Come on, let’s admit it.
Like many things, there’s the expectation, the intention, and then there’s the reality.
And hands up, in the past I’ve been a massive fan of planning as much content as possible. But then this year happened.
When the world gets turned upside down in a moment, plans have to change and adapting, pivoting and resilience have become the watchwords. So, what does that mean for next year?
Three months is the new twelve months
Or maybe it’s even one month, but it’s whatever works for your business. It might even change over the course of the year. January to March could be different from April onwards as we hopefully enjoy the benefit of life with a vaccine. There’s nothing wrong with adapting as you go.
Let’s face it, surviving 2020 has been all about adapting as things progressed.
But having some kind of plan, and even getting a little ahead, can take some of the stress out of consistently producing content for your customers. Being consistent and producing content that people want to engage with is the key thing. If you’ve read the report I wrote on effective social media content, you’ll have seen how just how key it is to keep engagement levels high.
Review and plan what you can
That check on how your engagement levels are doing and then doing more of what works, less of what didn’t, has to be a good thing. It helps to make time spent on creating content to be focused and effective. Analysing the past few weeks feels less daunting than a full year.
There’ll be certain events and things you know you’ll want to talk about, or that you know your customers are going to want to know about. Stick those on your calendar now, and you’re up and running.
Work out if events work for you
In the effectiveness report, I show you how I’ve worked out engagement rates (it’s not my method; it’s the most common method used to calculate the rate). If you’ve had a look at some of your posts and found that you got some good engagement around an awareness day, then now’s the time to check in on a) whether it’s running in 2021 and b) when it is.
I’ve found that many events in the first four months have not yet confirmed dates, reflecting the continued uncertainty. As the year goes on, and presumably as vaccines roll out, then things will start to go ahead again.
Why the 2021 Awareness Days Calendar is only 4 months long
The more I worked on the Food & Drink Awareness Days Calendar, the more it became apparent that many event organisers were holding off confirming anything. Rather than be constantly changing dates, or dropping events in, I decided I’d focus on making something comprehensive but confirmed for the first third of the year.
Available now to download, you’ll find everything through to the end of April. You’ll get updates through the year and, hopefully, as we get more settled back into normal rhythms, it’ll be worth having a longer view of the year.
What else has changed?
You’ll find links directly to the organiser’s websites for events wherever possible. In the monthly summary, I’ll also include all the hashtags relevant to the event. If the event has run more than once, then I’ll have had a look at the relative success of the tags so you can be confident about which ones to use.
Start planning when you can
There’ll be enough for most businesses to be concentrating on over the next few weeks before Christmas. Sometimes that gap between Christmas and New Year is a good one to start looking ahead. This year that might be particularly true as things close down again after the rule relaxation.
Sign up and get the 2021 calendar now, and you’ll have something to fill the time with other than that 1000 piece jigsaw. Content planning is a bit of a jigsaw, just with fewer family arguments about what goes where!
