Content is of the utmost importance for marketing professionals nowadays, but running a content strategy – more specifically a successful content marketing strategy – is harder than it looks.
Having years of experience in this area, we know that to create an effective strategy you need a sufficient amount of quality content, but also the ability to determine when to post such content and engage your target audience.
With this in mind, an editorial calendar is absolutely vital – and we know we would be lost without ours. Shafqat Islam, chief executive of content marketing software provider NewsCred, has helpfully offered four pieces of advice when it comes to editorial calendars.We’ve listed them below for your convenience: Firstly the purpose of the calendar should made clear from the start; whether the goal is to raise brand awareness or increase sales, the calendar should always reflect this, ensuring all content produced is in line with the specific goal in place. A calendar with a clearly stated business outcome as its foundation will give the content a better focus and help the brand maintain authenticity across multiple channels.
Don’t fear!
The next thing to remember is to not view an editorial calendar with fear – it is there to help and should be openly embraced by marketers. Once the calendar has been customised for the particular needs of a business it will allow for a more streamlined approach to publishing content. The calendar allows for the production and distribution of content to be managed across various digital channels, ultimately making a marketers’ job a lot easier. Since different brands have different needs, an editorial calendar may need to be broken down into several parts, each focusing on one specific content marketing tactic.The three most popular formats are: a blog editorial calendar, a premium content editorial calendar and a social editorial calendar. A blog requires the frequent publication of content that is centred on best-selling products, FAQs or customer worries and the culture of the brand. Since many blogs use a number of contributors, thus generating a wide variety of opinions, a suitable blog editorial calendar should be made available to the multiple writers and editors.
Premium content includes e-books, webinars and white papers and needs more in-depth work.
Preparing for tomorrow
An effective premium-content calendar should help track the work and the budget allocated for each specific project. Finally a social editorial calendar should help marketers devise schedules for publishing on multiple platforms and track whether the content is suitable for each site. Once all the initial organisation work has been done, the only thing left to do is manage the calendar. Marketers should be prepared to make changes as time goes by, either to the quality or quantity of the content that is being published, in case it’s too little, too much or ill-targeted; this can be done by making regular content audits.