A content calendar helps to structure your marketing plan, enhance efficiency, and conserve time. This also applies to you if you either operate alone or as a member of a huge marketing team.
However, how can you establish a content calendar for your blog and guarantee that content keeps flowing like water falling from a waterfall?
Don’t worry, I’m here to assist you. In this article, I’ll show you how to create an insanely effective content calendar for your site.
Let’s begin.
What is a Content Calendar?
A content calendar is also known as a “content plan” or an “editorial calendar”. It is a process where you organize and plan all your upcoming blog content.
A content calendar can be created in a variety of ways. A social media content calendar, for example, is a schedule where you have the content you plan to share on the social media platforms where you’re active. This also applies if it is a content calendar for a blog.
This implies that you build an authoritative resource that your marketing clients or marketing team can readily reach. It doesn’t matter if you’re a freelancer or a webmaster.
A content calendar, in essence, will include all of the future articles you wish to publish. It will also include scheduled marketing events, status updates, updates to existing content, and collaborations.
Depending on your marketing goals, a content calendar can be created on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
It’s the secret sauce that may help you and your company prepare a year’s worth of content in just one day.
Regardless of which method you use, a content calendar allows you to keep track of any content that is being created and published ahead of schedule.
You can stay organized, concentrate on your deadlines, and be more resourceful all year long if you build a prioritized list of blog post ideas in one calendar.
Depending on the niche, content calendars might cover a wide range of topics. This includes the following:
- Publishing videos
- Upcoming articles
- Infographics
- Planned promotional events
- E-books
- Updating old content
- Social media updates
- Status updates
- Case studies
- Industry news and announcements
- Crucial dates in your field, as well as seasonal events
Importance of Content Calendar
Wouldn’t it be amazing to own a blog that runs like an object falling under the influence of gravity?
There would have to be a structure, a plan, and a procedure in place from start to finish, with no hitches or obstacles down the route, for such to materialize.
Once that is achieved, everything will fall into shape, and then, you will be able to concentrate on building your site.
With the help of a content calendar, you can accomplish all of this and more. Let’s take a look at how a content calendar might assist you in growing your blog.
1. It helps you save time
The biggest benefit of using a content calendar is that it saves you time and effort in the longer term. The time saved could then be better spent on your promotional strategies and other creative aspects that will help to better improve your blog.
2. It lowers the number of errors
A content schedule that is followed on a regular basis decreases the chances of you or your writing team making mistakes. Consider the error of sharing the same content on various media outlets.
You can guarantee that all critical workflow operations run well by planning for the future and clearly delegating responsibilities among team members.
This is especially crucial in larger groups where tasks like proofreading and fact-checking are probably going to be split among members. Skipping this procedure could result in costly errors.
3. It is helpful to have a well-balanced blog
It gives a quick overview of what you’ll be writing about.
It’s a significant achievement to be able to plan out a month’s worth of website content in advance.
You can foresee what you’ll write about for the month by using a content calendar. It can assist you to spot any gaps in your material that you aren’t filling, as well as the micro topics you are focused on too much in a particular month.
If you’re a travel blogger, for example, you may see that you have seven trip destination posts but only three money-saving posts. You can easily balance your blog’s articles for the month by glancing at your content calendar.
4. It allows for teamwork
Content calendars make it possible to collaborate effectively, be it in-house or freelance. Since content calendars can be easily accessed by all team members, everyone can see the progress of each post without needing to contact each person individually.
See Also: 17 Best Social Media Management Tools For Your Business Growth
5. Prevents content publishing dormancy
There’s a thing regarding putting your plan down that makes it easier to keep to it. The same may be said for your blogging objectives.
It’s an amazing motivation to plan out your content and then give dates to each of your blog articles. It encourages you to take action and allows you to track your progress as the weeks pass.
When you understand what you’ll be working on, there’s also much less guesswork involved. No more scouring AnswerThePublic at 2 a.m. for a new blog post inspiration.
Regular posting has been found to be one of the most effective ways to promote engagement and develop true relationships with your target audience.
6. It aids in the identification of areas for improvement
A content calendar can be a useful tool for split testing, allowing you to try out different types of material and posting times to evaluate what works and what doesn’t.
7. It allows you to stay organized
If you have blog ideas strewn across post-it notes, CoSchedule, Google docs, notebooks, Trello, and Evernote, raise your hand. Don’t be shy!
