Creating Content to be Everywhere…

“You’re everywhere!”

I get told that a lot.

I take it as a compliment.

But it’s not by accident.

Each week we ‘show up’, in all manner of places, and we’re adding to those places all the time.

Why? Because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to be noticed and stand out.

It’s not enough to just spam social media with #BuyMyStuff posts. If you’re building a business or brand (and especially a personal brand) then your content needs to be targeted and offer something to your readers.

That takes planning and effort.

Most business owners don’t have the time, energy or know-how to make that effort.

So how do we do it?

Well, here’s exactly how we do it and what we do with it.

It’s fag packet maths but it gives you an idea.

I reckon we spend on average between 19 and 24 hours a week “being everywhere” and although that can vary, it does give you an idea of the sheer effort and time it takes.

But… we’re trying to be smart with it.

Here’s what a week in Spaghetti Agency’s marketing department looks like.

Creating Content to be Everywhere…

Blog – 1000 – 1,500 words (Time: 2 hours)

Two hours? Yeah it’s quite a long time. But we do tend to put some effort into these blogs. Initially I’ll write the blog on a Word document. I’m writing this on a laptop in a café (I’m so cool like that). It takes around 40 minutes depending on how much research it needs.

The ideas for the blogs come from conversations I’ve had from clients or enquiries we’ve had that week. Those blogs are the best types of content to create… as it helps future ones.

Then I’ll send the blog to Jo for proofreading. Then we’ll create a small graphic for the blog and an email to share the blog to our email list.

The blog is then uploaded to the site by our fabulous VA and then we share it to all our social media channels including LinkedIn, Twitter (many times through Social Jukebox), and Facebook, Facebook groups, and our Facebook Page. (We’ll sometimes promote it using Facebook ads.)

We have around three to four people working on making this process happen.

Email marketing – weekly Roundup (Time: 2-3 hours)

The Friday Digital Roundup (add yourself here) is our weekly email and has been going out at 6am on a Friday for over four years. The weekly blog and this email form the building blocks of our marketing.

The Roundup is a quirky email including five funny stories from the internet with some updates about our services and our weekly blog or vlog. Laura (office manager) finds the content, I write it, Jo edits it and adds that Spaghetti flair, and then I make the tech bits happen in Campaign Monitor whilst also testing it looks good on both desktop and mobile.

The Roundup drives business. It’s in people’s inboxes as a reminder that we exist ready for when they need us. It deserves the time it takes to get it right.

Video – YouTube and social media (Time: 30 minutes)

I record batches of short two-minute videos in one go, so and the time quoted here is to get them online and out there. But it’s not much more. Creating them is quicker than uploading and marketing them.

When I publish #ToddsTips, our weekly vlog, I’ll do the following:

• Set it live on YouTube
• Post it into Spaghetti Besties (our free Facebook group)
• Publish it on our Facebook page
• Share it into a few other Facebook groups
• Upload it to LinkedIn
• Add it to our blog (recently added this step).

Getting the video out there takes a little time to upload and give a few fresh titles and captions to each share, but we can schedule most of this inside Facebook so it can be done whenever we have time. This has to be time-blocked to make it happen.

LinkedIn can’t be automated. I download the video from Dropbox to my iPhone and upload to LinkedIn at a popular time (usually the morning or evening).

LinkedIn – Daily posts (60 minutes)

I love a bit of LinkedIn and the time quote here is only for uploading content. I pop back in the day and answer the notifications and scroll through some content to comment on others’ posts too. According to my iPhone I’ve actually spent 57 minutes on LinkedIn on my phone in the past seven days so with desktop too I suspect it’s more like two hours.

I share a daily post – usually a question, statement, opinion or answer to a question heard in a client meeting or conversation that week. The inspiration comes from the same place as our blog. This makes it pretty easy to create and avoids any writer’s block.

I generally create a post on my iPhone over breakfast in the morning and sometimes even in bed before I get up. It’s a daily task on my list.

