The Daily Post

Marketing for yourself can often be a challenge. You’re in it everyday and can, to a certain extent, assume that what you know about your business is common knowledge. So let’s start there: Don’t assume that what you know about your business is common knowledge. Let’s consider how to generate content for the daily post.

• Each day, recognize WHO you’re reaching out to, WHAT they need to know, and HOW you want them to respond. The WHO here is your audience. Make sure you have a good picture in your mind of the person or people that will be receiving this information. Maybe that will influence your vocabulary, or your examples, or your voice, or the length of your post. Which brings us to the WHAT; are you countering a commonly made mistake or myth? are you announcing a sale? are you giving inspiration or encouragement? And HOW will you know they received this information? Did you ask them to like your post or respond in the comments, or click on the link, or share the post with their circles, or forward the email to a friend? If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
• Determine your top five categories of information about your business or related to your business that you’d like to communicate.Maybe your five categories are
  1. events
  2. product promotion
  3. information/news
  4. funny/inspirational
  5. how-to
• Take those five categories to the calendar and plan out how you can evenly distribute those over a month’s worth of postings or emails. Remember all of your avenues of communication and cross pollinate among them all. Email a newsletter and link back to articles on your blog. Post a blog and post the link on Facebook. Tweet the post on Twitter and use hashtags that relate to the topic, in your eNews, remind people to become to follow you on your social media networks for more updates. Learn how to use the scheduling features and network share features for each of your channels. Plan to spend one hour a week scheduling posts for the next week or two and another fifteen minutes jotting down notes for ideas for the coming weeks.
• Remember to be social! Don’t be a know-it-all, but package your knowledge in the form of a question, or a info-graphic, or an entertaining meme or cartoon. Every post doesn’t need to be a 100 words. In fact, if we’re talking about
  • Facebook: think picture and caption/link,
  • Twitter: short and sweet with relevant hashtags
  • Instagram: capture a moment in a picture and maybe add a hashtag or two
  • Blog: Make it “skimable” with headings, bullets, and important nuggets in bold-face type
  • eNews: great subject line, 2-3 short articles with links back to your website to learn more

You’re on your way to becoming a Marketing expert! Consistency and quality are key for the daily post. If you just can’t seem to fill in the blanks listed in this article, then it might be a good fit for some help from the outside. Outsourcing someone to ask the right questions, develop a strategy and implement the timeline can be of great benefit to your peace of mind and your bottom line.