeing what others in my sector are writing about, I created a 12-month blog plan. Two blogs a month for the rest of 2023.
And here I am, writing the first one!
Time well spent? Absolutely.
And it’ll soon be time to start creating and scheduling February’s content.
Maybe you’re not one of life’s planners. Like so many business owners you start out with good intentions to write a blog every month. All goes well for a month or two, and then life, clients, and every other excuse under the sun get in the way and your website becomes a barren wasteland, devoid of any new content for Google to find and re-index you.
If you’d like a helping hand with planning your year ahead, or having your blogs written and uploaded to your website for you, I’d love to hear from you. Just email me on chez@wordybird.co.uk
Useful resources
https://www.canva.com
https://nationaltoday.com/
https://www.daysoftheyear.com/
