I’ll assume you have done your research and planning and created a content marketing plan.

That’s a great first step, but now you need to stay focused on it. It’s so easy to fall off the plan and start doing something you shouldn’t. That’s where a lot of wasted effort starts to drain your energy and performance. You may see something that works for someone else, and think that it might just work for you.

Don’t do that! You’ve created your content marketing plan for a reason. There is a time and a place for on-the-fly adjustments.

Keeping a firm and organised grip on your content marketing activities allows you to give yourself the best possible chance of accomplishing your goals.

Here are different tips you can use to stay focused on your content marketing plan. Some will be more effective than others and some more suitable for different people, so try them out and see which helps you to stay focused the best.

Let me know how you like to stay focused in the comments section.

Create A Schedule And Stick To It

You need a schedule. Better yet, you need a marketing calender.

Knowing what needs to be done in advance allows you to prepare sufficiently. Make room in your schedule to do what you need to do, when you need to do it.

Setting out your future marketing activities provides a framework to organise yourself and allows you to stay focused on your objectives.

Have Goals And Write Them Down

Goals are often needed to create a plan. You need to know what you want to achieve, otherwise it’s impossible to plan a route to get there.

The problem is people create loose goals and then forget about them. So, ensure you set SMARTER goals and make sure they are tied into your content marketing plan. Your marketing activities should have the sole purpose of fulfilling your aims and objectives.

When you start to feel yourself losing focus, go back over your goals and remember why you’re doing this. You’ll remember the reasons for each major phase in your content marketing plan, and get the motivation again to keep going with it.

If you struggle to find the time to check your goals in order to refresh your memory, put them somewhere that you can glance towards, like on your whiteboard or pin board. You’ll be able to stay focused throughout the day because there’s never a reason not to see what your trying to achieve.

Create A To-Do List Every Day

Stay focused by knowing what you need to do throughout each day. While you should create a marketing calender, a to-do list will break down the activities, sometimes in order, of what needs to be done NOW.

As you complete each task, cross it off your list and move onto the next. This can give you a sense of satisfaction and the boost you need to see that you are getting through your plan.

Do One Thing At Once

If you’re trying to do lots of things at once, you will lose focus. It’s too hard for your brain to take it all in. It’s important to work on one task at a time, and only move on when you’ve gone as far as you can with it or it’s complete.

One time when you should move onto something else while doing one thing is when you’re waiting for a task that runs in the background to complete. Multitasking on strategic tasks rarely works to increase productivity. In fact, it usually leaves room for making more mistakes and confusing yourself.

You’ll also be switching the attention from one task to another. It takes time to get back into the mindset for the first task, so you could end up with your brain switching off completely because it doesn’t have clarity or vision.

Get Help

There’s no need to learn how to do everything in your content marketing plan. While you may want to do as much as you can yourself, for control or for financial reasons, sometimes getting help can actually enable you to do more, and do it better.

Hiring social media marketers, community managers, or other online marketing professionals, whether in-house or by using an outsource provider, can help you to free up time from routine tasks and enable you to spend on more on important activities. You can also bring in specialists to do tasks better than what you can achieve.

Additional Tips To Stay Focused

You need to remain as focused as possible when executing marketing campaigns. Your plan was created for a reason - so you need to pay attention to it and work through it.

The good news is that by using a focused approach, you can maintain a productive and efficient work schedule.
 

Featured Image Source: Game-Changer