Even from the old-fashioned way of paper and a pen to the digital form, if you scribble your blog article ideas all around the place, you won’t be able to locate, sort, or use them.
And don’t expect to get by just using your daily calendar or planner. Adding your blog content schedule to a calendar that already has your appointments, birthday reminders, your children’s activities, your spouse or partner’s schedule, and other items won’t work very well.
Use a dedicated blog content calendar rather than spreading your blog post ideas or even using one calendar for your daily life and blog.
It will help you stay organized because you will have everything you need to write a blog article in one location. In your content calendar, you’ll be able to organize and track your deadlines, topics, images, and any extras like milestones and backlinks.
8. It has the potential to increase creativity
A content calendar can help to free up time for more creative pursuits. This could entail coming up with new ideas to improve your social media strategy, engaging with influencers in your niche, or devoting more effort to creating high-quality content.
How To Create Content Calendar For Your Blog
The strategies outlined below will assist you to develop a flawless content calendar. These strategies will help you work effortlessly and eventually achieve the success you desire.
1. Define your objectives
Begin by asking yourself, “What is the main goal of this piece of content?” before creating new content. You can proceed to use the response to this question to determine the appropriate channel and format.
Is the content intended to generate new leads, redirect readers to a website, increase visibility, or potentially increase the number of people who follow you on Social media?
The goals you set have a significant impact on whom you publish information to, where you post it, and how frequently you publish it. As a result, it’s critical that your team understands your objectives both before, during, and after the planning phase.
The first step in developing a content schedule should be to define your goals. Pushing out material without a defined aim won’t help your business. It’ll only lead to you wasting your money. The employee working on each project or calendar content should have a clear understanding of the desired outcomes.
2. Create post types and categories for your site
What five to seven key categories would you choose if you had to categorize all of the content on your blog?
If you run a service-based company, your categories will almost always revolve around the services you provide. As far as this blog is concerned, the primary topics are traffic, SEO, blogging, marketing, and WordPress.
If you sell things, the majority of your blog posts will be on your buyer personas and the concerns your products address.
I assume that if you’re reading this, you’ve already figured out your entire publishing process. Take your time to decide what kinds of posts you’d like to create and what format do you use for your content.
Here are several instances…
- Instructional
- List posts (Listicles)
- Reviews and promotions
- Content culled from other websites
- Company & product updates
- Photos
- Videos
- Slide decks
It’s important to vary your material to keep your publishing platforms fresh and exciting for your audience.
Listicles are extremely popular. They are also great because they’re not difficult to make. Planning list posts somewhere between more time-consuming content helps to distribute the workload and improve consistency in publication.
3. Pick a publishing schedule that works for you
When it comes to publishing content, how regularly should you do it?
This is a common question I hear, and my response is always the same: how regularly can you publish fresh content?
Pick a frequency at which you can produce high-quality content on a regular basis. This is a game of consistency rather than quantity.
Consistent publication aids in the development of both Google and audience trustworthiness.
Once you’ve determined how frequently you’ll publish, mark the dates on your publishing calendar for the following 6 months or a year from now.
This allows you to plan ahead of time for seasonal content and promotions.
4. Do your keyword research
The very first action you should do is conduct research before producing a blog post that converts, before deciding on a content plan, and certainly before beginning to write.
Moreover, you can’t analyze data unless you have it! Make sure your research is thorough as well.
The more competitors you can research and keyword categories you can look at utilizing Ahref, Semrush, and Google’s keyword tool or whichever research software you like, the better.
See Also: A Guide to Effective Competitor Research: Understand and Outsmart Your Competitors
5. Based on your study, choose appropriate keywords
It’s time to filter down your list by picking the most appropriate keywords and phrases once you’ve studied keywords and topic ideas.
Over the years, you’ll utilize these to develop ideas and optimize your content. You are to build your content calendar around this keyword data.
After you’ve generated your keyword data, go over your findings and choose the words that make perfect sense for your company and target market.
6. Format your keyword data spreadsheet
Open your spreadsheet after you’ve downloaded your keywords. You’ll notice a few columns that aren’t important to the process. We recommend that you format your spreadsheet in such a way that examining the data is as quick as feasible. It’s necessary to get rid of whatever you don’t require.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to data organization. Concentrate on which sections are most important to your team so you can organize your spreadsheet in an easy-to-understand manner.
7. Establish a publishing schedule
You must choose a content publishing timetable that you can keep to after completing keyword analysis and before creating your content calendar. When it relates to content marketing, consistency is the secret to success.
