Writing Next Year's First Post Now

The quietest week of the year

For most businesses, the days between Christmas and New Year are the quietest of the year. The phone rings less, half the customers are away, and the inbox fills with automatic replies.

January will be the opposite: catching up, restarting, chasing the work that waited over the holidays.

Which makes this week the best time to write the posts January needs, and January the worst.

Why January's posts never get written

Most small business blogs follow the same pattern. A resolution in the first week of January, a post or two, then a busy February and silence until the next resolution.

The posts were never the problem. They were planned for the one month when nobody has time to write them.

Written now, the first post of the year exists before January starts, and the plan begins with something done rather than something owed.

Four jobs for the quiet days

• Write January's first post and schedule it for the first working week.
• Write a second post and keep it in reserve.
• Update the main pages for next year's prices, people and services.
• List twelve topics, one for each month, with a writer for each.

The second is the one that keeps the plan alive. Every year has a month when nothing gets written, and a finished post waiting in reserve means that month leaves no gap.

What to write first

The best first post answers a question customers ask in January. Every business has one: what changes this year, how to prepare for the season ahead, what to sort out before booking.

Write it for one person: the customer who asked that question last January. A post aimed at one reader is easier to write and easier to read.

Avoid the post that only says happy new year. It gives a customer nothing to use, and it dates on the morning of January 2.

Avoid predictions too. A post about what next year holds for your industry ages quickly, and is rarely why anybody visits.

Three to six hundred words, written plainly, with a photograph of your own, is plenty.

Scheduling it properly

WordPress, like most site software, can hold a finished post and publish it at a set date and time.

Check the site's time zone first, under Settings and then General. A site left on universal time publishes a post set for nine in the morning at one in the morning in BC.

Scheduled posts in WordPress also rely on the site being visited around the scheduled time, so a very quiet site can publish late. Look at the site that morning to confirm the post went out.

A worked example

A two-person tax preparation office in a suburban plaza started a blog in three successive Januaries. Each time it stopped by March, when the tax season arrived.

Last year, in the week after Christmas, the owner wrote two posts. The first listed what to bring to a first appointment, from the previous year's notice of assessment to the receipts people most often forget.

The second, on what to do when a tax slip arrives late, was saved as a draft. It went out in the busiest week of March, when nobody in the office had a spare hour.

The partner who handles bookings updated the prices page with the new fees and replaced a photograph of the old office sign.

Together they listed twelve topics by month, each tied to something clients ask at that time of year. This week they are writing the next two.

Give the post somewhere to go

A post nobody is pointed to waits a long time for readers.

Link to it from the service page it relates to, so visitors already on the site find it. Send it to the email list, if there is one, as the first email of the year.

Share it on the business's Facebook page, and as a post on the Google My Business listing, where it shows for a week to people looking the business up.

Writing it now leaves time for all of that in January, rather than none of it.

The pages that matter more than posts

On most small business sites, the services, prices and contact pages are read far more often than any blog post. They are also where next year's details change first.

New prices that start on January 1, a service added or dropped, a person who joined or left, new hours: each belongs on the main pages before the first customer of the year arrives.

Check the photographs while you are there. Pictures of vans, staff and premises go out of date as quietly as the words do.

And clear out what expires with December. The holiday hours post can come down the day you reopen; the gift guide can stay at its address, ready to be rewritten next November.

A calendar small enough to keep

Twelve topics, one a month, is a plan most businesses can keep, provided each month has its topic and its writer before the year begins.

Tie the topics to the business's own year: the questions that arrive in each season, the jobs that come with it, the mistakes customers make before they call.

Put them in a simple table with five columns: month, topic, the question it answers, who writes it, and the page on the site it should link to. One sitting this week is enough.

The counter-case

A business without a blog does not need to start one in January. The main pages come first, and for some businesses they are the whole job.

A business whose busiest month is January, such as a gym, should do this work in November instead.

And one good post beats four rushed ones. Write what you can finish this week, and plan the rest.

For everyone else, the quiet week is the time: one post scheduled, one in reserve, and the year's topics listed.

Before New Year

1. Pick January's topic from customers' questions.
2. Write it in one sitting.
3. Check the time zone and schedule it.
4. Write a second and keep it in reserve.
5. Update prices and people on the main pages.
6. List twelve topics with a writer for each.
7. Take down posts that expire with the season.

Step four is what turns a good intention into a habit. The month when nothing gets written is coming, and a post already finished is the only thing that covers it.

Publishing ahead of the moment people need it is the same principle behind gift guides that sell something.

Frequently asked questions

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