You’ve got on your phone. You use the version of your Work Email to keep your meetings in order. You could have a physical copy stashed in your wallet, briefcase or purse. Your refrigerator may have a version of a dry erase board. It can be completely barren of description or lined to the max. Others may have photos of adorable puppies, scenes of a tropical paradise or inspirational quotations.
Calendars are an awesome organizational resource which helps us to understand our responsibilities and events. They can take all types, such as large wall calendars with just the month and date to a comprehensive book that breaks down the day into intervals of half an hour. For any lifestyle need and artistic preference, there is a template.
The same is true with content marketing departments on content. You have the web creators, social media strategists, photographers, graphic designers, photo producers, project managers and project directors all working with various companies with varying schedules for a number of projects at the same time. Also, one is needed for internal marketing efforts. Having multiple content schedules for various projects isn’t unusual. You can also merge these into one calendar summary.
The content calendar’s key purpose is to help teams clarify project obligations and responsibility, stick to schedules and predict their workload in the days to come while still allowing them to strategise.
Now that you have a better idea of why you need a content calendar, it’s time to learn what needs benefits can you avail and what needs to be included in it.
It has a Great Return on Investment
Marketing content is not a low-cost operation but has a strong ROI. It is expensive to produce high-quality content on a daily basis because it takes a lot of time and resources but it is the best investment you can make for your company. Effective content is deemed an “asset” for an online company and can produce income from more direct clicks, client mentions and interaction with social media.
Research demonstrates that, in terms of percentages, businesses that conduct digital marketing strategies receive more traffic and lead compared to companies that do not have a structured advertising plan.
- Up to 55 per cent rise in site visits
- 434 per cent more search engine indexed results
- 97% Plus Backlinks
- They are having 5X more leads on average thanks to web marketing
Creative Goals Include Sustainable Resources
Content marketing is a business undertaking. In terms of big-picture priorities and small-scale pivots, assumptions on content and its production exist, which may get overwhelming. Getting an editorial calendar is a place where you can display your entire content marketing plan in a panoramic way.
Reasonable Balance Makes Strategic Goals
It’s easy to lose concentration in the often scattershot world of social media and digital marketing, particularly when you don’t have a big, committed staff. Focus is the biggest problem for many charities when it comes to digital media, but the emphasis is also half the fight when it comes to achieving targets. There’s something important going on as you put down your plan: it’s being real to others, and something to draw on as the proposal arrives.
Plan and Arrange Meetings, Dates and Releases Around the Main
Did you ever have a slip up on you? we were there before, and we kinda wished we had written it down on a calendar in the mad rush to produce content for that event. If you schedule your content well ahead of time, you will arrange and coordinate around the main dates that could affect your content.
Ensure you have plenty of time to schedule Material for publication
Our guilty pleasure is to focus on blog posts now. (don’t know why we like to feel bad about it.) Calendars let our team see what’s going to happen and where we can invest time within the calendar and get on with it.
Generally speaking, the further you plan to publish your digital content, the better you will be able to produce a consistent flow of content that builds the perceived expertise of your brand in your chosen areas.
How to Start on a Calendar
Of course, how you plan, distribute and view your editorial calendar essentially depends on the unique marketing objectives and the tools available. Yet at the most basic level, I suggest you include the following areas in your editorial calendar:
- The date the piece of content will be published
- The topic or headline of the content piece
- The author of the content
- The owner of the content – i.e., who is in charge of making sure the content makes it from ideation to publication and promotion
- The current status of the content (updated as it moves through your publishing cycle)
Based on the unique priorities of the company, the structure of the marketing staff, the technologies and channels you want to work in, and the amount of content you are making, you will even choose to chart those elements that help you remain coordinated and manage long-term:
Platforms
These can either include your own platforms (e.g. your profile, Facebook account, twitter, YouTube page, email updates, etc.) so you can also extend your monitoring to include paying and receiving channels.
Formats of content
Is it a blog post? Any video? A podcast? An infographic on that? One original picture? To get more mileage from the material you’re making, you may want to try repurposing it to other platforms at some point, so keeping track on the kinds of materials you have right from the start is useful.
Visuals
When thinking about properties, it ‘s crucial that you don’t forget the value that visuals will offer your content, both in terms of social media opportunities and brand exposure overall. Tracking the graphic elements that you use in your efforts on content-such as cover photos, labels, diagrams, graphics-will make it easy to make sure your work has a distinctive look and a consistent brand identity.
Topic categories
This helps make the schedules more searchable when you’re trying to see which target subjects you’ve already created a lot of content for-or which you haven’t covered yet.
Keywords
And other meta-data, such as meta-descriptions and SEO names (if different from your headlines), that will help you keep your SEO activities synchronized with your content development.
URLs
This information can be indexed as a simple way to track your web content audits or connect to older content items in the latest content you make.
Calls for action
It lets you ensure that any piece of content that you produce aligns with the strategic priorities of the company.
Wrapping Up
A lot of preparation and effort — and even months of planning — is going into creating a calendar for content. It’s no longer as straightforward as saying, “We ‘re going to publish a blog every Tuesday.” The strategies that work for your company may not work for others as well. Perhaps you have just the tools to build a month-by-month calendar. You could have a big organization of various brick-and-mortar shops, and you need to prepare a year in advance and make sure everybody has the best supplies on time.
If you don’t have a calendar for content yet, now is the moment. Good content is vital to the success of your business to try and manage it with a whim.
