Scrapped my editorial calendar after a post got zero traction for the 4th time

Used to plan my quarterly content out to the day, topics all mapped out three months ahead. Hit publish on a deep dive about industry trends and got three clicks total, meanwhile a random tweet from my contractor account got 200 retweets. That was 6 months ago, and now I just write about whatever actually happened on a job site that week. What's your method for deciding what to write, do you plan it out or just go with what's fresh?

3 comments

3 Comments

haydenbutler1mo ago

The exact same thing happened to me. Spent a whole weekend polishing a piece about building material pricing trends, got maybe 15 views. Next day I posted a blurry photo of a plumbing disaster I fixed that morning and it blew up. Now I just walk around job sites with my phone, snap whatever looks interesting or annoying that day, and write the story behind it. Planning ahead just doesnt work for me anymore, its all about whatever is literally right in front of me that week.

rubyschmidt1mo ago

Gotta push back a little on the "planning ahead just doesn't work" part. The planning ahead is what gave you the skills to fix that plumbing disaster and spot what's interesting on a job site in the first place. I see this a lot with folks on my route who swap to the "whatever is right in front of me" method and then wonder why their work gets shallow after a few months. Keep snapping the blurry photos for sure, but don't toss the planning entirely. You might just need to plan for the spontaneous stuff rather than planning specific posts weeks out.

lopez.karen1mo ago

Snapped a blurry photo of a wire nest I found in a ceiling last month. Posted it at 10pm with no caption just the word "why." Got 400 shares before breakfast. Meanwhile spent two weeks on a code compliance guide that got 8 likes. @haydenbutler you're right, the random stuff hits different. My fancy planned content ended up feeling like homework. The job site chaos is what people actually want to see.