For many businesses, the main challenge with maintaining a blog or social media account isn’t coming up with ideas. It’s finding the time to write the content or create graphics. That’s where we come in.

But we’ve noticed that sometimes another challenge arises: finding the time to review and approve that content.

Unfortunately, it does your business no good if you have content created and then it sits in a figurative drawer, sometimes waiting for weeks (or months!) before you have a chance to look at it.

How can you speed up this process?

Review multiple pieces at once.

It’s much easier to carve out a single block of time once a month to read your blog posts and social media content than trying to find time every week to read each item separately.

But you don’t have to read just one month’s worth. We have a client who reviews three months of blog posts at a time — that’s a whopping 12 blog posts at once!

Approve topic ideas, too.

Finished reading those four (or more) blog posts? Your job’s not done.

Keep the blog train moving. Review or brainstorm topic ideas for future blog posts. And share any key info for the following month’s social media.

Then you can send it all back at once. Now your blog and social media are set for the next month, and you don’t have to give it a second thought.

Set a “meeting” for content review on your calendar.

We know this for ourselves: if we don’t put the time on our schedules, the task won’t get done.

Make your review time a recurring appointment. Just like you would for a regular meeting or phone call.

Then, stick to it.

 

Focus on the big picture.

We once had a client change “attorney” to “lawyer”… only to change it back to “attorney” in the next review!

Consider where you put your focus when reviewing. In general, you want to look for three things:

• Is the information accurate, interesting, and useful?
• Does the voice or tone match your brand?
• Does it make your business (or you) seem professional and knowledgeable?

Limit the number of people who have to approve.

What tends to happen is that the writer will rewrite to match one reviewer’s preferences… only to be given conflicting notes a few days later. The same thing happens with graphic design revisions.

Not only does this cost you extra time, it can also mean a bigger invoice at the end of the month. Consider who really has to review content before it goes live.