Twitter – storytelling and content sharing (2-3 hours)

Years ago this would’ve been the largest area of time but I now spend more time on Facebook. I generally check in on news, follow people I meet, comment on stuff I see that I like, comment back on posts from people in my lists and automate shares of my blog and vlog. Jo retweets dog videos. *Shrugs.*

I use Social Jukebox and Buffer for scheduling content as this makes it easy to share on the go and I also share the blog and vlog constantly. You never know when people are around and you need to share content a lot for it to be seen.

Facebook groups – multiple groups and more than one post a day (7 hours)

In the past seven days my iPhone tells me I’ve spent over 21 hours in the Facebook app and I suspect I do a good nine hours on my Mac! Yup… I use Facebook a lot. But I do admin some groups and that takes time.

I share the same type of content that I do on LinkedIn though, and I could easily just copy and paste that if I was short of time. I rarely do, but you could.

You don’t have to spend hours and hours. Here’s how to spend one hour a day making the most of Facebook groups:

• Create a daily post and share it during the morning, noon, or evening of that day.
• Search the groups for relevant content to chat about and with. Find your customers and referrers in these groups. Get good with the search box (this is hugely helpful) and converse and reply to notifications throughout the day or at key points when you can.

I reckon I could easily do an hour a day if it wasn’t for my clients’ groups. Engage in the right places, not all the places. Scrolling through groups literally wastes your life.

Networking – talking to strangers (7-10 hours)

Now, that does sound like a lot but that includes travel and I usually have calls in the phone on the way to and from networking meetings, and then cram in some audio books too. This week I’m doing more networking and travelling than normal, but an average week will see this amount of time for networking, travelling, and of course allowing time (15-30 mins for each event) to follow up.

Networking gets me out there in front of people and I’ve been very careful to only go further afield if I’m speaking or doing several things in the area. Locally I go to meetings where I speak or run the meeting.

Snob? Well, I consider myself to be selective and careful with my time. If I start going to new networks then I’ll have to start at the bottom a little but I’ve got enough ‘skin in the game’ to get that speaking slot and that’s more effective marketing.

Jo goes to between one and three events per week so between us we’re networking and following up and driving to and from networking meetings for around 15-20 hours a week! She stays locally and covers the more informal groups, as well as running a monthly ladies’ networking meeting.

We’re everywhere, you see!

Phone – follow ups and lead generation

And although I included this above, I do spend a few hours on the phone too. I have discovery calls and follow-ups to enquiries which are of course part of the sales and marketing process. I’m selling myself and our services to people. On an average week this can be anything from one to four or five hours for me.

AOB – the rest of the bunch

I’m also active on Instagram for fun and according to my iPhone I spend four hours a week on Facebook Messenger!

As you can see, this ‘being everywhere’ is by no means an accident and when I get asked “what’s your secret?” and I share all that the person questioning quickly retreats if they know they can’t put the same amount of effort in.

It takes time, effort – but most of all it takes a system. There’s no point in going networking and putting the business cards in your desk drawer when you get home. There’s no point in chatting to someone who’s interested in what you do, then forgetting to ask if they want your help. This is so easily done if you don’t have a system.

We use a simple marketing and sales system which we share in our workshop – The Small Business Goldmine. (Next dates are Sept 26^th and Nov 27^th.) Find them here.

You need a system, you need a content machine, but you need to be clever.

A lot of what we create is re-purposed from other content and re-shared in other places. Our weekly vlog appears in at least four other places. Some people like to watch videos and some hate them. That’s cool.

Create an idea or concept and answer in on your blog and social media and create a video for it and you’ll not go far wrong. We’ll even create talks, podcasts, and future updates from that, too.

When we meet you, we want to help you see the value that we add, so that when you’re ready to buy, you ask us.

It’s probably why you read this blog but if you’re meeting us for the first time then download the free content below. You’ll get some great content and we’ll also add you to our emails for that ever-popular Friday Digital Roundup – people tell us they love it.

If you’d like help creating content to be everywhere, just give us a yee-haa! We’ll show you how to do it yourself, or we’ll do it for you.

Need help getting all this together? Join us in one of our ever-popular marketing and social media workshops in Warwickshire right here.

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