Personal Branding Content Planning

Creating a calendar and planning ahead is going to be the key to build your personal brand. I talk about the three keys to building your brand, which include; Consistency, Storytelling, and Authenticity. In order to show consistently, you must plan ahead. And trust me, I understand how difficult it can be to plan ahead. I am more of the spontaneous, fly by the seat of my pants type. As I have grown in my career—and married a planner—I have found great joy in organization and planning. It is also crucial for me to plan ahead as I balance my full-time job, building Be Digable, and working with clients.

One of the biggest requests I have received from YOU is a content planning calendar. Therefore, I have created a 3-page worksheet that you can print our or save to assist you with your content planning.

 STEP 1: IDENTIFY YOUR YEARLY GOALS

This can seem very daunting, but it will set the tone and make it much easier for you to plan. Think about the answer to this question, “Where do I want to be this time next year?” It could be in a new job, a higher position within your current field, expanding your network, building partnerships, more speaking opportunities, and more. In the worksheet, identify your top 3 professional goals. Based on those goals, then identify key dates and tent poles in each month—either events that you are going to be participating in or key events within your current or aspirational industry. When you identify these key dates, it is a reminder to be either attending/participating in these events and more importantly engaging in the conversation online. To grow your influence, you must position yourself within the community you are looking to develop your personal brand. Therefore, you must put yourself in the middle of those communities. If there are months that you can’t identify key events, then think of a topic that you can make sure to speak on in that month.

STEP 2: CREATE MONTHLY THEMES

Once you have identify the major tent poles throughout the year, it is time to become more detailed within each month. If you are looking to get into fashion or grow within fashion, then you probably identified September and NY Fashion Week as a major tent pole. With the monthly template, break down each week in September based around NY Fashion Week. In Week 1, you are probably going to post about you getting ready for the week—maybe some IG stories of you shopping and choosing outfits. Or maybe you are posting about how busy you are getting your brand/business ready to host an event/attend. Week 2 you are going to post behind the scenes content of you running around, hosting events, meeting with other brands, etc. Week 3 maybe you create a recap post and blog where you give your POV of NY Fashion Week and what it means to you. In Week 4, you can post about how you are taking a few days off. You can use this across industries, if you are in tech, then you are doing to make note of major conferences that your company is hosting or that you will be attending. You see where I am going with this?

STEP 3: DAILY POSTING CADENCE

Ok, now that you have an overview of your year and you broke down content ideas by month, it is now time to create your posting cadence for each week. I encourage you to build out the daily posting calendars at least a week ahead of time.  Make sure to include copy and links to assets to make it easy for you to schedule. Give yourself at least a week of ahead of time in case you need to route for approvals or need time to create assets.

If you haven’t already, make sure to download the Easy Breezy Planning Calendar to get started planning today!