With so many people taking extended time off, summertime can be a slow time of year in the office. Summer presents an opportunity for the marketing and communications teams to catch up, brainstorm, and get a jump on upcoming activities. Below, our top recommendations for making the most of the summer slowdown.
Work On Award Submissions
During your regular workflow, it may be difficult to take a step back to determine which of your recent projects can be entered for awards. Set aside focused time to research potential awards, keep track of deadlines, and put together material for award submissions. Winning awards increases credibility for your company by providing a third-party endorsement. It can also validate your company’s leadership in its market and may generate additional leads.
Transform Top-Performing Content
Take time to revisit content you posted on a specific channel and repurpose it by reformatting it for a different channel. By turning a lengthy blog post into a simple Instagram infographic, you can stretch the content and reach new audiences. Keep in mind that not all content will apply to multiple channels, so take each target audience into consideration.
Create Scheduled Content Now
Take a step beyond mapping out your editorial calendar and create content that will be useful throughout the year. Examples include upcoming holidays, national days, tips and company anniversaries. Another option is to scroll back to see if there is evergreen content you can refresh. When the work picks up, you’ll thank yourself for having readily available, quality content at the tips of your fingers — it may just need a last review or minimal update right before publishing.
Review Analytics And Map Out A Strategy
Take a deeper dive into your year-over-year analytics and look at more than just the engagement numbers. Identify your most engaging content, your audience and why those posts or email newsletters performed the best. This helps show you what works and what doesn’t so you have a direction for future content planning.
Reorganize Projects For Onboarding And Referencing
Maybe you’ve experienced a few moments when you wanted to reference a past project, so you click into the main folder only to find a bunch of files labeled in an unorganized fashion. It’s easy to throw files into a folder when you’re busy, think that you’ll “fix it later,” and never have a moment to get to it. Returning to organize your files and renaming them with consistent and concise labels will help you to find things when you’re truly in a hurry. If you’re working in a shared drive, your team will also have an easier time locating project files when you’re out of the office.
Looking for more ways to stay productive during slow summer months? Click here for our additional tips.