Do you want to create better marketing content for your business? Are you tired of winging it and scrambling to find the next blog or email topic? Put an editorial calendar planning system in place. There’s no better time to plan than the start of a New Year. This is an effective way to gather the content and digital assets you’ll need to market your business — and meet your goals — for the year ahead.
What is an editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar can be an actual calendar, a spreadsheet or even a project management board. Its purpose is to help you and your team visualize what marketing content is needed to meet your goals each day, week or month. You can designate content types, such as blog posts, social media and email marketing projects. Remember to also set deadlines and assign team members to individual tasks.
Your editorial calendar isn’t just for you and your marketing team. It’s also a helpful tool for the entire company, including your sales team, who can suggest topic ideas that might be helpful to them in the field.
Preliminary Considerations
Determine what content is needed. Do you plan to feature blog articles on your website? Will you offer an email newsletter, and which social media networks should you publish to?
Decide how frequently you will publish content. Each marketing avenue has its own best practices in terms of publishing frequency. As a rule of thumb, it’s widely recommended to publish to your blog, and email list, at least once a month, but even better would be once per week. Each social media network also has their own publishing cadence, with some requiring several posts a day, while others are effective with just one post per day.
Designate team members. Gather the best content ideas by bringing your team on board to collaborate and give feedback in real time. Google Sheets and Trello are examples of editorial calendar tools you can use to accomplish this.
Editorial Calendar Planning Tools
Calendars and Spreadsheets
Since a calendar isn’t always the most effective method for editorial planning, you might integrate it with another tool like a spreadsheet. In Google Sheets, for example, you can organize your plan and ideas into rows. Then, you can add your Google Calendar to the document. This video shows you how.
Project Management Apps
At Vox Pop Marketing, we use the Trello project management tool to plan campaigns and content for our clients. Within Trello, we can assign tasks, set deadlines, share documents and chart the progress of a project. The system uses cards, which can be moved through different stages of a project. Content can be in the “Ideas” stage, in the “Pipeline,” “In Progress,” or in the “Editing” or “Published” phase.
Content Calendar and Management Apps
There are also apps specifically designed for content management. They include a calendar and project management tools needed to organize content marketing planning for teams. One example of this is CoSchedule.
Marketing Considerations
Your content writing is meant to generate leads, so be sure to consider all of these factors as you plan your editorial calendar …
- Marketing Personas – Who are you writing the content for?
- Keywords – Which keywords are people searching for related to your business and topics? Do some keyword research and find the best ones for each blog article or white paper.
- Calls to action (CTAs) – What should people do after reading your blog articles, emails or social media posts? Include a section for CTAs in your editorial content plan.
Do you need a content marketing plan?
Leave the content marketing planning and writing to the experts. Vox Pop Marketing is here to help with your content needs. Our marketing plan services are a great first step. Contact us to learn how we can work together to grow your business for the year ahead.
