Quick Answer to Key Question
The first step in creating a content calendar is to determine what type of content you want to plan and publish. Once you know that, it’s easy to begin mapping out specific pieces of content and scheduling them accordingly.
Why Create a Content Calendar?
Creating a content calendar is not a necessary step in the content marketing process, but it can be useful in ensuring that your content goals are being met. By creating a content calendar, you’re able to have an actionable plan of when and where to post or publish your content. This helps you stay organised and take control of the entire marketing process.
On the other hand, some may argue that the added time and effort spent developing the content calendar could be allocated elsewhere; for instance, by devoting more time to research and development of more creative pieces of content. At first glance this argument makes sense. But if you consider that having a deep understanding of your goal and audience leads to effective conversations within the pieces of work you create, then investing in (or outsourcing) making a good quality content calendar is essential for any successful marketing campaign.
Having a good quality content calendar also allows for seamless communication between teams. It’s important for everyone across disciplines to be able to easily identify when and where their piece of work needs to be sent or published. Without a content calendar, issues such as delays or incorrect website placement can occur leading to wasted resources and missed deadlines.
Now that we’ve discussed why creating a content calendar is beneficial, let’s move on to setting long-term goals with it. Knowing how best to make use of our content calendars will ensure success in meeting the larger objectives outlined from the start.
Setting Long-Term Goals with a Calendar
Coming up with long-term goals is an important element of creating a content calendar that works. A calendar should not just schedule content, but serve as a roadmap for achieving success by ensuring each post or piece of content meets specific objectives related to the overall goals. Often, these goals are based on long-term strategies such as improving organic search results or increasing brand awareness.
When deciding what to include in your long-term goals, it’s important to keep an eye on the big picture. For example, if your ultimate goal is to increase organic traffic, you’ll want to focus on optimising keyword phrases and creating content that promotes topics related to those key words. Additionally, you’ll need to take into account the frequency of changes and updates to ensure you’re consistently meeting your goals.
Creating and tracking long-term goals with a content calendar helps ensure that all stakeholders are aware of the direction being taken. This makes it easier for everyone involved to collaborate and agree on how best to move forward. Additionally, it helps keep teams motivated because they’re able to see their progress over time towards achieving the desired outcomes.
Ultimately, planning with a long-term perspective allows marketers and content creators alike to better understand where their efforts are most effective and provides useful insights into potential areas of improvement or growth. By utilising both immediate objectives as well as broader strategies when shaping a content calendar, businesses can achieve long-lasting results with every post or piece of content created.
Finally, as you explore what should be included in your content calendar, consider strategic elements such as target audience considerations and use of pertinent keywords used in titles and descriptions – both are important components when crafting effective pieces that drive maximum value from every post or piece of content created.
What Should be Included in a Content Calendar?
Now that you have set your longer-term goals with a content calendar, you need to plan out what should be included in the actual calendar. Deciding what type of content to include will depend on many factors such as what appeals to your target audience and how much new content needs to be created. There also needs to be a balance between creating quality and quantity—you want enough high-quality content so people remain engaged, but there needs to be enough of it so people don’t forget about you.
At a minimum, your content calendar should include the type of content you are creating (article, video, podcast), who is creating it (internal staff or freelancer), when it will be published or released, and where it will be posted. Your calendar can also include information such as who the post is targeting and what keywords you want to use. However, while some organisations prefer all this detail in their calendars, others may prefer to keep them more generic.
For example, if your organisation focuses more on quality over quantity of content, you may decide not to include too much detail in the calendar but instead focus only on the basics. On the other hand, if you are planning multiple posts every day across various channels such as blog posts, videos, podcasts etc., then you may find that having detailed information on each post within the calendar helps manage your entire workflow better. Ultimately it will come down to figuring out what works best for the specific goals and budget of your organisation.
In order to get the most out of your content calendar, however, it is important that you choose the right type of content for your audience. Factors such as industry trends, customer demographics and popular topics should be taken into account when deciding which type of content works best for reaching certain objectives and ultimately driving conversions. In our next section we will explore how to choose the right type of content for your audience.
Choosing the Right Type of Content for Your Audience
Choosing the right type of content for your audience is vital in creating a content calendar that works. Knowing what kind of content resonates with your target audience is essential to building successful campaigns. When selecting content for your content calendar, consider the interests and needs of the group you are targeting. What kind of information do they want? Which topics will engage or inspire them? Is there a particular format or style you should use?
It also pays to balance both brand-focused and industry-related content in your content calendar. Brand-focused pieces may include company updates, employee spotlights, product releases, and more. While industry-related pieces may include case studies, thought leadership articles, white papers, webinars/podcasts, and news coverage. Consider which types of content platforms your target audience uses most frequently as this can help inform which platform you should focus on for each type of content piece.
Furthermore, always remember to create a mix of different types of content to ensure that your plan remains engaging and dynamic over time. Infographics, videos, blog posts—all have different features you can take advantage of when planning out your content calendar.
At the same time, it’s important to be aware of what type of content may spark negative feedback from your current community as well as potential customers — and avoid using this kind of content in order to maintain good relationships and generate leads in the future.
By carefully taking into consideration the right types of content for your target audience and balancing brand-focused pieces with industry-related pieces, you can ensure to create an effective content calendar that resonates with your spectators, helping them better understand who you are and why they should choose you over another alternative. With this knowledge in mind, let’s move on to understanding how exactly a organised, well-crafted content calendar can help drive results for businesses.
