If you are a blogger, your ultimate goal is to make your company or blog a trusted source of valuable content. Achieving this takes time, and above all, it requires a clear content marketing strategy.
Editorial calendars are a vital part of this content marketing strategy, especially if you are a small business and do not have a dedicated marketing team. This will help you not start wondering what you need to write on a day that you know you should post, and it will also help you not overwhelm your audience with too much content. Today, we’ll look at several reasons why you need to create an editorial calendar.
What is an editorial calendar?
In the simplest terms, an editorial calendar is an outline of what you plan to post and when. Editorial calendars however go beyond this as they help bloggers outline other components of blogging such as audience engagement.
- Some of the elements that you can include in your editorial calendar are:
- Content type. E.g., articles, podcasts, videos.
- Topics you need to create content for.
- Timeline of when you should post a topic.
- Roles and responsibilities for each task. E.g., who will write, edit, publish.
There are many ways you can create an editorial calendar, but the most popular is through MS Excel. The software allows you to create or edit a template and suit it to your needs through content personalization and custom lists.
Reasons for creating an editorial calendar
Strategic planning
Strategic planning is a crucial part of any project's success, and to create a loyal audience, you will need to do more than just post content. Having an editorial calendar helps you do this as you can explore the themes that you need to cover in your topic list and even help you engage better with your audience.
Apart from that, once you look at your entire editorial calendar for a particular period, you will also see the fine details that you are missing. From there, you can then incorporate them into your strategy. For example, if you have certain themes that you need to cover every month, you can then schedule a social media Q&A.
Improve scheduling
One of the biggest advantages of using a content calendar is ensuring that everything is done on time. When making one, you can create posts depending on other events taking place. For example, if you have a promotion coming up, you can start preparing your audience for the same ahead of time. You can also plan for different times of the year, such as New Year, Halloween, or Black Friday/ Cyber Monday.
Besides that, knowing what will be published and when will help create the content early. Once you see a post is coming, you can ensure that you create the content a week earlier. You will then have time to review it and make any necessary changes before it goes live on the specified date. This is crucial especially if you have an editorial process that involves multiple people.
Consistency
Consistency is crucial in maintaining your audience. If you post information that they find helpful for a month and then go missing for two weeks, your audience may have already moved on after finding stale content multiple times. After all, there are very many sources of content out there.
Having a content calendar gives you a clear structure of content and time, and this leads to consistency. Your calendar should have a defined period for posting articles, guides, social media posts, etc.
Plenty of time to plan ideas
When you have an editorial calendar, you won’t wonder what to write at any single time. This is because you will have already listed your ideas for blog posts, white papers, or even eBooks. If your publishing has an editorial team or stakeholders, you will then have time to go over them and get a consensus.
Even better, you will be able to list down ideas as they come. This prevents your great ideas from going with the wind, leaving you scratching your head. After listing them, regularly go through them to have an idea of what you already have and what is coming up.
Build an efficient process
Besides listing, you also need to associate your topics with members of your editorial team. When a person knows what to do and when they are required to do it, the entire editorial process becomes efficient.
You can assign roles and responsibilities, such as writing, editing, graphic designing, etc. You can also assign individuals to other tasks such as updating landing pages or posting/ interacting on social media.
Once everything is streamlined, you will have set yourself on a path to keep your audience engaged and your blog growing!