Content creation and social media are two of the most common words in the field of Digital Marketing. With the progressing times, the need for growth online for a brand, business, or even an individual has become crucial. Another thing to keep in mind with creating the content is the time as well. This is where a content calendar comes in. A strategy for social media (content calendar) should be made to ensure timely posting of everything to create the most engagement. Furthermore, it ensures the inflow of traffic as well. The creation of a content calendar proves to be a very beneficial step towards the growth of a business.

Content Calendar

Now, the question comes: What is a content calendar?

A Content Calendar is an organizing mechanism to plan and organize future content. The traditional content calendar contains a list of upcoming content, publication dates, titles, focus keywords, status updates, and other important elements. These elements differ among the businesses and available resources. It is popularly known as an editorial calendar.

Social Media Strategy

While we are on the subject of a content calendar, let us also know about social media strategies.

A social media strategy refers to a document outlining your social media goals, the tactics you will use to complete them, and, therefore, the metrics you will track to look at your work.

Your social media strategy should also list all of your existing and planned social media accounts alongside the goals specific to every platform you are active on. These goals should align together with your business’s larger digital marketing strategy.

Aspects of a Content Calendar

Listed below are the various aspects of a content calendar:

1. Ideas For The Future- Creative ideas can strike you anytime, while driving to the office, taking a shower, or playing a game. But, you would like to note them down somewhere to use them to create future content. So, you should include random topics or ideas in your calendar and schedule them later on.
2. Editorial- Your calendar should include pieces that you decide to publish, and they should be scheduled beforehand. This way, you’ll keep checking your schedule, stick with it, and know what you would like to try next. Furthermore, do keep some room for flexibility as digital marketing trends change very quickly.
3. Promotional Activities- This covers how you wish to market different content pieces and where. Like, will you do a podcast on a successful case study soon? If you’re listing promotional activities within the same calendar, use a unique color to make them easy to identify.
4. Platform- This refers to the place where you have your content calendar. You can either use an easy Google spreadsheet or a complicated tool. You can even take the traditional pen-paper route. However, when tons of individuals perform on different content pieces, they will want one place where everything is visible. In which case, a spreadsheet helps. 

In this article today, we have listed out the various steps you should know about planning and organizing a content calendar.

Step 1- Decide On The Type Of Content

Your content team should have multiple professionals, like graphic designers, editors, writers, and distribution specialists. Look at what proportion of content they will work on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis without compromising the quality. Aside from these content creators and distributors, you want to have some subject-matter experts. Although they typically are not directly involved in the content creation process, they offer valuable insights on a good range of topics.

Step 2- Compare Marketing Strategies with Business Goals

The content calendar should align with your business goals, which suggests that it should cover topics and concepts that will get you what you would like. For instance, you will fulfill the aim of ranking higher on Google’s search results with the proper content pieces in your calendar. Furthermore, you will create and publish high-quality, informative, and interesting articles and blogs on your site with appropriate keywords so that search engines find them relevant and valuable. Moreover, you will also publish guest posts on various third-party portals to welcome quality backlinks.

Step 3- Repurpose Existing Content

Do not ignore the content you already posted, as it can be repurposed to offer more value to the audience. For example, old blog posts are often updated with the newest information and converted into whitepapers or e-books. 

Step 4- Decide On Frequency Of Content

Publish 18-20 blog posts on your portal for a quarter of each year. Choose around six topics from the blog posts to organize and publish guest articles on respected third-party sites. Create two long-form contents – case studies, a white book, or an ebook. Furthermore, you can organize a webinar and make multiple social media posts to promote it.

Step 5- Select A Calendar Tool

You can use Google Sheets if you like a content calendar tool that gives easy collaboration and is free of cost. Google Calendar is a perfect option for teams with just one member. Microsoft Excel spreadsheets are a simple idea for a straightforward partnership. The corporate-level businesses work best with Coschedule, though this tool also can be employed by one person, sort of a freelancer.

Step 6- Finalize On Topics For Content

Set the time limit for your brainstorming session, typically one-to-two hours. Allocate time for deciding the subject of every content type to avoid digression from the aim of the meeting. Fill in your calendar using the topics decided and other necessary details.

Step 7- Schedule The Workflow

To make your content calendar richer, don’t just include the topics of various content work and their publishing dates. Schedule each stage of the creation process. In other words, if you would like to make different content formats on one topic, mention that within the calendar. Furthermore, creating a blog post involves keyword research, making an overview, writing the post, adding visuals, and then noting each of those steps. This helps when different people or teams are performing on other stages. You’ll mention the team or employee who will handle each step within the calendar.

Step 8- Make Room For Instant Requirements

Your content calendar should be flexible enough to tend to the immediate content requirements. These requirements might collaborate with another industry leader or the latest industry development that needs your company to share its views. Make sure you have buffer time and resources for such requests of instant content requirements.

Conclusion

Creating a content calendar is simple, but at the same time, it is a lot of work.

The steps above explain what a content calendar and its significance is. Furthermore, a calendar like this is highly important for companies to meet deadlines. With a calendar, you’ll make the method of content creation, distribution, and promotion easy to track, analyze, and tweak.