How Does a Content Calendar Help?
When it comes to content creation, a content calendar is key for the success of any organisation. Not only does it help to simplify and streamline the creation of content, but it also helps you stay organised and consistently meet your audiences’ needs. With this tool, you can easily manage what type of content to create and when, allowing you to push out relevant, engaging content in a timely fashion.
Having a content calendar allows you to have an organised approach in terms of when and which type of content should be posted. You can use the calendar to identify trends that you may have missed otherwise, such as a surge in popularity or increased interest in certain topics. Monitoring your calendar also gives you insight into how users interact with your content. This gives you the opportunity to adjust your strategy as needed, depending on whether your content resonates with your audience or not.
Furthermore, being able to track what kinds of posts are being created helps teams better collaborate on projects since everyone involved will have access to the same information and goals at all times. Setting deadlines for each team member with specific tasks also ensures that everything gets completed in time since scheduling is already handled.
As seen, having a properly managed content calendar has numerous benefits that all contribute towards increasing productivity and focus in both teams and organisations alike. The next step is taking advantage of those benefits by leveraging tools that allow you to create, manage, and track your calendars with ease.
Increasing Productivity & Focus
As previously discussed, a content calendar provides numerous advantages to businesses that implement it. One of the key benefits is improved productivity and focus. This is because having a content calendar helps clear away the noise of day-to-day operations so that professionals can actively look ahead and plan accordingly. When teams have an established timeline, they can more easily identify tasks that need to be completed now and ones that can wait until later—an essential element in creating productive workflows.
Additionally, having a content calendar helps create a sense of urgency while also allowing teams the freedom to allot their time as needed. By not shying away from looming deadlines and managing their own workloads, teams become able to push themselves a little harder each day. This creates an overall sense of purpose within an organisation and serves as a powerful tool for motivation.
Finally, having an effective content calendar also helps ensure accountability throughout all groups involved in the process. This is because everyone, regardless of role or level within the company, knows what tasks are expected of them at any given time. As such, everyone remains accountable for ensuring those tasks are completed in an efficient manner.
Overall, there is no question that a well-thought-out content calendar plays a critical role in establishing healthy organisational habits and improving team productivity and focus. With the right processes in place, teams will begin benefiting from greater levels of efficiency and collaboration, setting the foundation for longer term success. Moving forward, it is important to develop a month-to-month strategy to help ensure plans remain focused on achieving organisational objectives.
Developing a Month-To-Month Content Scheduling Strategy
Now that you’ve increased your productivity and focus on producing content, it’s important to also develop a content scheduling strategy. Establishing monthly goals for your content calendar can provide an effective way to ensure you keep up with the demand of creating quality content.
When discussing this topic, there are two different perspectives—some believe in making a more detailed and specific plan while others take a more loosely structured approach.
Those who advocate for a more in-depth approach emphasise the importance of creating detailed plans ahead of time to keep their work organised and identify potential areas of improvement before they become issues. Additionally, some believe that having greater visibility over what will be published and when can help teams stay on track.
On the other hand, those who prefer a loose structure tend to emphasise being more flexible with their planning so they can adjust to changing circumstances more easily. They argue that allocating too much time to setting up a schedule can cause them to lose focus on actually creating content or relying too heavily on rigid timelines when unexpected changes come up.
At the end of the day, it falls to individual content marketers and teams to determine what works best for them when scheduling their content for maximum efficiency.
No matter which approach you decide is right for your team, utilising a month-to-month scheduling strategy can help ensure that each month is its own success story as long as you set achievable goals from the beginning. By doing so, you’ll have a better idea of how much work needs to be done ahead of time and where resources need to be allocated along the way. This will leave you better prepared as you move onto developing best practises for creating quality content.
Best Practises for Creating Quality Content
Switching gears from developing a content scheduling strategy to creating quality content, there are several best practises for content creation and distribution to consider. It is important to keep in mind how the content is distributed, if it is timely, and how engaging it is. Whether the content is created in-house or outsourced, a few key considerations should be taken into account when creating quality content.
First, consider the type of content that best resonates with the brand’s target audience. Content can come in many forms like blogs, videos, or social media campaigns. Understanding what type of content appeals to the target audience and draws them in helps determine what content to produce and when. Researching the competitors can help create buzzworthy topics that address current trends or difficulties.
Second, ensure that data points support any claims made throughout the content ahead of time. Quality thought-leadership articles or blog posts strive to inform readers and provide valuable advice. Reading any available research or competitor data prior to writing offers an advantage when constructing arguments within the text. Quoting influential people or case studies supports statements made in the article.
Third, use checklists each time you create new content even if it is similar to past pieces of work. This ensures accuracy and consistency regardless of who creates the final version because everyone follows the same template. Follow structural pieces from other known successful authors as a guide for where to start building out sections of each article. These tools offer direction for format to use so that ideas are translated into organised messages for readers established during editing phases without losing original purpose determined during creation stage.
Finally, every piece of content should have a call-to-action (CTA). A CTA encourages readers to take an actionable step towards either further engagement with your brand by signing up for an email list subscription or buying a product online that solves their issue addressed in article they just read. CTAs drive conversions because they cultivate relationships between reader and brand over time by making sure each piece of content serves a purpose beyond informing readers about new developments in industry space but also inspire them to do something more than just read about it after talking about related topics throughout article body itself.
