Create A Content Buffer By Scheduling Ahead
As a busy parent balancing business with a whole lot of life stuff, it can be really hard to be consistent with your content. And we know consistency is key to staying top of mind for your ideal clients and making those all-important sales.
Rather than being frustrated by a schedule you can’t control, why not build your content system to work for you, even when you aren’t working?
Having a strategic content calendar AND a bank of pre-written and pre-scheduled content - aka your content buffer - is a must. In this blog post, I’ll be showing you how I build out my content system and create a content buffer of up to 2 months of pre-scheduled content in my business.
Why scheduling your content is the best strategy
While you may love the spontaneity of a live post or a real-time email, that’s not always realistic for many entrepreneurs. If you’re working on your business part-time, balancing childcare, or have fluctuating health issues, it can be hard - or impossible - to bank on being able to show up live on a specific day to post your content.
By scheduling your emails, social posts and even blog content ahead of time, you’re taking the pressure off yourself to show up live every day or week. This also gives you space to be more intentional with the type of content you create and how it fits together in a larger scope.
Now, some days you will be able to post something live, and that’s great! When you have a pre-scheduled content buffer, your live content can slip in seamlessly with your pre-planned content.
How to build your content buffer
So rather than sharing your emails or publishing your blog posts or social content in real-time, you set aside time some time to work on creating your content and set them up to go out at a pre-determined time at a later date.
Often you can do this scheduling inside your email marketing system and website. And for social media you can use a paid scheduler app like Later or Buffer, or simply sign up for Meta’s Business Suite to be able to schedule your social posts ahead.
The great thing about working this way is if you can start building out your content buffer by even a few days, you start to afford yourself more time to create additional content and start scheduling out further ahead!
Which is great because there'll be days or weeks where you can't sit down and write anything. And because you now have this buffer content all setup and scheduled ahead, you don't have to worry about your business falling apart while you attend to more important things.
It's been such a relief the many times I've needed to use up the buffer content and has given me back a sense of control over my schedule because my content calendar is something I can control since I'm working on it ahead of time!
So if you too have an unpredictable schedule, have fluctuating energy levels or want the flexibility to take some time off from constant content creation, I highly recommend you give this a go!
It's pretty simple to get started with your content buffer, all you need to do is:
Map out your content calendar - my Calm Creator Content Calendar is great for this!
Work on creating & scheduling a little extra content when you have it in you to build up your buffer
And when you do use it up, make sure to set yourself some time to work on rebuilding that extra content so you'll be ready to go for the next time you need a break!
