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Marketing plan schedules are important in any business, and a home business is no exception. In fact the way that you implement a marketing plan schedule is even more important with a home based business, either one that you run by yourself or with only your family, simply because of the limited number of people actually doing the work! So here we take a look at the best way to plan your marketing schedule for every week, and also look at the websites and services you should be using.
Your marketing plan schedule should ideally fit in around your work and family commitments, yet still leave plenty of time to perfectly complete all of the tasks you need to each day, week in week out. Of course in the real world that is easier said than done, and it sounds great when you actually implement such a schedule?
Firstly you need to start by taking a moment to analyze your day to see when you have quiet periods of time that you can actually get some work done without being interrupted. It's no good starting a complicated task if you are not going to have the free time to finish it without being called upon to do something else.
You actually need to do this for every day of your week, so that you can see what free time you have available, as it is reasonably some days will be busier than others. If you are still working while running your own home business, then your days off will contain the most free time available to you and the days you have in work will contain the least, obviously.
A smart marketing plan schedule will allow you to do most of your work on your days off, and some of your promotional work should be set to automatically complete while you are in work. This will give a more consistent feel to your promotional efforts, and will help to avoid the feeling that you absolutely must get something done even after a hard days work, because you will already have done it in advance when you had the chance!
To better visualize your marketing plan schedule we will take my own personal schedule as an example. This schedule was originally based upon my 4 days on 4 days off shift pattern in work, giving an interesting 8 day week plan (8 day weeks previously only existing in Beatles songs) which had the benefit of my work never appearing in the same place on the same day each week. This meant people could not simply visit once per week for content, they would have to visit more often than that to find my updates.
I would do most of my promotional work (things such as writing blog posts, articles, press releases, classified ads etc.) on my 4 days off, and schedule as much of it as possible to be posted during my 4 days on. This would have the appearance of me working away and being consistent since the twelve hour shifts, and look to all as though there was a constant stream of content coming from my website.
My marketing plan schedule worked quite well for me, at least as long as I stuck to it, which was until circumstances changed beyond my control, and yours will work well for you provided you implemented a schedule you can actually stick to, because the earlier reason for analyzing quiet periods in each day of the week. So do this now before reading any further!
In this section of the article we will look at the websites and services you should be using. Which service you use, and even the particular day that you use them is entirely up to you. No doubt there is an extensive research on the particular day of the week to complete certain tasks, but that is beyond the scope of this article. You can always adapt your schedule later if you experience better results on different days for the individual tasks in hand.
Adapting my marketing plan schedule to your own .
(Please note the difference between the major tasks and the minor tasks as we go through my schedule below. done without any research at all and on only a moments notice)
FIRST DAY ON
On my first day on I would look into posting a Yahoo answer (a minor task). For those that do not know Yahoo answers are a wonderful place to post questions others can answer usually in minutes. The fact that they can answer them in minutes is excellent, because this means that Yahoo answers gets indexed by the search engines very quickly indeed. You can get links back to your own website once you get enough points built up by answering questions. You can also get quite a lot of traffic this way, provided your answers are good enough.
The truly great thing about Yahoo answers is the fact that it is usually placed very highly in the search engine positions if individual keywords matched. So if you work it well enough, you can get your answers to be displayed at the top of Google for a search, and get most of the people that find your answer over to your website! Yahoo answers should be part of any successful marketing plan schedule implementation strategy.
In addition to Yahoo answers I would also send out an email through Aweber (another minor task) to my email subscribers. The AWEber email archive page is indexed by the search engines, is a good source of traffic in itself and also helps to improve the positions of pages linked to it from there. The email could be about anything I was planning to do with my website or other announcements. Sending out a simple email and answering one question does not take up much time, and so that's the reason for including it on a busy work day.
SECOND DAY ON
On my second day I would upload a video to YouTube (another minor task). Usually the video was heavily completed on one of my days off and simply needed some tweaking before uploading. YouTube is an excellent source of traffic and the videos are again indexed extremely quickly. Commenting on videos was another quick and easy way of getting traffic over from popular videos.
Additionally I would also make a small post on the Yearn2earncash.com blog (another minor task). This would be nothing special, often only something as simple as firing the fact I had uploaded a new video to YouTube, and rewriting the description of the actual video slightly. The reason for making small posts is to keep the search engines robots coming back to the blog as often as possible. (By the way, always use free services to "Ping" your blog, without your blog already automatically uses ping services like WordPress.org self hosted blogs do)
Again both the uploading of YouTube videos and posting of small blog posts are something that could have been done even after a busy day in work.
THIRD DAY ON
On my third day on I would create a classified ad (another minor task), usually through Craigslist and also a website called USFreeads. The search engines really like classified ads and they index them very quickly. They can be a very good source of traffic; they get placed quite high in the search engines results, and are really quite easy to write. Choose good keywords as your ad title.
