A few recent projects were delayed waiting for content from clients, and that’s pretty typical. It has me thinking again about how businesses can better manage their published information.
With a little planning and organizing, most businesses can improve their promotional projects — the quality and turnaround — websites, trade shows, brochures, newsletters. So that’s this month’s topic.
Creating and Organizing Published Content
Content is the better part of websites and other promotional projects. That includes text, pictures and video. The design and the technical parts can be easily outsourced, but most small businesses want to write their own content. Unfortunately, they can’t spend quality time on it. They usually know what they want to say, but they don’t have the quality time to write it, organize it and create it..
Small businesses regularly, if not often, have to publish content, so this applies to other projects like trade shows, brochures, videos, social media, and newsletters.
So I’m preaching this month about your content. When you start a new promotion project — website, trade show or updated print material — plan time for reviewing and updating the content first. Eventually, you have to work on the content anyway, so you don’t save time by putting it off. Your message (content) guides design and technical decisions. And it helps A LOT when it’s created early…and I want to emphasis that:
It Helps A Lot When Content is Created Early
Content Review As a Regular Staff Duty
If you can, make it one of the yearly or quarterly duties for you or staff–more often for many businesses.
Schedule a regular inventory and review of:
- what’s currently published (print, website, social media, industry websites)
online listings (Google, Yelp, Bing, any other relevant sites)
Keep an inventory of your current “approved” files – text, pictures, video, PDFs, logos.
The goal is to be able to:
- find currently “approved” content (text, product-service descriptions, company history, pictures, video)
- back up your current content
- find and recover the backups of your content
Organize
If you need a boost getting organized, I can help gather your files, create a back up and provide written instructions for your company for:
- currently published content – text, pictures, video
- new content – where to save, where to back up
- scheduled reviews and updates
All Businesses Publish Information Now
You and your business publish information. Sometimes it’s for sales, sometimes it’s for support, sometimes it’s for general promotion. You already published it on your website, in brochures and on social media. And you’ll publish more information this year.
If your company isn’t big enough for dedicated creative staff, make it a scheduled routine. At least once a year, perhaps more often, review, inventory, and update your published content. It will make your promotion projects run more smoothly.
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