Set Aside 20 Minutes Each Day for Content Development

In the current age, it is no longer sufficient to have a website that is simply a landing page. Even a sophisticated landing page providing information on your team, the services you provided and more is not enough. At a minimum, businesses need to show thought leadership and interact with its customers and interested parties. The most effective way to do this is through regular content creation and social media interaction. In our first guest post, Danielle Mohr of Fine Point Writing & Editing shares some valuable advice on content creation.

Set Aside 20 Minutes Each Day for Content Development

In the digital age, businesses are expected to have great online content. Your digital presence reflects the quality and character of the behind-the-scenes work you do for your clients. It needs to be consistent, high-quality, and up-to-date. Unfortunately, content creation is something that takes time.

For small to mid-sized businesses, it’s tempting to let content needs build up over time. Whether you manage a website, blog, social media, or marketing campaigns, content creation is a task that frequently gets pushed to the bottom of your to-do list until it piles up. At this point, content can sometimes be slapped together and pushed out, without much focus on quality.

The best solution to keep things moving is to set aside twenty minutes daily to work on your content. If you need more than twenty minutes daily, give yourself more time, but the main principle here is to work on your content once per day, instead of all in one fell swoop at the end of the week or month.

Breaking your content creation up into smaller chunks on a daily basis makes it more manageable, and can also be a great way to maintain your quality. Often, giving yourself time to mull things over allows you to properly organize your thoughts on paper. It’s less stressful, too; instead of sitting down with a deadline looming, you’ll have time to write at whatever pace you need. Most importantly, setting aside time on a daily basis means it won’t build up into a task that takes you away from your business for an entire day, or possibly longer.

Your website is at the heart of your content, so make sure you spend a few of your twenty minutes checking it over and updating it. If you think of your digital network as a spider’s web of interconnected components, your website is at the centre of it all. Each smaller component (blogs, social media, etc.) feeds into it, but without that centre, no piece can stand on its own. Your website should tie into every other piece of content you have, and be completely up-to-date.

Spend the rest of your daily twenty minutes planning and writing your new content for your blog, social media, and campaigns. Don’t think that just because you have a blog you worked on over the last few years, you can let that content stand alone without adding to it. The world of business moves fast, and to keep up, you need to make sure that your content is always relevant and cutting-edge. Regular updates on new events, ideas, clients, and initiatives will increase your online visibility.

If you’re struggling with time constraints, there are ways to make more efficient use of your daily 20 minutes. Old or outdated content is a valuable starting point for something new. Once you’ve established a great blog, you can build on your previous posts. Writing shorter posts that link to several of your more substantial posts means less time spent on content during those time-crunches, and more clicks on your site. If you’ve written several how-to’s that are related, link them all into one post. You can also do this on your website. Group similar content together, write a short summary, and make it easier for your audience to get to the information they need.

If you struggle to find even 20 minutes a day, you might want to consider hiring out your content generation. You can read more about the benefits of outsourcing your content here.

About the Author

Danielle Mohr is the Creative Director of Fine Point Writing & Editing, an Edmonton-based content creation organization. Fine Point creates stunning content for websites, corporate blogs, marketing materials, social media, and more. For more information, or to contact Danielle, please call 780-218-3264, or email Danielle@finepointwriting.ca