Be Your Own Boss Friday: How To Create A Content Calendar

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Every Friday is BYOB (Be Your Own Boss Fridays). I recognize that being an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, business owner, or freelancer is also a part of The Future of Work and there are plenty of readers who fall into that category (myself included!) and many who want to be in that category. So each Friday will be devoted to that audience but the things I share should also be applicable to those with more traditional employment options as well.

Consistency is everything when you have your own business. As an entrepreneur, no matter what your product or service is, you want to put out great content in a thoughtful, meaningful way that allows your potential customers to find you. Great content also keeps you relevant and at the top of mind for your followers.

When looking at top content creators you may think kicking out a bunch of posts, images, videos, and articles is easy. But in reality there is a lot of work behind every single post that these brands put out on social media. We know first hand how much time and effort is spent on a great online presence.

We have found that the best way to stay organized and on top of our content is to have a content calendar. We both have created a system that allows our content creation to be a well-oiled machine, but it took time and experimentation to come up with our current setup.

Today we are sharing our content calendar with you along with all of our tips and advice so that you don’t have to go through the painful process of figuring it out for your business. We are also sharing what social media channels we use and what content we put on each one.

You can watch the video of our full discussion below or just listen to the audio version as a podcast. If you want more content like this you can subscribe to our Youtube channel.

Click below to play or go here to listen on your favorite platform.

Why should you use a content calendar

Before we share how to use a content calendar the first thing is why should you use one. When you first start out you may think it is easy just to post as you go, whenever inspiration hits. But your online presence should be true to your brand, it should tell a cohesive story. Just posting on the go without planning or thought isn’t very effective.

You have to start with the why. Why are you even putting content out there? What are you trying to say? What is your brand? Who is your audience? What do you stand for?

This is something you need to spend time thinking about. What is your style, and does your style change based on the platform you are using. For example we are much more casual on our BYOB platforms then we are on our speaking platforms where we have to be a bit more professional. How we post on LinkedIn is different than how we post on Instagram.

What platforms should you be using

Each online platform is different and can help you reach different audiences. The content you post on each one will vary as well. The main platforms we use are YouTube, Instagram, Medium, Forbes, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Wordpress, and our podcasts.

Obviously there is a never ending list of platforms you can use depending on your brand and message. For example we don’t use TikTok or Snapchat because most of our audience is made up of senior level leaders who most likely aren’t spending a lot of time on those channels. We also don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with all of the new platforms that pop up on a regular basis.

1. YouTube is a channel that is hard to grow, it takes a lot of time and effort to gain subscribers. We use YouTube to share our podcast interviews, to post our professional speaking reels, Jacob does weekly videos on leadership, and we do weekly quick tip videos for BYOB. Jacob tries to post on there 3 times a week. Blake doesn’t use it as frequently.
2. Instagram is a platform for images and short videos. It is a channel that is more raw and honest. Blake uses Instagram quite frequently to talk directly to her audience. She tries to post a video every day and images 2–3 times a week. It is a platform that helps your audience keep up with what you are up to. It is a channel that allows you to be more vulnerable, casual, and open. On this platform you do also want to pay attention to hashtags, they are important, but you don’t want to overdo it.
3. Medium is a blogging platform that we don’t use a ton, but we do re-post past content onto the platform to get it out to a different audience. It’s not one of our core platforms.
4. LinkedIn is definitely the platform we use the most. This is a great channel to network with people. Our main audience is professionals and senior level executives who ask us to speak inside their organizations so this is really a key place for us to share content and make sure we stay top of mind. We post articles, we send out LinkedIn newsletters, we network with others, give updates, and we post videos and live stories. We both use LinkedIn several times a day and we have huge audiences there.
5. Twitter is one we use, but we kind of have a love hate relationship with. It seems, at least for our businesses, one that doesn’t grow very much. We both post 3–5 times a day on this channel, but it isn’t one that is as relevant as it was years ago.
6. Facebook is another one that isn’t our favorite, but it is one that we use. We don’t use personal Facebook at all anymore, but we do use it for business. Jacob has a private group on Facebook on The Future If which has quite a following. But outside of that we don’t find a lot of engagement on our channels. Some people have hundreds of thousands of followers there, but this isn’t a channel we have mastered yet. This tends to be a channel that people use for personal life, not for business content.
7. Forbes is a channel Blake uses to post articles. She has had a column on there for 6+ years and she has really been able to create a large following due to this platform. But at the end of the day anything you post to Forbes is driving traffic to their website, not necessarily yours. It is definitely a good place to start and it can give some great opportunities and exposure, but the best thing you can do is create content for your website and your channels where people can find you.

Blake and I made lots of mistakes during our entrepreneurial journey and learned things the hard way, but you don’t have to. Whether you are considering going off on your own or you already have, this will be a valuable resource for you. 

Download our PDF on the 7 things you need to master if you want to be a successful entrepreneur.

On any channel that you have it is important to know who your audience is on each one and make sure your content is relevant for that audience. You can experiment and try things out to see what works and doesn’t work, we definitely do that. There are some channels that are more conducive to sharing personal information or being more vulnerable and real.

How to create a content calendar

For our businesses we use Google Sheets to create a content calendar with all of the days of the week listed out and what content we post each day on which channel. This makes it easy to see what is getting posted on each channel each day so that you make sure you are posting consistently on each channel and that you have a variety of items going up — articles, images, quotes, videos, etc…

Using something like this to keep track of your content is really important as you grow your business and your brand. You may even find that as it grows it becomes impossible to manage it on your own. We both have hired social media managers to coordinate all of our posts because we have so much going out.

But if you do hire someone make sure they are organized and consistent, because you want them to help you look at your best. These are people you have to trust and who cares about your brand and your mission. There are also a lot of tools you can use to make this process easier as well.

You can hear more of our stories and strategies in this episode of the Be Your Own Boss (BYOB) Podcast. Click below to play or go here to listen on your favorite platform.

Subscribe to the podcast on:

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If you enjoyed the article and want more content like this here’s what you can do:

1. Subscribe to The BYOB Podcast Newsletter to get notified when a new episode comes out (once a week).
2. Listen to episode 44 of the podcast where we talk about these things in much more detail including sharing our personal stories.
3. You can also connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, and Linkedin.
4. If you’re interested in sponsoring or have suggestions for the show, you can send us an email at [email protected].