January is the perfect time to look at your entire year, at a glance, and begin to “pre-plan” the content for your crochet business. 

Pre-planning your year will help you stay focused and organized all year long and prevent you from forgetting things you wished you would remember. You know, like National Pizza Day, when pizza amigurumis are your best seller! 

I have started “pre-planning” for my 2020 already and thought I would share with you how I planned my content and give you some tips for planning your own. 

I still have a long way to go, but I have started lol. It’s all about baby steps! 

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I may recieve a small commission from purchases made.

Here are some things you can pre-plan for your crochet business

• Social media posts and pictures
• Blog posts
• Newsletter emails
• Sales and promotions
• Products to promote each month

It’s important to keep your brand and target audience in mind when you look at the list of all the quirky social media holidays. You won’t want to celebrate every. single. one. Just the ones that make sense for your business, your brand, and your target audience.

For example. It wouldn’t make sense for me to do something big and exciting for May 4th, aka Star Wars day, because I am not a Star Wars fan. 

I never reference it in my content, I don’t have any Star Wars themed crochet patterns and I don’t talk to my audience about how much I love Star Wars (because I’ve never seen it). 

Wanna learn how to take your crochet business to a new level this spring?!

But if you and/or your target audience are Star Wars fans, you talk about it, your products are inspired by it etc. Then you should totally do something fun on that day!

You better believe I will be celebrating National Cereal Day and National Cow Appreciation Day!

Places to get content ideas for pre-planning

• Social media holiday calendar 
• Traditional holiday calendar (like Christmas) – These may already be printed on your calendar.
• Your personal/family calendar 

Once you gather those three resources, you can begin to write down the dates you want to be sure to remember.

I bought a desk calendar from Office Depot and began penciling in some of the social media holidays that make sense for me, my brand and my target audience to celebrate.

So for January 13th, clean off your desk day, I made a note on my calendar that said IG: Clean off your desk day.

My brain automatically thought of a picture and caption idea for that post so I took a sticky note, wrote down my post ideas, and stuck it right on top of that square on my calendar.

I have ordered colorful, mini sticky notes and when they come in im going to color code everything. Instagram posts will be a color, blog posts will be a color, emails will be a color, you get the idea.

Now when I go to plan (not pre-plan) my Instagram content for the month (or week), I can look at all the IG sticky notes, organize a photoshoot day to take all the pre-planned pictures, and batch write captions!

This will help me provide better quality content for my audience and save some time, who couldn’t use a few extra hours in a day am I right?

Watch this YouTube video by Jasmin Star to learn how to plan your Instagram content.

I decided my goal for 2020 is to publish 2 blog posts per month. I will write a blog post topic (or crochet pattern) on a sticky note, and place it on the correct month.

2 blog posts a month is only 24 for the entire year! Thinking of it like that will help me prioritize which posts/patterns I want to publish and putting them on the calendar will help me make sure each post goes live at the seasonally appropriate time.

You can do the same thing for newsletter emails! If you want to send at least 1 email a month to your newsletter, that’s 12 seasonally topics you can brainstorm and plan around.

The 2020 Content Planner freebie will give you some ideas for trendy topics each month.

Just remember to take your audience’s schedule into consideration. For example if you want to encourage them to purchase Christmas gifts in October, to give you plenty of time to make and ship them, then waiting till December to send your Holiday Gift Guide email wouldn’t be very beneficial.

If you can always put serving your audience first, your content will be gold!

I hope this post was helpful and you feel more confident about planning out your 2020! Make sure you sign up for the newsletter and grab your freebie. I will be sending out monthly emails all centered around helping you start and grow your crochet business.

I wish you the best in 2020!
❤️Ashley