FOURTH DAY ON
On my fourth day (the last of my 4 on, 4 off work schedule) I would simply find some follow blogs to comment on (another minor task, with the right software). For those that do not know do follow blogs give you SEO benefit, and so they are best blogs to comment on. If you comment on blogs then make sure that you do not spam them, simple leave normal helpful comments on subjects you are interested in. In addition to getting SEO credit from do follow blog comments you can also get some traffic if your comment is good enough and helpful enough.
Besides on my fourth day I would create another short blog post, usually just about how good one of the other follow blogs was, or something I had just discovered on one of them. Again, just something quick and easy would do to get the search engine robots back to the blog.
So now we are halfway through my own personal marketing plan schedule, and hopefully you are now well on your way to implementing your own schedule. This is where the work really starts though; because once I was on my 4 days off I had to really start creating the work in order to have some that could be scheduled to post even on the next set of work days!
FIRST DAY OFF
On my first day off I would write an article (a major task), usually to be posted on EzineArticles although occasionally posted on Isnare for massive article distribution. Although articles have become slightly less important in the search engines eyes of late, they should still form a major part of any successful marketing plan schedule implementation strategy. They still draw a lot of traffic over to the websites linked to from them.
Not being the best writer in the world I would find writing the article to be somewhat time consuming, due to the amount of research often required, and it was for the best that I did this on a day off.
SECOND DAY OFF
On my second day off I would research and create my main weekly YouTube video (a major task – lesser ones can be created and uploaded anytime, but I always like one important one each week) plus make a forum post (another major task, requiring some research on the subject matter). The forum used was often warrior forum, although any popular one will do.
The warrior forum is somehow the most important forum for internet marketers and can be an excellent source of traffic. I have also noticed some good SEO benefit from having links coming from forum posts and signature links, and so ideally you should use more than one forum. Google really approves of forums, and the posts get placed quite highly in the search engines results. So always make time for forum posts in your marketing plan schedule.
Also I would make another small blog post, this time a rewrite of my forum post answer so that I could effectively use the same content twice, but hopefully get even more traffic by implementing different keywords.
THIRD DAY OFF
On my third day off I would write a press release (a major task, not so much because it required any research as such, but mostly because it actually requires writing in the "third person" – which was a skill I never really got the hang of). I have only ever used PRlog for my press releases because I have been amazed by the speed with which traffic was generated by them. I had hundreds of views very quickly (within minutes for my best efforts!) And could get indexed by the search engines quickly too.
Given that press releases can now contain images and also videos that should be the most important factor in the implementation of your marketing plan schedule. If you are prepared to pay for it, you can even have the extra feature of keyword anchor text in the links back to your website – One of the most vital link types you can get.
Again writing press releases for me was time consuming, and so best left to one of my days off.
FOURTH DAY OFF
On my fourth day off (my last day off work, sadly) I would create my major blog post. This would be the most important blog post of the week, and would contain the sum of my discoveries and experiences online during the week. It would also contain any announcements I wanted to make to my visitors. As Google loves blogs you absolutes must have one and post to it regularly, regardless of the home business you have or the type of content you plan on posting.
Thus completes my marketing plan schedule. It is important to note that although some tasks were only mentioned once per week, they were actually repeated more often than that. For example, my yahoo answers postings were sometimes made more often than once per week. The schedule above was only the minimum number of times I would do it per week. Often I would try to post on yahoo answers more often than that, but never less.
Additionally as previously mentioned earlier in the article you should note the minor tasks. For example I would create small blog posts as often as I liked, even every day if I felt like it, provided I had made one at least every other day that was fine. I also made smaller YouTube videos that required no research and simply contained my reactions to something that had happened that day. Provided I made at least one major YouTube video in the week, again that was just fine.
In the implementation of your marketing plan schedule you must attempt to reach a happy balance between not getting enough done, and having so much on your schedule for the day that you feel overwhelmed and decide not to do anything! Try simply to create a minimum schedule of work that contains all of the tasks you want done each day / each week, and then do more if time allows.
One good option would be to print out copies of your marketing plan schedule so that you can tick off completed tasks each day, then after the week is complete start again on another copy. Better still, have a whiteboard so that you can write on it and wipe it off after the week is complete.
The final area to be covered is the sharing of your own content through social media. I would share through Facebook and twitter all of my posted content from the week before. I would also click on the Facebook like button, and any other sharing buttons available in order to get more of my marketing content out there. You should be sure to share your content through as many networks as possible, usually a week later in order to give it time to be scheduled, indexed and seen by a few people. Plus that avoids the issue of having all of the same subject matter appearing in your status updates in the same few days.
Now its time for you to implement your own marketing schedule. Whatever work schedule you have simply adapt my plan schedule above to suit and use all of the mentioned websites and services, plus as many more as you have time for. Get going!
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