F1 driver Valtteri Bottas has raised $150,000 for men’s health charity Movember after a calendar featuring photographs of him baring his backside sped off the shelves.
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Are you striving for consistency with your social media marketing? A good social media content calendar could be the missing ingredient.
Creating a social media calendar is a simple process, but it can have some impressive results.
Here’s how to quickly set up your social media content calendar and start leveling up your performance.
A social media calendar gives you a detailed overview of your upcoming social media posts.
This helps you to be more strategic with your content, maintain consistency, and delight your target audience on a regular basis.
Your social media calendar can be as simple as setting out what dates you’re going to post on, or it can be much more detailed.
Many successful social media content calendars will include high-level information to help you get more from each post:
This information gives you an initial framework you can use to build out each post.
Be careful when you are planning, though.
There’s a clear distinction between a content calendar and a content plan. Generally, a content calendar will set out the dates and times for your posts, whereas a content plan will detail the strategies and topics you want to use for your social media marketing.
Since these ideas are closely related, they’re often referred to interchangeably—and can be incorporated into one document.
To give you a better idea of what to include, and where, take a look at this example of a content calendar:
By taking a strategic approach with your planning, you may find a social media content calendar helps you save time and be more effective with your social media marketing.
Over 72 percent of the U.S. population use at least one social media platform, so your social media marketing is clearly important.
The question is, how does a social media calendar fit in?
Let’s take a look at two of the most important aspects of social media marketing: understanding your target audience and being consistent.
If you don’t understand where your target audience hangs out, what content they want to see, and how they consume information, then how do you expect to reach them? It’s difficult to connect with your audience when you’re making social media posts on the fly, which is why a social media content calendar can be so valuable.
The other thing that takes you a long way in social media marketing is consistency. It might not seem like it, but this one is actually very difficult to pull off. It’s not easy to keep coming back each day (or however often you post) with top-quality content.
It’s simply impossible unless you’re planning ahead.
Whatever niche you’re in, there’s tons of competition out there, so you need time to bring your ideas to life and make sure they’re perfectly targeted to your audience.
Those aren’t the only reasons to start using a social media content planner though. They can also help you:
The great thing is that anyone can start using a social media content calendar right now and use these benefits to improve their social media performance.
You don’t need any fancy software to create an effective social media content plan. All you need to do is open a spreadsheet and follow these 6 steps.
Before you create any plan, you need a clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve.
We all have some kind of goal for our social media posts, but it pays to narrow in on this and make them much more implicit. When you know exactly what you’re working towards, then it’s going to be much easier to come up with the content that’s going to help you achieve it.
Before you create your social media content calendar, make sure you sit down with your team and set yourself SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).
It’s also important to understand what KPIs you will use to measure your performance against these goals. For instance, are you most concerned with followers, impressions, clicks to your site, or something else?
Once you’ve got clearly defined goals, and a process for measuring your performance, then you’re ready to proceed.
Now that you’ve got a clear picture of what success looks like, it’s time to find out how you’re currently performing.
This information is important because it’s going to serve as your baseline. Once you have this data, it’s much easier to test the changes you’re making and adjust your strategies accordingly.
You can add a sheet for all your KPIs to your social media content calendar to keep an eye on this and help make sure you’re constantly working to improve your processes.
Gather all relevant information and make sure it’s easily accessible:
This will require a little bit of hard work, but it’s well worth it!
One of the main reasons you’re creating a social media content calendar is to make sure you’re giving your audience the content they’re looking for, and you’ve got to understand your past performance to do this.
If we went back a decade or so, this step would have been pretty simple. There were a handful of social platforms dominating the scene, which made this question easy to answer.
Today though, there are lots of thriving social media platforms, each with its own demographics. For instance, if you’re advertising to people aged 18-25, you’re probably going to have to use different platforms than if you’re trying to reach the over 55s age group.
Don’t get me wrong though, they’re all on social media!
58.4 percent of the global population is on social media, but how can you best reach your specific target audience?
You don’t have unlimited resources, so that might mean focusing your efforts on a handful of platforms. Bear in mind, that those platforms won’t necessarily be the biggest ones, they just have to be the ones where your target audience hangs out.
