Make Time for Content Calendars
Do you use a content marketing or editorial calendar as part of your everyday marketing process? If not, it might be time to add this important and effective tool into your work routine.
It’s so easy for things to fall through the cracks when you’re busy, and this device helps you avoid missing an important deadline, last minute crunch, or lapsing on one of your marketing plan goals. It is also a helpful tool for thinking through strategy and asking the “why” for any given content such as “is this helpful to meet my stated marketing objective”?
Advantages of an editorial calendar is that it can clarify:
Essentially, this is a schedule of all the content you’re going to publish weekly, monthly, quarterly or beyond, including a column for dates, campaign name, goal, budget, strategy (the why), type of content or promotional activity, assigned person(s) for writing, reviews, approval and posting, and where to publish or post. While not necessary to making a content calendar work, it can also be helpful to include a spot for a postmortem review of what worked and what didn’t for any given project, with any results information that’s available.
Basically, you want a way to review projects at a glance with team members, see where you are on the timeline, and assess if any deliverables are in jeopardy at any point in the process.
There are several techniques and programs for creating a content marketing calendars but often it is simplest in a customized spreadsheet format in Excel or Google Sheets, with key deliverables included such as reminders. If you are tech savvy you might consider a project or content management tool or platform like Trello, Airtable, or Meistertask, or apps like CoSchedule, Contently, or Loomly.
Include these types of editorial content on your calendar:
Here’s an example of a content marketing calendar for writing a blog, this could be a starting point for any kind of editorial content.
While simple in design and use, a focused content strategy requires thought and planning. Developing an effective tool now, and adopting it with your team, facilitates ongoing planning and adds efficiency to your marketing process. Thinking about 2022? Make this the year you put a great content calendar into action! Contact us today to put our experienced team to work for you.
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