How To Make a Great Content Calendar
In the world of online marketing, great content is the driver of all things – of website traffic, of social media engagement and, ultimately, of revenue. Without great content, the world’s most trafficked websites – think Facebook, or The NY Times, or Google – would essentially be worthless.
But the websites that are the most successful in driving in that traffic probably don’t rely on things like sheer luck or just doing whatever. Instead, chances are they’re relying on some sort of internal calendar in order to pump out the content that will work to drive those visitors towards their websites.
And content calendars are important because they help businesses frame and plan out the ‘how’ of their online presences — how they plan on driving traffic, and how they plan on getting people talking about their brand.
Here are a few ways that any business can create a great content calendar that can become an infinitely useful internal resource, and the ideal guide for providing useful (and marketable) content to its users.
Take Note Of Important Company Milestones
You’re going about your normal day doing things – working on projects, developing new products, whatever – and then all of a sudden – ‘bam!’ – you realize that it’s your company’s 10th anniversary.
But that shouldn’t just happen. Your company – regardless of whether it makes cake or plumbing supplies – probably has milestones, and has probably done some things that it can be proud of.
Which is why those sorts of events – a 1,000th customer, a birthday, a 50th employee – shouldn’t simply be brushed over. They should be take into consideration when developing a content calendar, including any associated social media and blog posts.
Chances are, if you have some customers, those customers probably care about your business and what’s going on at your business, and they’d probably be readily willing to share those milestones with their friends.
Make it Fun for You, but Relevant To Your Customers
Work is perhaps stressful enough, having to juggle a wide range of tasks while keeping a levelhead.
A content schedule should be an important part of how your company operates – what you share with your clients or consumers – but it shouldn’t be a complete drag. It should be something that employees actively contribute to not simply because they have to create the content, but because they find it fun.
But it shouldn’t merely be a whacky expose of the inner-workings of your organization. It should reflect things like company culture, for sure, what’s going on within your organization, and what sort of things you like to talk about (and that your customers love to hear), but it should also keep in mind that there are people looking in from the inside.
Make It Flexible
Beyond relevance, your content schedule should also be something that has plenty of flexibility in terms of what content goes where and when that content is distributed. Having content in place weeks in advance is good, but it’s also relatively worthless if you can’t change that content as important events come and go.
Say, for example, one week you’re planning on promoting a new product through press releases, blogs and social media, but the week prior to that recently saw your company be purchased by a much larger conglomerate.
Your content schedule needs to provide your organization with the flexibility to still maintain updates around possibly bigger, or more urgent news.
Though these factors all play an important role in developing a great content calendar, perhaps the most important factor is simply providing great content – whether those articles be in the form of helpful blog posts, shareable social media posts, or great press releases that everyone wants to talk about.
Then it’s simply a matter of figuring out how, when and why you’re distributing that content to your consumers. Enter: Your super-amazing content calendar.
Source: MSM DesignZ, Inc. is a Westchester social media company based in NY specializing in advertising, web and graphic design, and SEO.