Check out the in-depth demographics in the image below and think about which platform might be the best fit for your target audience.
As you can see, these figures vary greatly, so it’s important to decide where you want to be and when.
One of the greatest benefits of a social media content planner is that it helps you to be more consistent, but the question still remains, how often should you post?
The answer will vary for each business.
If you’ve got a huge marketing team working on different elements like images, video, copy, personal interactions with followers, and everything else, then there’s no reason why you can’t post multiple times a day.
However, if you’re a one-man team working on every part of your business, then this probably isn’t realistic.
Ultimately, it’s about utilizing your resources to achieve a good balance between quality and quantity. If you’re putting out poor content that nobody interacts with though, it’s no use to anybody.
There’s no hard and fast answer to this question, but the key is maintaining a schedule where you can be consistent. Most algorithms (whether that’s Google, Facebook, or YouTube) value consistency.
This is something you can be in complete control of, especially with a good social media content calendar.
It can be helpful to break your posts down into categories to give your audience a mix of different content types.
There are two rules that are popular for this and they can help ensure you’re offering variety as well as making life a little bit easier for yourself.
This rule helps you strike a balance between engaging your audience and trying to sell your products.
It states that 80 percent of your posts should be designed to engage, inform, and educate, and the other 20 percent should be used to directly promote your business.
People don’t go on social media to be bombarded with promotions, so this formula helps you hit the right balance of growing sales while maintaining a positive brand image.
You’ve got to figure out how your content can fit with these goals.
If you’re always posting the same type of content then it can quickly get boring. This is why many brands use the Social Media Rule of Thirds throughout their content calendars.
In the social media rule of thirds, one-third of your posts promote your own content, one-third share curated content, and one-third share personal interactions with your followers.
The last thing you need to do before setting up your social media content calendar is audit your resources. How big is your team, and what skills do you have available to you?
If you have a team full of social media specialists, videographers, and content creators, then your plans are going to be a lot more ambitious. However, you’ve also got to put systems in place to bring these people together.
This is where your social media content calendar becomes even more important.
When you’ve clearly set out your schedule for the next month, or even quarter, then everybody can see what they need to work on.
Your writer can work on the copy, and your videographer and graphic designer can work on the visuals, bringing everything together on time.
The easiest way to create a social media content calendar template is using a Google sheet.
Open up a new sheet, and split your calendar into weeks.
Use the columns at the top to set out your dates, and in the rows, enter the following for each platform you intend to post on:
This should allow you to create a basic template in just a few minutes. It should look something like this example of a social media content calendar:
From here, you can build your social media content calendar out as much as you like, however, this should give you an excellent starting point.
If you have a budget, you could look at different project management systems like Trello or Airtable to custom-build your social media content calendar. As you start to use them, you’ll be able to spot trends, plan promotions, and much more.
The benefits of a social media calendar are that it saves you time, helps you to be more consistent, reduces errors, and allows you to be more strategical. This should help you provide your audience with better content and increase brand engagement.
You don’t have to have a social media calendar but it can be incredibly helpful. It’s hard to consistently offer your audience high-quality content, and sometimes you need time to plan what you’re doing. Knowing what posts you have coming up gives you time to get your copy and visuals in place and tie them to your promotions.
You can get as detailed as you want with a social media content calendar. Some basic information to include is the type of content, title, topic, links, and visuals that are needed.
The easiest way to create a social media content calendar is in a spreadsheet. It’s very simple to set up, and you can have a functioning content plan in just a few minutes.
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With some basic Microsoft Excel skills, you can create a content calendar that clearly outlines your strategy for the weeks and months to come. Not only will this help you create better content, but it’s also going to save you time.
Whether you’re a large social media team or an individual marketer, a good social media content calendar is going to make it much easier to coordinate your efforts and ensure you consistently meet your audience’s needs.
Start doing this, and your social media marketing results are going to improve dramatically.
How often do you post to social media?
According to Bill Gates, “Content is King.” That was true in 1996, and it continues to be true today.
As consumers become savvier, content continues to play a vital role in educating and converting consumers.
However, not all marketers understand how to implement a content strategy correctly. When you don’t start with the basics, you could be making content production more complicated than necessary.
To be successful, your content plan must be actionable, and you need to publish content consistently.
