When you are running a website and posting content regularly for your customers, then you will need a content calendar. Managing several tasks at the same time is a tough job and when it comes to creating successful marketing campaigns, timing plays a huge role. We recommend you create a well-designed content marketing calendar so that you can plan out when to post what. However, if you are not sure what content calendars do and how to create one, then you should keep reading this post.
Understanding Content Calendar And Its Benefits
What are Content Marketing Calendars?
Content marketing calendars are used by marketers so that they can plan out when they are going to post about something on social media or the website. In a content marketing calendar, you can set up your preferred date for posting any kind of content. It is usually a simple one that comes in a diary or notebook. But there is also a cloud-based calendar that delivers maximum scalability.
Content marketing calendars are also known as editorial calendars. It is a schedule or planner where you can write about the pieces that you are going to publish, your status updates, the promotional activities that you have planned, the partnership that you have planned, and if you have planned any updates to add on your old content. There are various reasons why a content marketing calendar can help you improve your online business operations.
Why Should You Use a Content Marketing Calendar?
There are multiple advantages of operating a content marketing calendar. They revolutionize your content marketing process. But there are some other points that you need to remember as well.
1. They Help You Organize Activities
Randomly writing ideas and following them might demotivate you in continuing the project further. Moreover, they also reduce productivity because of disorganization. But when you have a content calendar, it will help you organize every activity you want to perform in a week or day. It also helps you find gaps and provides you insights into how you are going to complete a project. Therefore, you can meet deadlines and produce quality content at the same time.
2. Helps You Brainstorm
When you are organizing your content and the team you are working with or have an idea of the work, you stress less about it. Instead, you think about new ideas and brainstorm new activities that help you keep a project going. Many content calendars provide you with an idea feature where you can write any content ideas that come to your mind. You can also add notes about those thoughts and communicate them with your crew.
3. Helps You Stay Consistent with Your Efforts
The biggest problem in content marketing is inconsistency. Consistency is essential in content marketing because, without it, you won’t be able to keep your audience engaged. In content marketing, you will have to constantly deliver entertaining content to keep your readers around. Your irregular posting and not being able to meet your readers’ needs won’t boost your audience further. But a content marketing calendar can help you to stay on schedule and execute the task that you have planned.
4. Keeps Your Audience Engaged
When you are organizing your content ideas in a content calendar, you can easily see what topics you have already posted about. So it removes duplicate content but also helps you create new ideas on the theme or project that you are working on. You don’t have to pick out random topics since you already know what to compose. It helps boost audience engagement.
5. Keeps You Timely
Content marketing calendars also help you keep track of holidays, your personal special times of the year, and special events that might play a big role for your business and audience. Content marketing is mostly about following trends so you won’t miss out on any special day with a calendar. You can leverage those events and post timely content to your potential customers. It also improves your brand’s credibility.
6. Helps Boost Team Productivity
If you have a large team then collaborating with each other can be a complex task. When you are utilizing a content calendar, the process will be easier. A content calendar allows you to keep track of the resources and share them with your team so that everyone can be on the same page. Every employee of your organization such as marketers, product managers, sales, content writers, etc. will have clear visibility into your team’s project. Therefore, it helps boost productivity as well as improve your company’s manager-employee dynamics.
7. Enables You to Plan Your Social Media Marketing Better
Only planning out your content marketing is not enough. You will also have to determine when you are proceeding to broadcast on your social media. With a content calendar, you can remind your team when and what to post on your social channels. It also allows consistency and efficiency. There is a content automation feature available in most content calendars. That feature helps you save time by scheduling your posts. For example, if you want to post something on your social channels on Friday every week, then you can schedule that post on the calendar and it will be automatically posted. It helps you keep a presence in your social media accounts and helps you interact with your followers more effectively.
8. Helps You Track Performance
Simply putting effort into your content marketing is not enough. You will have to keep track of the efforts that you are making and whether or not they are delivering enough effectiveness. Content marketing calendars also deliver reporting on production and give you insights into how you can plan out your content marketing to make it more effective.
Any general content marketing calendar will avail you of these benefits. However, when you are choosing one, there is something that you have to consider.
What Must You Search for in a Content Marketing Calendar?
When you are searching for a content marketing calendar, you will have to find out the essential features. Here we are helping you out on this.
1. Cloud-based
When you have cloud-based technology on your content marketing calendar, you can do most of the work online. You can share the calendar with your team members and they will also be able to actively participate in the project. Moreover, cloud-based technology also enables remote working and streamlined operations.
2. Should Have Multiple User Profiles
If there are not multiple user account creations on your calendar, then it won’t be much of a use. A content marketing calendar with multiple user profiles will help you manage tasks easily and you will also be able to maintain your team’s productivity.
3. Filters and Visualization
Content marketing calendars can also become disorganized if you have a lot of team members to manage at the same time. That’s why the filtration and visualization options will help you organize the projects by type, deadline, team member, etc.
If you want all these features on your best content marketing calendar then you can also create one for your benefit.
How to Create a Social Media Marketing Calendar?
Here are some of the steps that you can follow if you want to create an efficient content marketing planner for your social media posts.
1. Audit Your Social Networks
Before creating a content calendar for your social media platforms, you will have to keep all your social media accounts in mind. Keep an updated record of all these points in a journal or audit template:
- How many fake accounts and outdated profiles do you have?
- The passwords of your accounts and what security measures you follow.
- What are the goals and KPIs for each of your social accounts based on different platforms?
- Sort out your audiences and their personalities as well as demographics.
- Your most successful posts and marketing campaigns.
- How do you measure the metrics for your posts to understand which ones are performing better?
2. Choose Your Social Platforms and Content Combo
Decide which social media platforms you want to publish your content and what kind of content you want to publish. Create a special mix of all kinds of content including infographics, memes, blog posts, video content, etc.
3. Put Resources on the Calendar
Create a table on your social media calendar and input details such as a platform, date, time zone, copy, visuals, URLs, URLs of the published posts, etc. All these resources will help you keep track of your content.
4. Invite Your Team to Collaborate
Creating a content marketing calendar will make it easy for you to invite your team members to collaborate on the projects. They can easily track, edit, and review all the resources you have entered on your social media planner.
Conclusion
Before working with a content marketing calendar, you will have to understand the basic elements that it comes with. First of all, there is an editorial section where you will put all the content that you are willing to publish. Then there is a platform section where you can choose the tools where your content calendar will be hosted. The majority of the time, it is Google Sheets. And then there is a promotional section that allows you to determine the social channels where you can promote your content. Using a content marketing calendar is easy if you can brainstorm your content marketing ideas easily. Please note that you can use a content calendar for different tasks such as content updates, content audits, and promoting your work. If you require any assistance with using any content calendar, feel open to asking us.
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Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
