Buckle your (Marketing) Tool Belt

The final piece of our Content Calendar for Professional Growth entails some heavy lifting. But not to worry, we don’t expect you to carry the weight of the content load.

To recap, part one helped you identify themes, goals, and responsibilities, while part two mapped out your calendar. In part three, our final part of your professional content planning, we’ll show you how to maintain the forward motion of your new roadmap.

Setting something up for success doesn’t always make it a success. We are all as strong as the tools we put in place.

Make your life easy, use the tools

• Adopt a Platform. 
  There are new tools and subscription services appearing daily to help manage calendars and schedules. Review a few and choose the one that works best for you. Managing teams and clients, we use various tools to create process and efficiencies for communications. I’m a fan of Asana, SmartSheet, Google sheets, Trello and Evernote as options. I prefer to avoid paid subscription until the use and adoption validates the investment. If you see an opportunity for larger team adoption, bring it up with your team for testing.
• Set Reminders.
  Whether it’s an email or a push notification to your mobile device, every app has the option to keep you informed. Most allow you to customize how many reminders and how far ahead to go. Let the tools be your own personal project manager.
• Connect Devices. 
  Make it easy for yourself to stay on task whether you are in front of your computer or checking your smartphone during a meeting. Download the app and sync it to your calendar. There is no need to check multiple places to ensure you are staying the course.

Test and measure

• Set Success Metrics.
  Put realistic numbers in place and work towards those goals. As marketers, we know how critical it is to set up parameters to measure growth. Review the numbers regularly to gage your trajectory toward success.
• Not Working? Change it.
  You wouldn’t continue to dump money into a marketing campaign that wasn’t generating new leads. The same is true for professional growth. It’s easy to get sucked into the busyness of your new calendar schedule. Remember, you didn’t set up thoughtful ideas and meetings to keep yourself busy. You created a plan to foster growth.
• Identify Gaps. 
  As you continue to test and track, take a step back to ensure you aren’t missing key themes. Maybe the board you joined sounded right on paper but, in reality, it’s not challenging you in the right way. Stay true to your goals to ensure where you spend your time has the most impact on the bigger journey.
• Continue to Evolve. 
  Remember, you put together a plan to work for you. Everyone moves at a different pace. Are you getting the right information to help you stay the course?

As the first six weeks of the new year come to an end, now is the best time to finalize and execute your plan for professional growth. Whether you map out the next year or a few months, just get started.

If you need a solid place to start, tick through the first part of our blog series to kick things off!