How does a communicationist stay organized? We’ve all got different methods but the important thing is to remember to have a way, any way. My communications calendar is a simple Google spreadsheet and once I created it, my brain was so much happier.
Let’s break it down. First, the medium of a Google spreadsheet. I like it because I can open it anywhere, there’s no risk of outdated versions floating around when I re-save, and I can share it with my multiple email addresses. The downside is that it isn’t a mobile app. I just couldn’t find the right one. I do have task list apps that could remind me of all of the different content to publish, but I haven’t found it to be worth my time to type it all out if I can’t sort and view the long-term calendar and other features I haven’t found all in one app.
The colors on the spreadsheet represent the type of medium: Red in Pinterest, blue is Facebook, and so on. That way I can look at groupings of clients sorted alphabetically (i.e. all of the RR are together) and then visually scan for blue for what else I should do while I’m on Facebook or another medium while I’m there.
Most of the cells are empty, but that doesn’t mean that nothing is happening on them. By default, each account is checked daily and updated if there is something newsworthy, something to reply to, etc. If there hasn’t been something requiring action, then I find something in my Google Alerts or news feed/home stream to share. In the case of MC PIN above, I wrote “repin” every day because it is a newly-created account and it is especially important to get it active and for me to prioritize it.
You may notice that no row has more than two “promos” in a week. The majority of your content should be interesting news from the topic area, not blatantly marketing yourself non-stop. Sneak in the links to your services and products every once in a while.
This keeps my brain happy not only by getting things out of my brain and into somewhere else, but it keeps me focus. If I feel like spending an hour on Pinterest when I should be writing a blog post, seeing that I get to repin away tomorrow (and that the post needs to be published tomorrow) helps keep me on track.
How do you organize your communications calendar?