That’s where an editorial calendar comes in.
We’re going to cover the basics, including how to create and manage your editorial calendar, and how it can help your content strategy grow
An editorial calendar enables content publishers to plan, create, publish, and promote their content in an organized manner. Many bloggers and businesses use editorial or content calendars to streamline content production.
In many ways, an editorial calendar is a lifesaver for creatives and business owners. Whether you’re a blogger, freelance writer, business owner, or creative director at a marketing firm, an editorial content calendar can help you stay on track and keep you sane—while ensuring a consistent flow of content.
Others use an editorial calendar to improve focus, because an organized approach can also limit writer’s block and keep content evergreen.
There are other ways you can benefit from an editorial content calendar, including:
With an editorial calendar, you can see articles that need writing at a glance. From there, you can delegate the articles to your writing team, ready for them to get to work. No more scrambling to send writers topics at the last minute or wondering if you’ll even get around to writing this month.
With a calendar, it’s all right in front of you.
Ultimately, this level of organization saves time, keeps the content coming, and ensures every member of your content creation team knows what they’re doing.
The better you plan your articles, the better the writing tends to be. When you know what you want to write, you don’t waste time with last-minute research or trying to find the sources you need to support your article.
In fact, some consider planning to be more important than the content production itself. Planning content is essential for:
Your editorial calendar is part of your content strategy. Ideally, you’ve developed your content strategy around the goals you’re trying to achieve with your product, your blog, or your company overall.
An editorial content calendar assists in goal achievement by:
Whatever your goals are for your business, your editorial calendar has a vital role in allowing you to achieve them.
According to Mark Twain, “deadlines are the greatest source of inspiration.”
However, that doesn’t mean you want to do a rush job.
To avoid rushing content creation, every team member needs to be clear on their deadlines to keep reaching your goals and your audience engaged.
Further, keeping up with these deadlines is especially important when you’re publishing new content that’s a part of your business strategy. For example, if you are publishing blogs to support a new launch or annual sale.
Don’t let the thought of creating an editorial calendar stress you out—I promise it’s not that complicated once you create a plan. This next section takes you through how to create an effective calendar, step-by-step. This is just an outline, so feel free to adjust these steps to meet the needs of your business.
Your first step is deciding which tools to use. This varies from team to team, and content managers may need a combination of tools for best results.
If you want free options for getting started, Google Docs, Excel, or Trello are popular choices. For paid tools, there are several worth considering, including:
Airtable, Asana, and HubSpot offer free content calendar templates to get you started, and there are plenty of others available, too.
Whichever tool you use, make sure it meets everyone’s needs. As Buffer’s editorial director, Ash Read, told HubSpot:
“[your] editorial calendar should be a resource for your whole team, not just content creators.”
Next, you need to create a content backlog. This is just a list of content ideas for easy viewing and lets you track your ideas for posts.
You could use Google Sheets or Excel for this, or one of the free templates mentioned, like Asana.
Whichever you go with, your chosen tool should allow you to create a clear, organized list. Just remember, it’s OK to stray from your list. Not every idea will end up as an entire post, and sometimes changing your content strategy is essential for keeping up with new trends or thinking of a new angle.
Create your sheet, then start adding a few headings like:
Other headings you could use are:
Don’t overthink your content strategy. There’s a simple way of making sure your content strategy covers all the bases, and as long as you keep these parts in mind, you won’t go wrong.
First, outline steps such as how much content you want to produce a month, what topics you want to cover, and your ideal customers.
Then add strategic steps, such as managing your existing content and goal tracking. These might include:
Many of us produce content at the last minute or create it whenever we have spare time. If you’re looking for a less stressful (and more effective) approach, schedule your content in advance.
A month is usually enough, but you could schedule up to six weeks. You can use Google Calendar for this.
Add each step of your process, and make sure to give yourself plenty of time. So, you might create a due date on the first Monday to write your outlines, then schedule one article a week to be written, two days for editing, set a publish date, then schedule it into your social media sharing calendar.
The process will vary based on how much content you produce and how many people are on your team, but I strongly recommend breaking each piece of content into more manageable steps.
