There are several key words when it comes to successful content marking. The most important of which is consistency. Unfortunately, many marketers still struggle with creating content regularly. Using a content calendar is an easy solution to getting back on track.
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 80% of business-to-business marketers have a content marketing strategy. However, 48% of this lot does not document their plans. Perhaps the biggest question marketers ask is if a content calendar is really beneficial to their brand. The answer to that is a resounding yes! Here are five reasons why:
1. Better content planning
A content calendar can help you achieve the marketing goals you have set for your brand. Essentially, this marketing tool is a planning document that gives you and your team an organized, bird’s eye view of your plans for the coming weeks. Consistency is a key element in content marketing thus it is paramount for you to regularly publish content that is not only timely but also relevant both to your brand and your audience.
2. Advance content
Organizing all your content in one place helps you remember noteworthy dates and events. This ensures that you won’t miss crafting relevant content for occasions that are important to your industry, products, and customers. Remember to populate your content calendar with all the important dates and holidays along with content ideas for execution.
3. Content balance on all social media platforms
A content calendar allows you to track where your content is posted and the performance of each platform. For example, if you’re mainly on Facebook and Twitter but are not getting enough traction, explore adding more content on LinkedIn. You can also try building your Instagram and Pinterest account with images and infographics. For each type of content, assign a social media channel that is suited for it and note it accordingly in your content calendar.
4. No more outputs on the fly
Creating content on the go can be stressful. It puts a lot of pressure on your creative team to produce good content within a short period of time. Over time, your team may have a hard time finding inspiration to create unique content as they are consistently working on tight deadlines. A content calendar allows you to develop your content with ample time researching, writing, and editing before the actual publish date.
5. Track content performance
An editorial content calendar will make it easy for you to define content buckets based on your objective or category. Having a content calendar makes it easy for you to look back on your published posts and identify which one you’d like to track. Once you have that down, you’ll be able to measure its level on engagement with your audience.
Bonus tip: Set up regular check-up times to observe important metrics on your content. Tools like Google Analytics can help you track these numbers to see what works, what needs tweaking, and what needs to be scrapped altogether.
A content calendar can help you simplify your content marketing efforts. It will guide your team in strategically mapping out long-term and short-term content plans. It will also help them in posting more consistently and coming up with more relevant, timely, and cohesive outputs. A content calendar is your golden ticket to an organized layout of content across all platforms, ensuring a strong online presence for your brand.
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Revisit the importance of content on our Content Marketing Series!
- Revisiting Content Marketing: Content is Still King
- 5 Ways to Create Compelling Content
- 5 Reasons Why You Should Have a Content Calendar
- 5 Common Content Marketing Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Pepper Virtual Assistant Services is a business solutions firm that specializes on virtual administrative and personal assistance, online marketing, customer support, and copywriting. We are known for reliability through our managed services, responsive client handling backed by extensive training, and rockstar virtual assistants hired for their skills and expertise.
This is quite interesting! It helps me to know my priorities and that I should not get lost. It is really advisable that I should get a planner for myself so that when I get lost, my planner will help me get back on track. We must also take note of all the details given so that we would remember it.
I didn’t know a content calendar helps this much in my content marketing efforts. I should have known it a long time ago. Thank you for the article! It was an eye-opener for me to have an efficient content marketing strategy.
Great article Pepper! Your points gave me an idea how to make content (even my personal ones) more effective and efficient. It also gave me an idea on how to become more organized and how to reach my readers in the right social media platforms. Keep ’em coming!
Woah! I didn’t know that a content calendar is the answer to my marketing team’s problems. I will surely send them a copy of this. You have no idea how your articles transform companies! More powers, Pepper!
I think that having a content calendar is a great way to organize your thoughts, plans, and schedules. With this calendar, you would be able to properly track your previous ideas and future ideas so that there would be no redundancy. Also, you could keep track with your progress as to how your ideas and plans have develop since you would be able to look back. This is indeed a great way to keep one organized, on-track, and consistent.
I actually think those reasons are correct. I’ve been creating content calendars for my website for a very long time but I didn’t quite make a use of it. I’ve been putting so many content on queue that posts are already redundant. Thank you so much for this article!