We get questions like this lots . . .
- How usually ought to we ship out ___________ ? (fill within the clean with emails, tweets, press releases, and so forth.)
- What’s a standard quantity of content material for my crew to be requested to create?
- How a lot ought to I put in my editorial calendar?
After all, the reply is “It relies upon.”
However right here’s an train I like to recommend to our teaching shoppers to assist reply the questions for your self. This assumes you’ve been at your group doing the comms work for at the very least a 12 months.
I need you to consider three completely different months prior to now 12 months or so when
- You felt comfy with the extent of labor. You felt just like the tempo was manageable and the standard of the work product was excessive.
- You felt pushed, nevertheless it was tolerable for a brief time period. Should you do fast response work that comes laborious and quick, you realize these months. For others, it may be a time when the group didn’t plan properly or tempo out the work properly, and you needed to handle lots abruptly.
- You felt utterly overworked. The standard of the work might have suffered. However even when it didn’t, you and/or your crew suffered since you needed to put in quite a lot of additional time.
It is best to have three completely different months in thoughts, one which exemplifies every of those conditions above.
Now, I need you to rely the work product created and printed throughout every of these months. Depend the variety of emails you despatched out to your mailing record, the variety of Fb posts, tweets, Instagram tales, press releases, white papers, blogs, web site web page updates, and so forth. No matter it’s that you just or your crew produce, rely it for every of those months.
It may be useful to place this in a chart or a spreadsheet so you possibly can examine the tempo or quantity of every of the kinds of communications work merchandise throughout every of those three time durations. Typically it’s not a lot concerning the amount of the work, however the dynamics or the tradition by which the work occurs, so be happy to make notes about how these months have been completely different in these methods too.
The quantity of content material you created in your “comfy” month can function your default editorial calendar. That’s the variety of instances you’re going to plan to ship emails, Fb updates, and the like in a typical month going ahead. After all, you’ll modify as wanted for what the group is doing sooner or later, however this can be a good baseline.
Just a few instances a 12 months (by which I imply two or three, however no extra) you possibly can improve that default to what you probably did on the “pushed” or “fast response” schedule. It’s important that you just make it clear inside your group that you may solely do that just a few instances a 12 months. They want to decide on correctly about when to invoke this additional degree of effort.
The overworked schedule? You need to use this in just a few methods, none of which really contain placing that tempo on your editorial calendar.
First, in case you are seeing work on the horizon that may find yourself forcing you into the overworked schedule, it’s good to sound the alarm early and loud to convey the tempo again right down to one thing extra affordable.
Second, you should use this requested degree of effort (particularly in comparison with your comfy tempo) to advocate for extra sources, resembling a much bigger crew or extra contractor/freelancer {dollars} to assist fill in as wanted.
Third, you possibly can negotiate important trade-offs in the event you do consent to that overworked degree of effort, like further paid day without work afterward. I don’t suggest that you just actually consent to this, however the actuality is that it generally occurs to you. Insist that you’re rewarded for that degree of effort.
And fourth, if none of that works, you can begin on the lookout for one other job that received’t abuse you, realizing what you might be able to and what’s an excessive amount of.
Should you give this train a strive, let me know the way it goes!