When you’re in the full swing of producing content, it’s easy to let pieces slip through the cracks, especially if you have multiple people working on the project. Creating a Trello account can keep you on track.
The first step in using your Trello account for content production is to decide what stages each article will need to go through.
What you need is up to you, but here are some suggestions for your Trello cards:
Alternatively, you could make it more complex and add additional steps like:
Then your Trello cards might look something like this:
If you’re just starting with an editorial calendar, you need to get a few articles ready for publication.
Choose a schedule that suits you, but a forward-looking schedule of 4-6 weeks works well for most teams.
That sounds like a lot of work, but you can approach the task in two ways. First, you could spend a few weeks writing content until you have a volume of work to publish. However, this method isn’t suitable for everyone, unless you’ve got a team of writers to help you.
Another way is to spend a few months creating extra content every day, which is doable for most content producers.
So far, we’ve covered how to get your content production off the ground. However, you can’t set it and forget it. Over time, you might find there are bottlenecks in your process or that certain tools don’t fit your needs. Make sure to check in with your team regularly to ensure the editorial process you’ve created is working for everyone.
Common areas to review include:
Over time, you’ll get a better understanding of whether the tools you’re working at are suitable for your team and whether the amount of articles you’re publishing is helping your business grow.
An organized approach to content production reduces time and helps you publish better quality content. From ideation and writing to publishing and promotion, an editorial calendar helps streamline every part of the process.
Not unless you want to. Free tools like Trello and Google Docs are fine, but there are also paid options like Asana available.
Not everyone’s calendar looks the same, but most marketers include titles, publication dates, and the article writer’s name. Once you’ve added in the most obvious headings, write in the titles that work for your specific needs.
These terms are often used interchangeably. However, an editorial calendar generally outlines each step of the process, while a content calendar usually covers one aspect—such as when posts are published or shared to social media.
An editorial content calendar is a must-have for any content marketer or small business looking to make the most of content production. It helps you stay focused on your goals and produce high-quality content consistently.
Although it sounds like a lot of work, setting up a calendar isn’t difficult and allows you to seamlessly produce evergreen content while making the most of seasonal trends.
How do you use an editorial calendar? Tell us below.
If you create content, you need a content calendar. I know—not an earth-shattering revelation! What about a calendar specifically for your paid content? Should it be part of your regular editorial calendar? A separate calendar? Do you even need a paid content calendar? The answer to the first two questions is: How you structure your … Continue reading Why You May Need a Content Calendar For Paid Campaigns
If you create content, you need a content calendar. I know—not an earth-shattering revelation!
What about a calendar specifically for your paid content?
Should it be part of your regular editorial calendar? A separate calendar? Do you even need a paid content calendar?
The answer to the first two questions is: How you structure your marketing calendar is up to you and your company’s needs.
The answer to the third question is: almost definitely.
Read on to learn what a paid content calendar is, why you should consider having one, and which tools we recommend for creating your own.
It may seem self-explanatory: A paid content calendar is a calendar you use to plan for paid content, right?
Well, it’s a little more complicated than that because paid content works differently than other types of content.
It’s usually more direct and sales-oriented than other kinds, and unlike your other content, which is likely owned (even if it does end up also being earned), it can exist on multiple platforms.
A content calendar for paid ads doesn’t strictly plan what you want to post; it plans when and where you want to post it, as well as how much you want to spend doing so.
A blog content calendar is for owned media, specifically on a blog, while an ad content calendar is for paid content.
Your blog content calendar likely goes through a somewhat lengthy process from start to finish, starting with initial information gathering, going through researchers, writers, and editors, being published, having quality assurance checks, and so on.
A paid content calendar focuses more strictly on the buyer’s journey with the goal of making sales. It’s the schedule you follow when you plan to get information directly in front of people.
Sometimes these two types are on the same calendar; sometimes, they’re separate. It depends on what you want them to do.
Using a paid content calendar is a good idea for many companies, whether it’s connected to or separate from their regular content calendars. Here are five reasons why.
You can use a paid content calendar not only to determine dates and times but also to finalize where you’ll post your ads and what they’ll say.
For instance, Hootsuite does this (with Google Sheets) when planning its social media campaigns and determining what topic, site, copy, and link to use when it’s ready for the ads to go live.
