Here we are in a fresh new year, full of potential. If you’ve been using the quiet time between the Festive Frenzy and the New Year celebrations to do a bit of thinking about where you want to take your business in 2022 – you’ll need some strategies to support your goals for the year.
Content
This is a big area and includes:
- Articles for your blog
- Copy for your social media profile/biographies
- Copy for your website
- Items to pitch to publications
- Content for your newsletter
- Email campaigns to promote your offers, new products /services or holiday promotions.
These all need to be part of your plan. If you’re thinking ‘I already have copy on my website’ or ‘I’ve already completed my social media profiles’ – it’s time to review what’s there and ensure it’s still up-to-date and the message is on target.
If you think it’s too early to start planning email campaigns – it’s better to have these scheduled in so you can invest time in advance and ensure your series o messages is compelling and persuasive, rather than thrown together and rushed!
If you send out a monthly newsletter, knowing in advance what the key subjects are for each month will help you to avoid that ‘blank screen syndrome’.
Here’s a huge tip – write articles for your website blog and repurpose them for your LinkedIn profile, extract short quotes for social media and use the article as the lead item in your newsletter. You can even convert an article into a short podcast or a series of slides to turn into a video presentation. Don’t reinvent the wheel!
Social media
The more people who know about you, the more potential customers you can reach. This means you need to ensure your social media presence is:
- In the right places – where your ideal customers are looking
- Delivers great value – so your potential customers can see the kind of expertise they’ll get
- Consistent – more than a random post when you have time. You don’t have to post every day, but you do need a regular posting schedule and your posts need to be customer-focused (not endless promotion)
- Interesting for your target audience. Post what people like and more people will engage and follow you.
A social media planner will pay dividends to ensure you capture ideas, content, useful links and more – and then know what’s going where and when.
Fail to plan; plan to fail
You may have heard this saying – and it’s true. A little planning goes a long way towards a structured marketing plan that rolls smoothly on all year long and keeps delivering warm leads into your business.
