We operate on a monthly schedule, so final client work needs to be uploaded by us by the last day of the month, whether that's a Friday, Wednesday, or Monday.

Content needs to go through edits, get graphics, be optimized for SEO, and finally posted. In order to accomplish all of those elements, we need all article content done a week before the end of the month.

First of the Month

The first day of the month we spend scheduling out content for the rest of the month. We do this using Postoplan, our social media scheduling tool. This will usually take about half a day to complete depending on the number of posts the Content Writer is uploading.

First Week of the Month

After scheduling out social posts, the next task is starting on the research and interview outreach for Outreach Pieces for the month. Remember from our training on the outreach pieces that you'll spend up to 6 hours per piece to conduct initial research, send an outline to the Content Marketing Manager, draw up your interview questions, and start initial outreach.

Third Week of the Month

Organics (Social Media Posts): We write all the social media posts a month ahead of time and in the thrid week of the month in order to give clients a week to look them over and approve before we post. On average for clients, we're writing a maximum of 15 posts per month, each at under 100 words. These posts generally do not require research, so plan to do 4-5 clients a day. If you have a full load of 8 clients, plan to take up to 2 days to write them.

Newsletters: Newsletters are also written in the third week of the month. Newsletters average under 1,000 words. Rather than create brand new content, we want to repurpose existing content. Take a blog post we wrote and condense it into newsletter format. It is also OK to simply copy paste the entire blog post if it's not too long. This way, we try not to spend more than an hour per newsletter.

The Last Week of the Month

Ideally, we have everything finished and over to the SEO and Web Team for optimization and upload by the end of the third week. The 4th week of the month is reserved for finishing up any content left over.

Mondays

Mondays are always outreach follow-up days. Do these first thing, reaching out by phone and email again to your list of potential interviewees who you have not been able to contact yet.

This is also the day when we send out email messages or reminders to previous interviewees encouraging them to share last month's completed Outreach Pieces and link to them from their website.

Daily Workflow & Communication

We try to keep things simple here at Circle Social by following a clear routine every day.

Email should only be checked at the beginning and end of the day. When sending emails at Circle Social, we know that they are for information or tasks that do not need to be completed immediately, so anything in our inboxes can wait. By limited email checks to twice a day, we've found it greatly improves focus and reduces task switching.

Forurgent communications or where you need an immediate answer, use the chat function in Hive. Please not that this should only be reserved for things that require an immediate answer. We also strongly recommend that, for questions related to content you're writing, a list of questions should be compiled throughout the day and then sent in bulk rather than pinging someone every time a question comes up.

Our goal is to write 3,000 words of content per day. This is not set in stone, but is a good goal for most writing days. Some days Content Writers will write more, some less, but that's a good average. This applies only to writing days, not outreach planning days. Most new writers notice it takes them longer to write pieces and they spend more time on research in the first month with Circle Social. As their knowledge of the space grows and similar topics come up again and again, content becomes easier to write.

If you are struggling with a piece or need ideas, the best solution is to chat the Content Team Lead or Content Marketing Manager in Hive and arrange a call. This is usually the quickest way to get support working through a piece.

The last hour of the day is reserved for edits on previous pieces. Hive will display pieces ready for revisions after edits. Do all edits for any copy edited pieces that last hour. If edits require additional time, finish them up first thing the next morning.

When scheduling interviews for Outreach Pieces, you'll need to do these whenever the interviewee is available, so just book their time in and work your regular day around that.

We also have a weekly Content Team Meeting where we'll discuss projects and sticking points or provide training. We'll make sure everything we planned to complete for the week is completed, briefly discuss next week's content needs, and make any adjustments to the schedule necessary based on the status of projects. Currently, these are held at 12:00 on Fridays, but sometimes move around.

Planning Out the Month