In the Hootsuite image above, you may have noticed they don’t have dates on those specific campaigns—they’re held under an “evergreen” tab.
This is when having a separate calendar for your paid ad campaigns may be of real benefit: You have a paid campaign that does well. You don’t want to overstay your virtual welcome, but you know it could do well again in the future, with little to no changes to the content.
Why try to dig through old campaigns, whether through your content calendar or your ad history on your chosen site, when you could just organize things in one spreadsheet or another documentation system?
When it’s time to pull out one of these evergreen campaigns, you can simply move it to your dated paid content calendar, and, except for actually posting the ad, you’re done.
In many industries, holidays are big sales times, and, whether or not you’re in sales, holidays like to sneak up on you.
Depending on the type of calendar you use, the program may auto-populate holidays into your calendar. You can also download a template that does this for you, like the one HubSpot created:
If your brand wants a campaign for World UFO Day (who knew?), and it usually takes your team two months to go from brainstorming to promotion, count back two months. Then, add an event titled “Brainstorm World UFO Day Ideas.”
You could even have a reminder a week before saying, “Remind everyone about World UFO Day brainstorming session.”
Depending on the calendar program you use, you could even set it up to repeat your event yearly, so the brainstorming session would already be on your calendar for next year’s holiday.
Your paid ad content calendar should include the anticipated and actual start and end dates of your campaign, but it could also include a daily or weekly breakdown of the campaign’s results.
You’re already monitoring how well your campaign is going; putting the information in the calendar lets you see at a glance whether the campaign is working as planned and consider if you should extend the campaign or end it early.
Since this is all in one central calendar, you can look back or look ahead to see if you can replace an ad that isn’t doing well with an ad you think will perform better—or if you need to delay the start of a new one because of how successful a current campaign is.
Some programs allow you to set priorities for different projects.
For instance, imagine it’s late October, and you want your holiday campaign to be ready to roll by mid-November. However, you also have a cool blog you want to write and promote.
They’re different enough to promote both simultaneously without any kind of conflict, but one is a higher priority than the other.
If you use a program that allows you to prioritize your paid content (like Asana), you give yourself some wiggle room.
High-priority paid content takes precedence over the others, so you ensure those head down the pipeline on time. Lower priority ones stay in the system, and you can get to them later if you need to.
In addition, most of these programs alert you when a project is “late” so you can adjust your dates and change priority levels as needed.
There are a ton of content planning tools available out there, and if you already use a calendar program for your content, chances are you can use it for paid ad campaigns as well.
I have 14 favorite tools for organizing content, but let’s look at just three of them for our purposes: Google Calendar, Asana, and HubSpot.
Who doesn’t love products that are both free and effective?
Google Calendar integrates well with other Google products, so if your organization already uses things like Google Docs for content, you don’t have to do much to make your different products play nicely together.
Like many paid options, you can color-code your entries, set up start and end dates, invite relevant people to view or modify the calendar, and more. When it comes to scheduling, at least, it’s kind of a one-stop-shop.
The downside, when compared to paid options, is that you can’t collaborate directly on the calendar task. Of course, you can integrate this with other Google products, but the collaboration occurs on the products and not the calendar itself.
Asana could be ideal if you like seeing the big picture and the small details with just a click of a button.
You can create a seemingly endless number of projects and subtasks (and subtasks of subtasks), with over 100 integrations available.
One beneficial aspect of Asana is you can look at a graph showing exactly how much each member of your team has on their plate.
This can help when planning your campaigns because you can see—even months in advance—who has the bandwidth to complete different tasks.
If you’re looking for an option encompassing calendars, automated marketing, customer service functions, and more, Hubspot has you covered. Anything you want to do with your content or paid campaigns can probably be done on the platform.
If you’re wavering about whether they’re right for you, they offer a Social Media Content Calendar Template you can download for free. However, it doesn’t have the bells and whistles the paid membership does.
That membership gives you access to many marketing tools, including a highly flexible and easy-to-read social media marketing calendar.
A content calendar that helps you plan when, where, and how you’ll promote your content.
A paid content calendar focuses on the details about your marketing campaign, while a blog calendar focuses on the content you plan to create.