Try to publish one or two blog articles per week at the very least. The sweet spot for publication periodicity in terms of traffic and conversions, according to available research, is two to four times per week.
Of course, this will be determined by the size, goals, and industry of your company. As a general rule, the more frequently you post on your website, the more visitors and conversions you’ll obtain.
Your resources will determine the volume of your production, so pick a posting frequency that you can maintain over time to see great outcomes. Establish deadlines for each phase of the blogging process, including the first draft, layout, copyediting, and publication date.
Make time to update earlier blog posts so that they remain relevant. Keep in mind that blog post viewership compounds, which means it grows dramatically over time.
Establishing a clear structure can assist you in bringing your entire staff up to speed on what is happening. Your team will be able to work ahead of schedule if you have a clear plan in place.
8. Create a template for the calendar
On the internet, there are a plethora of applications that provide calendar functionality; feel free to choose whichever style you prefer. However, because learning a new piece of software might take time, your content schedule can be as simple as a spreadsheet.
If you’re planning content with the entire organization, the content calendar should contain a share option. You may make a calendar template, for example, with the free Google Sheets tool, which enables everybody involved in the content creation process to update the sheet on their own computer and submit comments, feedback, and ideas if need be.
Your content calendar can be customized to meet the needs of your team, but it should include some essential information such as:
- The medium to publish the content
- Date and time of publication
- The topic of the blog post
- A feedback system to indicate if the content has been published as scheduled
- The content type
- The content writer handling the content
9. Start writing your content
You must understand how to write a successful blog post. You can have fantastic pitches, amazing keywords, insanely strong headlines, and a brilliant content strategy, but none of it will matter if you don’t transform all of that effort into the content.
It’s also not enough to write a couple of excellent pieces of content; the more content you can produce, the better. Simply make sure you’re not sacrificing quality for quantity’s sake.
See Also: Complete Copywriting Guide: How to Craft Copy That Sells
10. Re-evaluate and revise your strategy
There is no precise answer to how far ahead of time you should plan your material. Planning ahead is influenced by a variety of factors, including the variability of your industry and even certain characteristics unique to your organization.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that the farther ahead of time you organize your topic, the better the content flow will be. A simple rule of thumb is to prepare the primary content for the entire year first, then plan weekly and daily material for the following month in greater detail.
Individuals should be able to communicate their ideas and make changes to their plans as needed. It can be a good idea to discuss the content calendar with the entire team on a frequent basis. This will assist you in staying on track and adapting to potential changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. What characteristics distinguish an excellent content calendar?
It varies, as it does with everything in marketing.
Since no two people or businesses are alike, what works for me may not work as well for you. The most significant thing to remember is that creating a content calendar does not have to be difficult. After all, the purpose of a content calendar is to make life simple for you and your team, not harder.
If you’re just getting started, a simple Google Sheet is a good place to start. However, the following are the main items that I believe you should include in your content calendar:
- Title of a blog post
- The keyword that you want to target
- Post status (is it in draft or published)
- The deadline for the content to be published
- Traffic potential (this is optional)
- Ranking potential (this is optional)
Prioritize your material based on how much of an influence it can have on your revenue. Your content calendar should be based on a combination of a piece of content’s ranking potential, traffic potential, and opportunity gap.
2. How often should a content calendar be updated?
A decent calendar-making procedure should incorporate a variety of timeframes. The main procedure to follow is as follows:
- Begin with an annual assessment
- Start gathering ideas
- Incorporate the information into monthly calendars
The goal of the procedure is to think about the larger picture when it comes to the material you generate and share. It’s more like getting a bird’s eye view of the entire process, and that’s exactly what it does.
You can ensure that all content is better put together by looking at the big picture and choosing topics for a complete year ahead of time.
See Also: How to Overcome Writer’s Block-13 Tricks That Actually Work
Conclusion
A content calendar may help you be more productive and efficient with your time, whether you’re arranging a marketing strategy for yourself or as part of a large marketing team.
For both small and large businesses, being more structured and coordinated is beneficial.
A content calendar might assist you in managing your time and keeping up with your blog. It accomplishes this by cutting down the publishing process into easy-to-follow steps.
You can use a simple excel sheet to plan your content calendar for a simplified version which you can even use offline.
Blogamigo is an online resource that offers the most effective ways to grow your blogging business. Thanks for reading.