You will be able to set a publishing rhythm from the hours you actually have each week.
Most small business accounts follow the same pattern. A burst of energy, a post every day for two weeks, then a busy month, then nothing for six weeks, then an apologetic "we're back" post, then another burst. Mei Ling's Instagram looked like this for two years. She felt guilty every time she opened it.
The problem was never effort. She simply planned for more than her week could hold. This lesson shows how to set a rhythm from the hours you really have.
Most people have no idea how long a piece of content takes them, so they plan as if it takes no time at all. Start by measuring.
Take one typical piece, such as a blog post or a short video, and time each stage: research, writing, editing and publishing. Research includes checking your voice-of-customer file and any facts. Writing is the draft. Editing is the passes from lesson 7.1. Publishing includes formatting, images, scheduling and sharing.
Priya timed her blog post from lesson 6.4. Research took one hour, writing an hour and a half, editing half an hour, and publishing, with the photo and formatting, another half hour. That is 3.5 hours for one blog post. A short social post adapted from the blog took her about half an hour.
Then decide how many hours a week you can honestly give to content. Not the hours you wish you had. Look at a typical week and find the time that is really free. Priya had about five hours a week, mostly on Sunday evenings and one weekday morning before the centre opened.
Divide one by the other. Five hours a week, minus 3.5 for a blog post, leaves 1.5 hours, which is enough for three short posts at half an hour each. So her sustainable rhythm was one blog post and three short posts a week, at most. (Her hours are an example. Use your own.)
If she had tried to write two blog posts a week, that would have needed seven hours, two more than she had. She would have managed it for a week or two, then fallen behind.
A reader who sees one useful post from you every week learns to expect it. A reader who sees seven posts in one week and then nothing for a month learns that you are unreliable. The steady rhythm builds a habit in the reader. The burst does not.
The same applies to email and to blogs. A monthly email that arrives every month is more useful to a reader than a weekly email that stops after six weeks. A blog with one good post a fortnight for a year is worth more than a blog with twenty posts in its first month and none since.
So choose a rhythm you can keep for at least three months, through busy periods, holidays and the weeks when the business needs all your attention. It is better to start smaller than you think you can manage and add more later than to start big and stop.
Writing one post at a time, every few days, means switching into writing mode again and again. Each switch costs time: finding your notes, remembering where you were, getting back into the reader's head.
Batching means doing several pieces of the same kind of work in one sitting. Write three or four posts in one session. Edit them all in the next. Schedule them all at once, using the scheduling tool in your social media platform or a separate scheduler.
Mei Ling now spends two hours on the first Sunday of each month writing four weeks of posts, and another hour scheduling them. The rest of the month she only has to reply to comments. Her account has posted every week for seven months.
A calendar filled entirely in advance cannot respond to anything. A customer asks a question that would make a great post. Something happens in the news that affects your customers. A product sells out and you need to say so.
Leave one slot open each week for this. If nothing timely comes up, use the slot to answer a customer question from your list. If something does come up, you have room for it without breaking the rhythm.
Priya keeps her Friday short post open. Most weeks she uses it to answer a question a parent asked during the week, written in the parent's words with the name removed. Those posts consistently get more replies than anything she planned weeks ahead.
For the activity, time one real piece of content this week, stage by stage, and write the total down. Then look at your week and write the hours you can honestly give to content every week for the next three months. Divide, leave room for one open slot, and round down.
Time yourself producing one post this week and write the number of pieces per week you can sustain for three months.
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