A paid content calendar focuses on the details about your marketing campaign, while a blog calendar focuses on the content you plan to create.
Yes, if you run more than one paid campaign a year, you should use a calendar to keep you organized, plan for holidays, and better monitor your results.
It can help your company in dozens of ways, including pre-planning entire campaigns, easily accessing evergreen materials, preparing for holidays, monitoring and adjusting work, and helping with prioritization.
Calendars are essential to running any kind of business, and using calendars to monitor your paid campaigns could be particularly important.
They help you plan when and where you’ll post content, monitor the success of your campaigns and adjust accordingly, keep track of dates and evergreen content, and more.
If you have a calendar for your blog content, chances are you can use that same calendar—or at least that same program—to house your paid content calendar. However, if you need a new system, you have a ton of content management systems to choose from.
If you need a little extra help, we’re always here to give you a consultation and assist you on your way to marketing success.
How do you use your paid content calendar?
If you’ve ever led a marketing team, you know it’s easy to get overwhelmed by tasks and plans. Numerous blog posts, social media marketing campaigns, and emails crowd your pipeline. But distractions and urgent issues get in the way, and when you check the clock, several hours have passed. It happens all the time: you miss …
The post How To Create A Marketing Calendar That Will Streamline Your Campaigns first appeared on Online Web Store Site.
If you’ve ever led a marketing team, you know it’s easy to get overwhelmed by tasks and plans.
Numerous blog posts, social media marketing campaigns, and emails crowd your pipeline. But distractions and urgent issues get in the way, and when you check the clock, several hours have passed.
It happens all the time: you miss one deadline and end up missing more. The result is a half-baked campaign that fails to hit your goals.
Without a concrete schedule, this becomes an inevitable cycle.
To solve this problem, consider using a marketing calendar.
In my experience, you need a marketing calendar to get a full overview of your team’s deliverables, deadlines, and tasks.
Recent research in an article by Evinex states that marketers who record their strategies are 538% more likely to complete tasks on time. Consider goal-setting as well, as 81% of people who set goals do achieve them.
I’ve worked on plenty of marketing campaigns, and I can tell you that it’s easier to hit your goals when you can streamline your tasks and manage deadlines.
So today, I’ll show you how to create your marketing calendar.
Every task in your marketing calendar should revolve around attracting your target audience. Your marketing efforts’ ultimate purpose is to reach the most customers and get them past the sales funnel.
For example, if you’re offering video games to students, you’ll want to launch aggressive marketing campaigns during school breaks. Similarly, if you’re targeting employed adults, you’ll want to post content during normal break times, after work hours, and or weekends.
Here are questions to consider when planning the activities in your marketing calendar:
You have to think long term to reach the most number of consumers for your marketing campaigns.
Every member of your marketing team has a role to fill. Their responsibilities are often based on their skills, which will determine their tasks in your marketing calendar.
Here are some typical marketing roles:
Here an example of how to make it work for you.
Since most marketers on your team work on different content types or areas, you may want to organize their tasks through other marketing calendars and templates.
Here are common types of marketing calendars to consider:
The specific goal of each calendar is to organize and schedule your marketing initiatives.
Unlike your marketing plan, which lists down your deliverables, a marketing calendar shows when your team can expect to work on a task. Marketers may use several types of calendars to track related activities in one document.
Most successful websites have a specific quantity and frequency for publishing content.
It would be best to plot out the content you must create per week or month. Then, once you’ve determined how often you will promote, consider your marketing budget and your team’s capabilities.
The types of content which you can publish per week include:
A good tip is to finish a consistent number of deliverables each week.
For instance, you can host a podcast episode on Tuesdays and post a long-form blog post every Thursday. Meanwhile, you may aggregate the results of your social media campaigns every Friday.
Yes, it can be challenging to plan and fulfill different types of marketing content. But a consistent weekly plan enables your team to establish a routine and consistently finish their tasks.
For B2C retailers, core themes of marketing campaigns revolve around specific seasons or dates. A millennial fashion brand could regularly promote back-to-school outfits near the end of the summer.
In contrast, B2B brands could focus on their industry’s opportunities and challenges. Due to the pandemic, some businesses may want to cover topics such as “digital transformation,” “future of work,” and “long-term impacts of a recession.”
