Every (thing) business has its season.
There will be quieter times of the month and busier times of the year. This blog post is to help you understand how to account for this and what to do with them! This post is suitable for StartUps and all the way up to ScaleUps.
Seasonality is the ups and downs of your business. It's when you're likely to earn more or less in that time frame. Seasons are not only impacted by weather of course, but also by supply chains, financial issues and these days even pandemics. A lot of these things we can't possibly account for, but there should be some wiggle room you can put in every quarter or at least every six months.
By gaining this insight into seasons you can prepare content and indeed manage your time better overall. This is also taking into account that you may have had a business for a year or two and you can look back at your analytics. If however, you're a start up you can alternatively use your own practical knowledge to predict and indeed somewhat manipulate when your audience should be there as well.
There should be no limit to the type of content you create or use. Over time (months or even years) you can start adding other platforms or get staff or virtual assistants in to help you with your content creation.
Just remember that all the content you create is for the benefit of your customers, not you. So put up what benefits them, not what you thought would be beneficial. One of the hardest things I've had to remember is that although I've been doing this a while, I mustn't assume people who approach me know as much as I do. I have to remember that not everyone is on the same journey as I and have to assume they use a layman language and may search for what I do in an entirely different way.
It's worth noting also, that not every post you ever put up has to be about your business. Try and remember that you're trying to engage humans, not customers. Ask them questions and talk about something relevant (like if your customer is parents, then talk about back to school checklists and packed lunches) around that season.
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Without the benefit of actual analytics you'll have to use something referred to as predictive analytics. So you'll have to imagine when your audience will be there and what they want to see when they have arrived looking at your content.
So first up, get yourself a larger piece of paper or a white board and section out the months on the top. Now you need to work out the times of year your product or service will be most popular in your opinion. If you have both a product and a service, I recommend you do two separate lists.
Here's an example of what would be considered an evergreen business.
Shoe Shop
People buy shoes year round correct? Yes - But!
Most shoe shops will include children's, men's and women's shoes. Following the school terms is when the children's shoes will be sold more often, normally just before they start back to school. Men's shoes tend to be replaced less often but they are usually replaced in the Autumn as that is when their less than ideal shoes are impacted more by the cold and the wet. Women tend to replace their shoes more seasonally, for instance, open toed or sandals during the Summer and closed, warmer shoes during the Winter.
Solicitors
People need a solicitor for a lot of things, year round right? Yes - But!
House sales typically begin in Spring. The largest amount of application for divorces happen in January and the largest amount of natural deaths happen in the Winter!
Training
People need training year round right? Yes - But!
Company budgets typically start in January and end in December, so December tends to be quiet (as the budget is more or less spent by that time) and January can be quiet due to illness or people waiting to get paid at the end of January.
So think about your business. Think of the customer and their role. If they are a consumer (B2C), then what's going on in their lives? If your customer is a business (B2B), how are they going to be looking for you? What problem do they want to solve? Think about the journey that each of your customer avatars are having to go through to get their problem solved.
Whatever content you create, remember to repurpose it. Also, when you go to the trouble of creating content, especially hard stuff like blogs and presentations, remember to share them actively and frequently. I use several tools to push out my articles and blogs and it increases eyeballs to my website. Namely QUUU Promote, Missinglettr and Postplanner, but there are a lot more platforms you can investigate/
This is any business that's already started and perhaps has 12 months or more history to work from. If your business is approximately 2-3 years old (at the time of writing in September 2022) then you're most likely still going to be working from a predictive basis. I say this because your first two years of trading - I certainly hope - won't be "normal". Not many businesses have to normalise pandemics and lock downs and now of course, we have the "cost-of-living" crisis (also known as nearly in recession) as well.
I would of course recommend you look at your analytics and statistics over the last year or so, as a place to start. Then look at your future goals and plans. Are you getting more staff? Are you changing structure, direction or perhaps setting up an ecommerce website? These will also change the seasons on your business as you announce each of these changes.
You might have in-person and online events to plan for as well and these will need content created as well. This can be promotional video on top or everything else mentioned above.
Analytics can also be found else where and not just on your social media of course. You have it on your website using Google Analytics (please change over your current one to GA4 as soon as possible - well before the cut off point of June 2023), you have your sales, people on your email list, you can even measure your phone calls, messages, Whatsapps and footfall. Each of these will help you better understand what has or has not been working as you promote your business through online and offline means.
I hope this blog has at least got you started, targeted and more motivated into becoming more structured with your content going forward. Getting inspiration can be difficult at times, I appreciate that, but what's more important is what your customer is going to get out of it. The more useful it is, the more resources it offers and problems it solves, the greater chance of having them come back, refer and gain you more sales.
If you would like me to provide a talk presentation or consultation on this or need any further support or guidance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
