Balancing Your Full-Time Job With Full-Time Content
Whether you’re a blogger, Instagrammer or YouTuber, creating and publishing your content takes a lot of time, planning, researching, scheduling, coordinating, filming, editing, writing and engaging on social media.
Running a content business can also cost you upwards of dollars in the hundreds per year. Between all the apps and online tools you need to run a successful content business, it takes a lot of upfront investing.
Knowing that getting your content business off the ground is going to cost a pretty penny, it’s only logical to keep your full-time job until you’re comfortable and secure that your content business can now be your only source of full-time income.
Until then, you’ll have to balance working your full-time job while running your full-time content business.
I can tell you first hand that working full-time and managing a blog is a balancing act. But when your content business is on the cusp of earning you a full-time income, you’ll want to give it your full-time mental capacity.
1. Plan Ahead. When you’re in the business of being a content publisher—especially when you’re balancing a full-time job—it’s absolutely imperative that you use a content editorial calendar.
Having an editorial calendar allows you plan ahead and create, organize and manage your content more efficiently and productively. It helps you to see long term and prepare content well in advance as well as guarantee that your blog posts, videos, photos or social media posts go up at the same days each week.
2. Use Digital Tools. Social media never sleeps. Websites never close. When you’re running a full-time content business, the expectation is that you’re running it around the clock.
In order to keep up with the demands of being a content publisher, you’ll have to research and invest in online tools and apps to help you manage and distribute your content.
You’ll need to use tools for social media management, list management and email marketing, creative and asset management, photo editing, video editing, SEO optimization, keyword planning and graphics creation.
Pro bloggers, for instance, plan out their social media feed at least a week in advance. They also use automation tools and plugins to support their social media marketing around the clock.
As an example, I use a tool called Revive Old Post. This WordPress plugin helps me to promote our content around the clock by sharing them on Twitter thus driving more traffic to the site.
Once you have a library of content, you can install a plugin like this to automatically publish your content on Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn. It can post multiple times per hour and include the post title, image and post link.
This is just one example of the eco-system of tools and apps I use to run my content business. While you’re at work bringing in the bacon, your content business is still on run-mode.
Without relying on digital tools and automation, it would be hard to manage your full-time content business while you’re still working full time.
3. Create Routines. No matter where you work or what industry you’re in, no doubt your day-to-day includes tasks and activities that you do daily, weekly, monthly or even quarterly.
Perhaps you routinely have a Monday morning team meeting or Friday status update with the manager at your day job. It goes the same way for full-time content publishers. You’ll need to create a routine for how you run your business.
If you have a blog, you can write every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Plan your social media for the week ahead on Saturday, and spend Sunday curating some images and photos for Instagram.
Creating a routine for how you manage your content business will help you to balance it more smoothly alongside your full-time job.
Now it’s Your Turn
Setting up a routine in conjunction with using your editorial calendar and online digital tools, will make it easier to manage you full-time content business while working a full-time job.
Are you a blogger or Youtuber? What are your tips for balancing your full-time job with your content business? Would love to hear in the comments section below.
This piece originally appeared on The See Girl Work blog.