Now get a spreadsheet and list potential themes that are specific to your industry. Set a meeting and invite your team to brainstorm topics relevant to your target market.
Now use Ubersuggest to find out the search volume of each keyword. Themes with a high search volume are likely to be relevant topics that your target audience searches for.
For this example, I used Ubersuggest to research the phrase “digital transformation.”
I discovered the topic has a pretty high search volume and a moderate SEO difficulty, so it is a good theme to keep in mind.
I highly recommend having various themes and topics to cover each month, especially for brands catering to different buyer personas.
In the long-run, this will help you establish a variety and keep posts fresh.
Next, it’s time to create a marketing calendar backlog.
Think of content projects and marketing deliverables. During the process, you may discover some tasks are better suited for execution at a later date.
Having a content backlog ensures you can document all the ideas for your next campaigns, podcasts, or blog posts.
Here’s an example in Google Sheets to create a content backlog, but you can use other software and apps too.
The document should include the type of content, topic or headline, priority level, and deadline for each content idea.
Coschedule has a useful marketing project prioritization matrix for identifying tasks with the most significant impact on your marketing goals.
They suggest using a “10x versus 10% framework,” which goes like this:
Let’s see how you can put this theory into action:
The most prioritized content should be situated on the top right corner of the chart.
While there are many calendar tools and software in the market, we’ll use Trello for this article as an example.
A Trello kanban board usually consists of tasks that are organized into lists.
However, Trello also has a calendar view that gives users a complete overview of their tasks and deadlines per month.
Here’s how it’s done:
First, create a Trello board.
Hover to the Menu Bar and click “Power-Ups.”
On the “Essential Power-Ups” section, add the “Calendar” to visualize Trello cards in a calendar format.
To create a task, click a date, and choose the “Add Card” button.
Then type the name, deadline, and task description.
You can open up the tool again and complete the following fields:
Trello calendars provide a complete overview of your marketing team’s activities and deadlines. By monitoring deadlines, marketers can set priorities and accurately determine the time it takes to complete each task.
Note: Mark vacations and holidays. These events could impact the schedule for your marketing content.
Planning your marketing initiatives often involve a multi-step process. Prior to publication, most marketing content starts with a draft and requires reviews from superiors.
Here’s how it’s done in Trello with a sample account.
First, a deliverable gets written on the Content Backlog of your Google Sheet. Content with a high level of priority is the first one to get assigned to an author. When a content creator claims a task, the status of the deliverable becomes “In Progress.”
Next, return to Trello and create a card for the task. Add a due date, description, comments, and assign it to a member of your team.
Trello lets you sort cards into “Lists.” The title of each list can be based on the current status of the task, which includes:
If your colleague is working on the task, set the status to “In Progress.”
After submitting the draft, you can classify it as “In Review.”
In this phase, a superior will check the article to make edits or ask revisions. If there are significant changes, the card returns to the “In Progress” column with a new due date.
Once the task receives approval, then the card can be transferred to the “Closed” column.
You can also de-clutter the Trello board by archiving cards upon publication of the post. This removes them from the list.
Now that you’ve launched a marketing calendar, you’re ready to plan your projects for the upcoming weeks or months.
Holiday marketing campaigns take months or weeks to plan.
For instance, the entire bundle of holidays for the end of the year include Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Christmas. Many marketers may begin holiday planning as early as August to prepare for the influx of customers during their busiest time.
There’s no need to come up with specific content to publish yet. Just be aware of the main marketing campaigns and tweak the plan as you see fit.
Aside from preparing for upcoming campaigns, a calendar will help you set a realistic amount of projects. You can create content weeks in advance to hit your marketing goals during peak sales time. Your team won’t be stressed out with a practical schedule or be forced to downsize the campaign due to missed deadlines.
If you want to build a marketing campaign, you need an elaborate plan to succeed.
A marketing calendar lets you determine how far in advance you need to begin your marketing campaigns and the amount of time you have to fulfill them. Setting up tasks and deadlines is the only way to streamline your campaigns and make sure your team is on track to hit their goals.
How will you use your marketing calendar?
The post How To Create A Marketing Calendar That Will Streamline Your Campaigns appeared first on Neil Patel.