Email & Coffee

I've years of job experience in the print industry. Sometime around the year 1995, I developed a nagging itch. Scratching my head revealed a trend as if a vision, that the print industry would metamorphize over the Internet. It actually frightened me, like a giant Mothra evolving out of a cocoon. And I wasn't alone. Many associates, even programmers, denied the validity of the web, proclaiming it more fad than practice. Perhaps some of them should have talked with Al Gore.

In 2000, I left an advertising position for an experimental web start-up. Well, within 6-months that job was canned and it was the second of three layoffs that I'd experience in my career. Jobless in America in not a great place to be, but it helped me learn to think for myself and trust my instinct. That seems a paradox, that losing work would strengthen my resolve, but it did. I'd learn to trust that nagging itch, as each time I'd find myself scratching, change loomed in my future.

My core skills served as a bridge between one job and another. My talent to see the big picture, my attention to details, an ability to work through projects and see them from beginning to end. Many tools acquired while in the print industry still remain in my well-worn bag of tricks.

Specifically, one tool deserves its place, front and center on main street. And that's the editorial calendar.

There is no better way to layout a electronic newsletter than to prepare a monthly outline of benchmark content, promotion, value-added editorial, tied together with a great picture or two. Done ahead of time and for every month of the year, you will have yourself a marketing plan that pays back within six months.

Do this in one sitting, and you put forth a strategy from point A to Z. You can move your clients within your purchasing cycle, provide tips with continuity, introduce seasonal services, answer frequently asked questions. You don't necessarily need a flare for marketing, but you do need insight into your own business, something you should have if you are there in the first place.

Don't make excuses that you can't write, don't have vision or a free moment. You're in business, make the time. An editorial calendar can mark the difference between engagement and junk mail.