This is the final week of our Spring Cleaning series and we hope you've found it helpful! If you missed it, you can find all three FREE workbooks in our Resource Room. Week 3 is all about planning for the future and two of our favorite ways to stay on top of our future work for our business is utilizing a workflow and an editorial calendar.
A workflow is is defined as "the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion". No matter what creative business or blog you run, it's important to write down the steps you take in your behind-the-scenes processes to stay organized and be sure every step gets checked off. If you're a calligrapher, you might have the following in your workflow lineup:
Initial inquiry with the client, response to inquiry, contract signed and accept deposit / retainer, talk over initial ideas for wedding invitations, send first proof, make revisions, send second proof, make revisions.... all the way until the end of the process where you deliver the final product and collect the final payment.
This ensures you don't miss a step in your process, which in turn ensures happy clients! In order to help you even further with your workflow, we have created a helpful guide to walk you through the process of creating your own. The guide even comes with a printable workflow chart!
The second thing we use to keep on top of our schedules and plan for the future is an editorial calendar. You can keep your editorial calendar in your computer calendar, Google Calendar, your phone calendar app, or a written planner or journal. Editorial calendars are defined as being "used to define and control the process of creating content, from idea through writing and publication. "
For example, as an interior designer and design blogger myself, I sit down and pre-plan all my blog posts about a month in advance. This doesn't mean I write them all in one day (heavens, no!) but it does mean I come up with my post topics. This helps me avoid frantic brainstorming and writing the night before a post, allows me to schedule in time to take photos for particular posts, and helps me spread out my content so I don't end up with 3 posts about bookshelves in one week. If you don't have a blog, you can easily take this concept and apply it to what you're posting on social media.
Hopefully these two things help you be more efficient and ready for big things ahead in your business!
