Imagine waking up and knowing all your blog posts are going out, all your social media posts are posted, and checking your email to see that your weekly newsletter is already in everyone’s inboxes. Oh the things you could do if you didn’t have to worry about these content marketing tasks every week.

Let’s be honest. We all know it. The big dogs. They schedule their content at least 12 months out in advance. Sure they tweak things here and there but for the most part, the bulk of it is done. They’ve already got their Christmas promotions and holiday greetings scheduled for next year. They’re not building landing pages the day before the event. Their landing pages have been built and tested for ages.

So, what are the benefits of scheduling your content out 12 months in advance?

What does this mean for them? It means the 20 or so hours they are working per week to grow their business is not spent on marketing tasks, but on actually growing their business. They are attending networking events. They are guests on podcasts. They are getting articles published on the Huffington Post. All those things we keep on our list but seem to get pushed off until the blog posts go out and the newsletters are sent. So how can you schedule your content for the next 12 months for your business?

Start With A Plan

When I first started to schedule my content, I looked at what needed to happen every week.

• I have a podcast that needs to go out.
• I have to post a tip on my Facebook group.
• I have a daily blog post that needs to go out.
• And of course, you can’t forget the weekly newsletter.

Each week those were the things that needed to get done. Using Asana, I created a task for every week and each of those things became a sub task. Here is what it looked like:

Automate What You Can

Now that I had a plan, I looked at what I could make happen on it’s own. For example, I use the magical world of RSS feeds to automate sharing my blog posts. Using Social Pilot, I set it up to automatically create Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Xing, and Instagram posts for me. I also use the Editorial Calendar plugin on WordPress to organize my blog posts and get them scheduled properly.

Get To Work

I started this process a month ago writing out and creating the weekly promotion schedule for my blog posts. Once all the posts were written and I knew what to promote each week, it became pretty simple for me. But it started with blocking out an entire month to just write content. Nothing else.

Now, for the two months after that, I’m just putting the puzzle pieces together. This is where my Asana checklist comes in handy. I start week by week scheduling the content. Again, Social Pilot comes in handy for this as well.

What Resources Are You Using

• I use Asana to sort out the weekly promotion schedule and create my weekly checklist.
• I use MailerLite to schedule my weekly newsletter, create my landing pages, and schedule my monthly list building events.
• I use Social Pilot to set up my RSS auto-posting and schedule my additional social media posts including posting in my group.
• I use Zoom to record my videos and podcasts.
• I use YouTube to schedule my videos and keep unlisted my monthly event videos.
• I use Simple Podcast to create and schedule my podcasts.
• And I use Amazon Storage to hold my podcasts and PDF downloads.

What’s Left Over?

There are of course a few tasks that can’t be automated. I can’t find an app yet that will repin my pins for me or comment in Facebook groups for me. These kinds of tasks are the tasks I divide between myself and my Virtual Assistant. This way, I know, that my VA’s time is being used in the best way possible.

Stephanie Latorre is the owner of EGM, a website designer and digital marketing coach. She works with bloggers and small business owners who struggle with keeping up with new digital marketing strategies and would like to have easy access to templates and plans that work so they understand the why of digital marketing strategies. What makes her different is she explains the tech side of digital marketing. Because of this her clients get better results and understanding of what they are doing.

*Disclosure: There are some affiliate links in this post, but these are all products I highly recommend. I won’t put anything on this page that I haven’t verified and/or personally used.