Content calendars help you simplify your month’s worth of content with a proper plan and schedule. With this, you can manage your social media marketing campaigns the right way. Now, all it takes is a content calendar for to follow the right research, planning, and scheduling for all your business content.
What is a Content Calendar?
Well, the simple answer to this is; a content calendar is a tool that allows you to plan your marketing strategy.
But it’s not something you create when you launch a business or once every year. Content calendars have to be developed every year and every month in order to stay on top of your game. With this, you can track all of your social posts, blog posts, and other content types that will grow your business.
Brainstorm ideas, come up with a killer content calendar, stick to the plan, and stay on top of your goals!
But why else should you do it?
- Calendars help you avoid surprises. You will have an acute idea of what you are going to publish in advance.
- With calendars, you can stay on track of how often and consistently you post.
- Analyzing and rethinking become easier when you have solid records of all the content you have ever posted/created.
Why is a Content Calendar Important for your Business?
A content calendar helps you plan ahead. It creates a content roadmap for your business throughout the month, making it an essential element of your marketing strategy.
The calendar helps you to get organized in multiple ways. You can plan when, where, and what to post. It also gives you enough space and time to plan for your audience.
All these make marketing easy. These simple, consistent steps can lead your business to growth without much stress.
How to Create a Content Calendar for your Business
Creating a content calendar is perhaps the most important step in your entire marketing strategy every month. The results of your campaigns depend on the strength of your creatives. To make a content calendar for your business, start with a simple spreadsheet to list everything. We can also use tools that are abundantly available these days. We prefer tools like Trello, Hootsuite, and Airtable to simplify the process.
Once your template is all set, start listing down important aspects like keywords, ideas, platform, date and time of posting, etc. Then spend some quality time in brainstorming sessions with your team to come up with more precise themes, copies, content, and designs.
Finally, your content calendars should also include your goals and objectives from all these content pieces. Remember, without goals, all your efforts go in vain.
Creating a content calendar is perhaps the most important step in your entire marketing strategy every month. The results of your campaigns depend on the strength of your creatives. To make a content calendar for your business, start with a simple spreadsheet to list everything. We can also use tools that are abundantly available these days. We prefer tools like Trello, Hootsuite, and Airtable to simplify the process.
Once your template is all set, start listing down important aspects like keywords, ideas, platform, date and time of posting, etc. Then spend some quality time in brainstorming sessions with your team to come up with more precise themes, copies, content, and designs.
Finally, your content calendars should also include your goals and objectives from all these content pieces. Remember, without goals, all your efforts go in vain.
How to Use your Content Calendar to Do the Right Research, Planning, and Scheduling
A content calendar is a great way for you to plan your posts and social media efforts. It helps you stay organized, so you don’t forget any important dates or deadlines. Calendars are not just for social media or blogs. In fact, it should be a holistic tool that consists of all the content you will be publishing across multiple channels.
For the best results, we recommend creating content calendars for every objective and time frame. We need a calendar with broader visions and goals. We can further break it down into monthly, weekly, or campaign-based calendars to make optimum use of it.
Creating calendars for your paid campaigns will improve their efficiency. When you plan each step of a campaign, the relevancy of the ad also increases. This in turn improves the performance of your campaigns bringing you closer to more potential customers and leads.
A final approved asset is a collaborative effort of a number of people. From copywriters, designers, and sales heads, everyone is involved in the process. With enough time and advanced planning, you can create content that brings together the best ideas of your strongest team members. This is possible only when you have a highly organized system that uses monthly content calendars.
How To Use an Editorial Content Calendar for Social Media Marketing
Don’t start creating a post 10 mins before you need to publish it. Instead, imagine, opening your calendar and copying the post that’s already there and pasting it on your page. Sounds simple?
Then that’s exactly what we should do! Social media platforms have preferred timings to post. Creating in a hurry might not always allow you to stick to the golden window of opportunities in social media. So always have them ready, know where you should be posting them, and stick to a proper schedule. Social Media posting plan is the way to go!
You can also use tools like Buffer to schedule your posts. This ensures that your content is published even when you are away. It is important that you post regularly but with planned intervals. Remember that the aim is not just to have a lot of content but it is more about getting engagements. When you post all your content at the end of the day, they just overlap each other bringing no value to most of your content.
Tips To Create High-Performance Content For Your Calendar (Bonus)
It is fun and refreshing to come up with creative ideas for your content calendar. While doing this one of the foremost things to keep in mind is that ‘whatever we create is in the best interest of our audience. Not ours, not the brand, but the audience’. If they can resonate with what you create, you are already halfway there.
So always think about what your audience looks forward to from you. Write stories and make designs that the audience needs from you. Talk to people who belong to your audience group to understand their views. You might be surprised at their thoughts. Creating these types of content will help them understand your brand better.
Talk about how you can serve people. Tell them why they should trust you and purchase from you. Always reflect on their benefits and stay away from content that brags. Also, try to educate them. Make them aware of the things they might be missing out on. When you genuinely try to help them with useful content, they will definitely help you out too!
A lot of people who follow you would be people interested in/working in the same industry. So make content about the updates, news, and trends that happen in your industry. People might find you just because they were looking for industry updates!
If you really put yourself into your audience’s shoes, you will come up with thousands of ideas that they would like to hear from you. Stick to those to build a trusted brand!
Content Calendars: The Easiest and Most Effective Way To Grow Your Business
We cannot stress this enough; a content marketing calendar is the foundation of your marketing strategies. You need a content calendar to keep track of all the content that you have. These can also be reused and repurposed over time. Having a well-organized calendar is like having access to a data bank. It will enhance your performance and bring you amazing results.
So if you haven’t yet started using calendars, now is the time. Or if you need some expert guidance, NestleAway is just a click away.
