Once you’ve decided on a strategy (which if you recall from my last article, is your business goals in alignment with the type of content best suited for yielding those results), you now need a plan to follow. When you have a plan, it’s easier to keep organized, focus on deadlines, and be more productive, which will lead to yielding more prospects and sales.
An Executable Plan Is Your Marketing Backbone.
So from a marketing perspective, what does a “plan” look like when it comes to creating a strong foundation for all of your content marketing efforts? Simple, a content calendar.
A standard content marketing calendar includes every marketing channel that you plan to leverage for your business, along with correlating campaign initiatives, content types, content KPIs, post dates, and deadlines.
The purpose of a content calendar is to provide you with a strategy, plan, and schedule for your organized content and any other offline marketing projects, like in-person events. It’s a comprehensive representation of your digital marketing efforts.
Most content calendars are created quarterly. This allows for your business to have a core theme/goal for the content being presented. There are 4 quarters in the year, so you could technically assign a content goal for each quarter if see fit.
What’s the standard format?
The format is typically some type of sheet—whether it’s Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Depending on how you and your team prefer to digest content, your content calendar can be in the form of an actual calendar for the month (design wise), where each day is a square block that has the associated content or you can do a traditional sheet with rows for each day and columns with the associated content. We personally recommend the calendar design format. We’ve find it easier to digest and follow. This is the format that we use for all of our clients and we also include a color-coded key.
What should be included?
Each calendar should include the marketing channel (specific social media channel, Email Marketing, and digital ads), the content type (video, email, blog, or image), the associated campaign/content goal (brand awareness, customer retention, sales, lead generation, or engagement), Content KPIs (key performance indicators like numerical goals for website traffic, total online audience, email subscriptions, online form completions, etc), and a task list with deadlines.
Get super detailed with your description in your columns, especially if you have someone else who would be in charge of executing what’s outlined in the calendar, like creating and scheduling the social post or building out the promotional email. Some detailed column names are “image file name”, “post copy”, “CTA URL”, etc.
There you have it—the key elements to crafting a solid content calendar.
If you are interested in taking control of your content marketing engine and getting your time back, please feel free to schedule a free consultation here.