How to build a content calendar
When you want to be effective with your content marketing efforts, it’s important to develop a content calendar. A content calendar will help you plan the content you’ll need to create. It will help you publish your content at the right time, in order to promote the events, products, services and information that your audience needs.
The goal of creating a content calendar is to ensure that you, as well as those you work with, can all be on the same page when it comes to creating content for your business. This can include content for your blogs, social media accounts, and more. Also, all content needs to be combined to get the marketing results you want.
Identify the topics you need to cover
Before you start creating a calendar, you need to know what kind of topics it should cover. It is important to identify a specific niche and then work from there.
Know who your audience is
Understanding your audience is one of the most important things you can do. This will help you with content creation, because you will know what your audience needs to know about your niche to decide to buy from you.
Determine what you already have in terms of content
Check the inventory you already have for content. Update anything that needs to be updated, and practice good internal linking to draw attention to other content for your audience.
Make a list of the products and services you want to promote
What are the products and services you want to promote right now? From that list, you should be able to create at least five to ten pieces of content for each product or service.
Know the purpose of each piece of content
When you create any piece of content, you need to know what the end point is. Is it to get newsletter subscribers? Is it to make a sale? Is it to educate before launching the product or service?
Be aware of launch dates for new products, events, or services
Inside the calendar, write down the launch dates of any new products or services you plan to promote. This will allow you to work backwards through the calendar to deliver content at the right time.
Make a spreadsheet with logical headers
You’ll want your spreadsheet to make sense and include logical headings like article title, assigned to, draft due date, goal, promotion, keywords, CTA, etc. Leave a space for anything you want to track, including social media, etc.
track everything
Within your spreadsheet, leave a space to track the results of your content marketing efforts. What you track will be what succeeds.