As marketing methods continue to evolve, content marketing has become an essential tool. In today’s digital world, it has proven to be one of the most effective marketing methods used by businesses. However, although it’s an effective form of marketing it also takes a lot of creativity, organization, and planning. This is why content calendars should be a priority when thinking of a content strategy for your business.
You’re probably wondering what exactly a content calendar is and why would you even need it. This type of calendar plans and organizes future content. It assures that all your marketing strategies have the same end goal and are easily accessible to your team. All your ideas will be in one place and in the case that they become too broad and overwhelming, it’ll be easier to analyze strategies and execute successful content marketing campaigns.
Content calendars come in different forms and have distinct focal points. For instance, social media content calendars tend to focus in planning all the content that will be placed exclusively in social media channels. An editorial content calendar plans out specific marketing strategies within different platforms like magazines, newspapers, blogs,email newsletters, and websites. Having separate calendars is also key to keeping things in the right order and organizing ideas according to the type of outlet where your content is being published.
The next step of the process is, where do you create a content calendar? Essentially, you can create your own content calendar using Microsoft Word, Google Sheets, Excel, or any free template on the web. Google calendar can be a great resource as well. You can also create a physical calendar but I would mainly recommend this if your company is just starting and the amount of information is not excessive. The most important thing is to have everything organized in order for you and anyone in your team to grasp the entire idea of a current campaign or launch happening at the moment.
Some of the main things to include in your calendar are:
- Listed names of the social media platforms or media channels you are posting in.
- A timed schedule based on each day of the week.
- A title and brief description of the post.
- Links or images pertaining to the post.