Content is the way your business or organization communicates and drives engagement with your customers. Content on websites, blogs, social media, printing and email marketing needs to be fresh and updated regularly, just like kitty litter. Stale content like old kitty litter will drive people and search engines away causing your business, and your website ranking, to suffer. In most small businesses content is the responsibility the owner or a busy marketing person. Both probably have better things to do.

So just what is an adequate schedule to keep your content fresh? Here are some guidelines.

Website

Update your website as new things happen to your company. Search engines look for new content on websites and rank them accordingly. Old sites that have irrelevant data like one launched in 2004 that have never been changed won’t place high up on a search list. Even if your site is stagnant for shorter periods, your ranking can be affected. If your business doesn’t have a lot of changes, add resources and continue to update them at least monthly.

Twitter

Daily tweets or more keep your twitter feed alive and your followers following. One way to keep the flow going when you are busy is to use services like TweetDeck, which allow you to write tweets when you can and schedule their release when you would like.

Facebook

You should consider posting as frequently as once a day if you have a retail oriented business with an engaged fan base. However, for most other businesses, a weekly update is good enough.

Email Marketing

Email is the most intrusive form of marketing listed here because you invade your customers’ inboxes, which is their personal space. The frequency of your emails should respect that and you should only email as often as your customers what to hear from you. How often is that? Poll them and ask or offer multiple subscription options to your emails. A basic rule of thumb is that if you offer deals and discounts email once a day to once a week depending on how many deals you offer. If you email informational content like newsletters then once a month or even once a quarter is good. No matter how often you decide to send email, consistency is very important.

Direct Mail

While this is also intrusive, direct mail isn’t as intrusive as email. Your customer can elect to put your mail piece aside and look at when they have time. No one ever really does that with email. Again, like email marketing, consistency is very important with direct mail.

Collateral Marketing

These are your brochures, flyers, and other printed material. Just like your website, they should be updated when you have something new to add or have introduced a new product or service. If your product line is fairly stable, make sure the design of your marketing materials is fresh and up to date. Every few years evaluate them to see if your image is starting to look dated. Using a professional graphic designer to update your printing is money well spent because this is how you present and define your brand.

Hopefully the above will help you decide how often you need to update your content. Keep in mind that the quality of your content is even more important than frequency. If you are going to add something, make sure it is something valuable and well written. Just like kitty litter, no one wants to have anything to do with content when it when it stinks.