Content calendars are the best way to stick to a schedule for creating and promoting content, but where should you start? Let’s discuss how to build and optimize a great content calendar.
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Content calendars are one of the most talked about tools of this decade. Why? Because marketing your own company can be hard! Creating and following a content calendar is one of the best ways to stay on top of marketing for your company. In this post, we will discuss the elements that make a content calendar successful:
It all starts with the right marketing assets. What content are you going to be sharing? Whitepapers, blogs, webinars, reels? It’s important to understand the scope of items to be created so that you can properly organize and resource your content calendar.
If you’re just starting out, we recommend making a shortlist of marketing assets that are sustainable for your specific company. Ideally, this group of items will include video (as it performs well on almost every social network) along with whitepapers and blogs because they are both standard expectations.
If you have the capacity, consider adding podcasts, ebooks, guides, case studies, infographics, and webinars. While webinars may be categorized as video, you may consider a live class or presentation that can be gated with conversions in mind).
Publishing cadence
One of the first conversations you need to have when scoping a content calendar is about content cadence and the responsibilities that go with it.
Will you be sharing content multiple times a day, daily, weekly, or monthly?
Will certain content be generated on an annual basis and updated based on new statistics?
Will some content be on different schedules than others?
Will you share content based on peak engagement times, or will you focus on your own customer habits?
Will your content be short or long-form?
Once you answer those questions, begin to rough out the publication frequency and then work backward from your ideal go-live date. That strategy will allow you to understand how much time you can give contributors to produce the content you need.
Content contributors
Deciding who should contribute content, participate in brainstorming sessions, and be responsible for upholding the calendar is important. If you have those conversations and establish expectations early on, your teammates will be more likely to deliver.
At Imarc, there are a number of content contributors, but it’s our marketing team that leads the initiative and ensures its success.
We know what you’re thinking… you’re a part of a small or medium-sized business with a limited team… how are you going to get the team members on board? No problem! Not everyone is going to be as excited about content as you are (though they will want the results of it), but there are ways they can contribute without producing work directly.
One great way to leverage the knowledge of time-crunched leaders within your company is to simply interview them and then offer to ghostwrite or design the piece yourself. That option usually means a much quicker turnaround time.
Another equally effective way is to showcase the talent of your subject matter experts by letting them author pieces they are passionate about that also appeal to your audience.
These kinds of efforts will make life a little easier for everyone on the team while keeping quality content flowing and leads coming in.
Audience & promotion
With content, two major areas need to be considered - who and how.
Let’s start with the who. Hopefully by the time you start a content calendar, you have already established buyer personas, but if not, now is the time to do so. Why? Because you need to be producing content that aligns with at least one of them so that you can work toward your goals, actionably.
We won’t go into depth on personas in this blog, but here’s the Hubspot definition if you’re not familiar with the term “Personas are fictional, generalized characters that encompass the various needs, goals, and observed behavior patterns among your customers. Creating personas in your HubSpot account allows you to target these groups and categorize your contacts.”
We recommend adding a section to your content calendar for who each piece of content is for, as well as where it fits into that persona’s buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration, or decision). That will allow you to see at a glance if you are producing too much or too little content for a key audience or stage. It will also provide you a way to see if the content you produce is aligning with that group, or if you need to strategize (using post-launch metrics, of course!)
Now onto the how. Let’s say you produce an incredible piece that is search engine optimized (SEO), on target, on brand, and just… awesome! Well, that’s wonderful, but you also need to consider a coordinated promotion plan to go with it.
Your SEO efforts will get you started when it comes to organic ranking (we always recommend starting with a strong content brief with targeted keywords based on user search intent) but it’s also important to consider other methods. Those methods could consist of a paid option, a coordinated blitz with newsletter inclusion, a specific email, a workflow for downloads, or other elements that will help you earn conversions.
Your promotion strategy will be based largely on where your personas will consume the content most readily. Are they LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok users? Perhaps you could advertise on one of those social media platforms! Are they regular Googlers? Get some pay-per-click (PPC) working for you! Are they regularly reading your marketing emails? Blast that list!
Pro-tip: To support content for ourselves and our clients, we use a tool called SEMRush to determine the best keywords for our content and paid marketing efforts.
Project management tools
Content calendars can become large and unmanageable given their complexity. With that in mind, we suggest that you consider using a planning tool or multiple tools to stay on track. There are many choices like HubSpot, SproutSocial, Monday.com, Trello, Wrike, a simple Google Sheets document, or a shared Google Calendar. Each tool offers something different, so it’s important to consider your company’s individual needs.
There are tools that simply catalog/house your efforts and can be added to over time as ideas occur (Trello, Google Sheets, etc.). There are platforms that allow you to schedule and track your performance over time (Hubspot, SproutSocial, etc.) There are products that encompass many needs like customer relationship management (CRM), social scheduling, and team-based project management (Hubspot, Monday.com, etc.). And finally, there are pure project management tools that help keep your team on track based on active projects (Wrike, ActiveCollab, etc.).
The right tool or tools exists, just make sure to do your research.
Getting started
Making a content calendar from scratch can seem like a daunting task, but don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be completed in a day. Take time each week to develop your content and strategy until you feel comfortable with the finished product, and be open to making optimizations along the way.
