Monster Tip #7 Be A Calendar Girl (or Guy)

One of the best tips I know to stay on top of your content creation comes from my 10 years of public relations experience.  Create an editoral calendar for your business.  An editorial calendar is essentially a weekly (or daily) content plan for your business.   Having an editorial calendar lets you plan your articles and blog entries around your product launches and around seasonal events.  Planning your writing this way allows you to get the most bang for your writing time.  Here are some tips to creating an editorial calendar that will work for you and your business.

1, Create a spreadsheet — add a column for each day of the week you want to write.  Number the rows. Each row will be one of your writing weeks.

2. Take a look at your business/marketing plan.  Mark down your product launches (or product launches of your affiliate partners) on your calendar.  Plan articles around your products.

3. What are the "events" that relate to your product.  For example, January is "national get organized month".  May is national " Shoes for Orphans Month".  Planning your articles and blog posts around these events can often lead to more media attention because they have a timely "hook".  A good source of information on special days and months is Chase’s - -http://chases.com.

4. Make your own weekly pattern.  Write about the same topic each day.   Alice Seba does a good job with this on her blog. Monday is Myth Crusher Monday where she addresses an Internet myth.  Tuesday is Turn Around Tuesday where she allows her viistors to ask her a question, on Saturdays, she has Sweetie Saturday giveaway, etc.  

5. Consider planning your "own day" into your marketing calendar.  You can write article, blog posts and even press relases announcing your special event.  On your day, you can have a sale, make a donation to charity whatever makes your readers happy!

6. Now that you have your spreadsheet, spend some time brainstorming possible articles.  In the next session, we’ll talk about an excellent way to come up with lots of great ideas.   Start filling the articles into the calendar.  Pretty soon, you’ll have three months or more of ideas.

Now, I know things change and that you might not actually write the article you’ve planned on each day — but knowing that there is a topic waiting for your each day makes it much easier to write consistently.