If you’ve ever been overwhelmed by last minute content creation, running behind post dates or struggled to keep marketing campaigns consistent, you’re not on your own. Many businesses have a great standard of content, but without a plan they can’t get it out regularly.
That’s what a content calendar tries to help with. When done correctly, it’s not just a schedule, it’s a tool which keeps marketing campaigns organised and aligned with your business goals.
During this blog, we will be discussing what content calendars are and why they are so helpful to many business owners and marketers.
Why a Content Calendar Matters
Before understanding how they work, it’s important to note why they are important and what they help you with. The benefits of these calendars include: helps you stay consistent, plan around key dates, collaborate efficiently and easily measure results.
Now, how do you make one?
Define Your Goals
A calendar is useless if you don’t have any marketing objectives for it to serve. Ask if you want to increase website traffic, build brand awareness, generate leads… Depending on your objectives, you will make different types of content, post on different platforms … ect
Know Your Audience
Understanding who you’re reaching allows you to plan way more effectively using the calendar. Create or revisit any buyer personas so you can better target audiences.
Audit Existing Content
By reviewing your old content you can evaluate what was done well and poorly and whether any old content would be worth repurposing. Here, you can also remove or update outdated content to make sure your pages are relevant.
Decide on Content Types
Strong content calendars include a mix of formats so your audience stays engaged, examples of these are blog posts, podcasts, videos or webinars.
Choose Platforms
Every channel you want to use should be covered on the calendar, but that doesn’t mean you should cover every platform. Use your audience and content types and decide what platforms are best for your business.
Map Out Dates
When mapping out your key dates, start with the big picture and include any launches, events, days and milestones. Then, you can work backwards and fill in any bits you have missed like pre-launch teasers and follow-up content.
Set a Posting Frequency
Posting too rarely can make a forgettable brand and too much can lead to burnout, there needs to be a realistic balance based on any resources you have. Remember, quality is almost always more effective than quantity.
Build Calendar
Then, now you have all of the data you need, you can begin building the calendar. Popular tools to do this include Google Sheets, Trello and Notion.
Final Thoughts
Well-built content calendars act as a roadmap for your marketing efforts, making sure you’re always organised and ready for the next stage of your plans. It turns making content from a frantic, last minute activity to a relaxed, measurable process.
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