Content marketing is all about the messaging you want to put in front of prospective or current leads. Content marketing includes but is not limited to social media, email or SMS, website, paid or organic ads, etc. There's a lot of room for creativity in a content marketing strategy but what is one thing that will make it all run? A content calendar! In this post we'll look at how to set up a content calendar, what to include and how to track content performance in your calendar so that it can shape future marketing decisions.
Before you start to plan your content calendar and the messaging that will go out to your audience here's a quick recap on the three things that your content strategy absolutely needs:
A defined goal and target audience.
Organization!
Strategy
Your content calendar is part of your content strategy in that it bridges the organization and strategy elements, while being shaped overall by the defined goal and target audience. A content calendar is the natural next step once you have determined a content strategy plan.
Where is your content calendar 'housed'?
The most important part of your content calendar is that it be a living, breathing space for collaboration and communication. Hosting your content calendar in an excel sheet is a great idea -- hosting it on something like Google Drive is even better. Google Drive allows for several editors to have access and contribute to the document meaning that it is a living space for your ideas and action plans. Worried about too many chefs in the kitchen? Easy -- you can limit the access that viewers have to editing the doc and Google Drive allows you to 'revert to this version' if too many changes are made and you want to get back to the original ASAP.
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What does your content calendar include?
Generally, content calendars should be organized either monthly or quarterly if the quantity of material isn't enough to warrant it's own full sheet. This is a great way to get a 'birds eye' picture of the content for the upcoming weeks. Think of your content calendar like your email sending schedule -- a record of what you've done and what you're planning to do with the marketing channel down to specific details.
Be sure to include:
Date of the week to post/send: Can use the letter date of the week in addition to the number
Time of the day to post/send: This can help if you are tracking engagement over a period of time but isn't super necessary if you're more interested in practicing consistency first
Content Type: You've already got your individual sheets for individual marketing channels but this might be where you identify the category (i.e. informative, review, brand story etc.) that your content falls under in the broader strategy OR it could be where you record the actual style of content (i.e. Reel, YouTube Video, Podcast Clip, etc.) that you are sharing out
Content Copy: This is a way to look at your language in copy (short form like social) to make sure that you aren't using the same phrasing or style of approach too often...Pro Tip: Always be sure to spell check your content copy if you're writing it directly into excel as it doesn't always catch mistakes in spelling
Link to Content: If you keep your content in various folders this is a great way to organize them to find easily
Performance Metrics: This is why it helps to have a goal in mind when you set out to design your content....are you recording sales? Are you recording replies? Determine what action you want the end user to take and track that!
Your content calendar is where you will organize the results of a brainstorm -- not necessarily brainstorm, directly. Having a monthly or quarterly view of the upcoming content for the channel will help you see the bigger picture and find a good cadence, or frequency, for different styles of content. This will all develop with time, especially when you can start to look at the data about what performs well verses not.
Pro-Tip: If you are planning content for different channels, create different calendars. They can all be housed in one document but should be their own sheets. Everything should have it's own space to spread out. This means that you aren't scrolling through pages of information to find a quick answer if you're making a call on the fly or you're pulling together a report about performance to justify spend.
How can you track performance in your calendar?
An organized content calendar with clear categories and functions makes things so much easier in the long run for creating and reporting on performance. If you can keep a clean record of how often a message went out to the audiences and the actions they took as a result, over time you will be able to see what works and what doesn't in your content strategy.
Photo by John Schnobrich on Unsplash
By recording engagement (how many likes a post gets on social, Open Rate on email, etc.) on each post/messaging that you dispatch as under the brand umbrella you will be able to see what type of content works best in your content marketing strategy. This will ultimately help you -- or your marketing team -- refine that messaging and get the best ROI (Return on Investment) for your efforts.
Summary:
A content calendar is the next step after you determine your content strategy. Your content calendar should be housed somewhere online where team members can find it easily. It should include specifics for a monthly or quarterly plan like post/send date, relevant links, and metrics to track. When you have compiled a set of metrics to compare you can refine your content overall for better results.
Get in Touch.
Have a question about content calendars and how they can work best for your business? Write to us at Liz@litirmarketing.com
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