Finding your ideal "weekly workflow" for content creation

Fall tends to be a busy season for many of us.  It’s the time of year when our summer vacations and travel comes to an end.  Grade schools and colleges are back in session.  Many clubs and organizations resume meeting after taking several months off.  There’s a lot going on, and the month of September usually involves a lot of things starting up all at once.

I was speaking to a friend of mine the other day and he mentioned to me that he grieves the end of summer because of this bustle of activity.  He and his wife have several children at home and he misses the flexibility to do things that their family enjoys during the summer months.

I’ve been feeling the pinch of schedule changes this fall as well.  I recently became a professor again, a role that I enjoy, but also a role that requires a lot of planning and time management.  I teach most of my classes first thing in the morning beginning at 8:00 am.  Some classes are 75 minutes long, but the class I teach on Fridays is a full three hours.

I taught at the same university from 2012 to 2018, so it’s fun to be back, but there’s a difference between my life now and my life then.  My online platform was in its infancy when I last taught.  I still had my other responsibilities, but I wasn’t responsible for creating as much platform-related content when I was teaching years ago.  Now I find myself preparing classes and creating content in new ways and at new times.  It’s an adjustment.

If you’re in the process of creating an online platform, or if you already have a platform, creating content is one of the most important things you will do to sustain what you’re building and effectively reach new people.  Your message, marketing, and monetization are all directly connected to the content you’re creating.

What forms of content do you regularly try to produce?  Audio?  Video?  Blogs?  Social media content that incorporates audio, video, and written text?  It all has value, but it all needs to be intentionally created for it to be shared.  It doesn’t create itself.

For this to work, you need to develop a weekly workflow.  Some people try to convince me that they don’t really need something like that, but I think they’re wrong.  In fact, I don’t even have to prove to you that they’re wrong.  All you’d have to do is look and see if there’s any consistency or any rhyme or reason to the content they’re releasing.  You’ll quickly discover that their platform struggles to find momentum because it’s on again and off again like a light switch.  Lack of a weekly workflow equals lack of messaging, marketing, monetization, and momentum.

Do you have a workflow that works for you?  If so, how do you carve up your time?  I like to assign certain tasks to different days of the week.  That way, there’s no major stress involved.  I just look at my schedule and say something like, “Oh, it’s Tuesday.  That means I need to write a blog post and edit three podcast episodes.”  Or I’ll say, “It’s Sunday.  That means I need to share a long-form show on two platforms.”  I have specific tasks for every day of the week, and there are two things that help keep me accountable for creating this content.

The first thing that keeps me accountable is personal integrity.  If I say I’m going to do something and there’s no emergency preventing me from doing it, I want to get it done.  I don’t want to be dishonest and I don’t want to make false promises.

The second thing that keeps me accountable is my audience.  The fact that there are actual people who look for me to release content at set points throughout the week keeps me motivated to deliver it.  This motivated me when my audience was small and I knew most of them personally, and it still motivates me now that my audience has grown.

I realize we’re all busy and we all have a lot going on.  I know that some of you who are listening to me right now have children you’re caring for and other responsibilities that make major demands on your time and use up a considerable amount of your energy.  I can completely relate.  But having a weekly workflow doesn’t have to be a burden.  It can be a blessing that works well with your available time and when you tend to have the most creative energy.

I have discovered that I do some of my best writing during the margins of the day.  For that reason, I often try to use the hours right before I go to bed to write, or the hours when I first wake up.  I’ve discovered that I tend to create better voiceovers during the middle of the day when my voice doesn’t sound groggy or tired.  

I’m trying to create multiple pieces of content throughout the week, but maybe your plan is to primarily create one quality piece of content each week.  Let me offer a suggested workflow, based on the days of the week, that might help you accomplish that.

Monday - Use the day for planning and research.  Take time to review what you created the week before and start planning what you’re going to create this week.  Build off of your most popular content or take a risk to try something new.

Tuesday - Use this day to actually create your content.  Carve out time to write or record.  Don’t worry if what you’ve created is perfect.  Just focus on whether or not it’s helpful.

Wednesday - Use this day to edit what you created on Tuesday.  Refine the audio, video, or written content.  Get some feedback from people you trust if you aren’t completely sure you’re happy with the finished product.

Thursday - Release and market the content you’ve created.  Share it on the platforms where you host it, then post about it on your social media and send an email to your subscribers.

Friday - Use some time this day to connect with your audience.  Interact with their posts and comments.  Follow up with some of the questions you received during the week.  Attempt to make some new connections as well.

In the end, developing a weekly workflow that suits your schedule and the times of day when you have the most energy is wise.  You’ll get more accomplished, your message will be more widely disseminated, you’ll be more likely to monetize your content, and you’ll gain momentum at a much quicker rate.

© John Stange, 2023