Are you a blogger? Or Are you an entrepreneur? Or are you using this lockdown to extend your business online? Whether you fall under any of the above-mentioned categories or are here just to learn, we got you covered! The magic formula to make content marketing so much easier and stress-free is here – the Content Marketing Strategy Calendar.
In this extremely digitally dependent world, the best way to expand your business is via content marketing. You work hard on the SEO content, ensuring that your content is ranked higher after the optimization but the entire task is deemed to be a herculean one which then leads to you missing great opportunities. The key reason for this is the lack of organizing and planning. For a business to be successful a long-term plan is inevitably essential. Producing content regularly and efficiently would become extremely difficult without this long term plan.
The content marketing strategy calendar helps you exactly there! Your very own fairy godmother, come specifically to fix your content marketing dilemmas!
So What Is a Content Marketing Calendar, Precisely?
Much like the name suggests, it is a calendar; but not just another calendar! It is the 21st century after all! This tool would help you in planning your strategy and executing it as well in an organized manner. Here, you can schedule the time when you want a particular piece of content to be published, where, and how you want to do so. Again, the marvel of the tool lies in the ‘content’ aspect of the same. These calendars were earlier referred to as editorial calendars which were limited to certain forms of content such as articles. They were designed in such a way that they catered to the needs of a very small digital population. And, to be honest, they were very boring as well!
The content marketing calendar, however, is designed for much more than an essay on a blog. It includes quizzes, videos, social media posts, Infographic, and much more. Content calendars feature partnerships, possible changes to pre-existing content, promotional activities, and status updates as well.
Now, if there is so much work to do, you have to be organized! This brings the inquisitive mind to our next question.
Why Do You Need a Content Marketing Strategy Calendar?
Well, because the content is king and organization is his crown! Marketing, in general, is not the easiest task, and content marketing takes the bar a little higher. To deal with these situations, a shabby to-do list that one would create every morning is a big no. Here; you would need extra organizational assistance. This calendar gives you the option of a visual, easy to understand alternative to the messy, coffee-stained to-do list. This can be shared with your team, plans can be tweaked according to your needs and you would always have back up content as well (if you want). Planning as such would allow you to be ready to grab golden opportunities at the right time. For instance, a holiday happens to fall on the 25th of the month. That would be the day many of you could woo in your audience by publishing your best content!
Also, when used well, the content marketing strategy calendar would limit the spamming of the audience as well, by making sure that you are not bombarding the user with a similar type of content. By bringing in planned diversity, you would not only attract more people to your content but also make sure that your pre-existing users are not bored away.
Moreover, this isn’t a world where a newspaper advertisement would bring in hundreds of customers. The prospective audience probably has enough and more options to choose from for whichever product or content they want. The audience is also spread across various platforms. This calendar would allow you to ace the cross-promotion game! You could space out content ranging from email content to blog posts well with the calendar. This way, you can always reach out to potential audiences while catering to the existing ones without boring them!
Isn’t this amazing?
Want more reasons as to why the content marketing strategy calendar is a must-have?
Here you go!
1) You will have a Publishing schedule
This way you can manage your content very well, tweak it to your needs and stay efficient always!
2) Guest contributions easily dealt with
Guest contributions are a great way to attract new audience members while also keeping the content production at a good pace. However, it is a tedious task as quality also needs to be achieved. Guest entries involve a lot of editing, research, promotion, etc. If planned, the quality and quantity of the same can be improved drastically!
3) Staying always on track
In this fast-paced world, there is competition in every industry. There is always a high probability that a rival may produce content before you. Irrespective of the quality of that content, attention would be diverted there first. It will leave you in a disadvantaged position. This can all be avoided by a prior allocation of content through the content calendar!
4) Introducing new marketing strategies
You can’t always go with the tried and tested methods. Trying out new ones is essential. If planned, this could be achieved most efficiently!
How to Make and Use the Content Marketing Strategy Calendar?
Using a content calendar tool is the best option depending on the workload, size of the team, and type of content you produce. There are various templates available for all of your needs.
A few examples would be Google Sheets, Excel, Coschedule, Loomy, etc.
What next?
1) Decide on your base.
You need to categorize your content. The best way to do this would be to make a list.
2) Decide on how often you want to publish
Depending on your cause, deciding this is crucial as effective outreach is our desired result.
3) Get to work!
A few tips:
- Schedule! Schedule! Schedule!
- Plan ahead, because if you don’t, your rival will definitely take the buck!
About the Author
Mary is a founder and chief editor at her digital content and SEO agency PRable.org. She is passionate about digital marketing innovations. The technologies and online businesses are her engines she loves to write about.”
