An Editorial Calendar is a key resource when managing the content marketing of a company, especially when we need to organize the long-term strategy and when working with several teammates.
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What is an Editorial Calendar?
The planning of a medium-long term strategy for a marketing strategy is essential, especially if you pretend to get and measure results. The most important step when deciding to start the strategy is the editorial calendar.
What do you need before sitting down and preparing your calendar?
Have clear objectives.
Know your user persona
Establish the following steps
Content needs to be fresh and updated regularly. A Content Marketing Strategy cannot be taken on the spot or be sorted on a day-to-day basis. To get the best results, every piece of content needs to be thought of and carefully posted.
An editorial calendar is a resource that allows us to organize all aspects related to the publication of the content for a brand strategy; that way, we can keep organized our job and the targets to reach that have been previously established.
According to this, the planner can analyze when each action was taken, what content has been approved, and where your overall strategy is going.
Why do you need one for?
There’s the long-time planning factor: a strategist planner can remember what actions were taken last week or even in the past month.
There might be a user persona in mind, shared by everyone involved in the strategy. But in the long term, it’s highly necessary to have everything in writing, and a clear strategy to reach the business goals.
Having an editorial calendar is necessary for:
Time optimizing. As with any other chore, a defined strategy and to have it planned, helps to reduce efforts, as the team doesn’t work overtime for things that can’t be measured or that won’t bring the expected benefits.
Teamwork. Content strategy requires the involvement of many people, including copywriters, planners, designers, among others. For this reason, an editorial calendar is highly necessary. Once all content is scheduled, the team can have a clear idea of where the strategy is going, its easier to keep them working together and motivated.
The essentials
The ideal calendar will depend on your needs, themes, and communication channels. But, regarding the variables, some things can’t be missed. Just like in journalism, the 5 questions you need to ask yourself before planning your strategy, are:
Why: Keeping in mind the needs of your audience and your project, you can determine the core of your blog. For that, measurable objectives have to be specified (as in the number of visitors, engagements, conversions, etc.)
What: One of the most important questions is what kind of content can you offer? Whatever the answer is, it should be a solution to a real problem in your market.
When: How often do you want to publish? This must be defined according to your audience's needs.
Where: What channels are good for your business? Not all channels are good or necessary for your brand. You need to know where your audience is and focus on those channels.
How: how will this strategy be done? by who? This is important information and it needs to be written down from the beginning.