As marketing and design consultancy, we place a lot of value in the use of an editorial calendar in online marketing. We believe that a good editorial calendar is the backbone of any successful online marketing campaign. A well-crafted calendar provides the structure and direction to ensure that marketing content is consistently on message, on time, and on target.
Editorial Calendar Defined
Simply put, an editorial calendar is a schedule of the content that you will publish. Within the context of online (or digital marketing), it’s the schedule of when you’ll publish blog posts, send newsletters, or share content on social media.
Five Ways to Harness the Power of an Editorial Calendar
To help you make the most of your online marketing, we’re sharing five tips to help you harness the power of an editorial campaign. Use of this planning tool will certainly help you achieve a stronger return on the investment you put into marketing your business or organization.
1. Set Out A Full Year of Content
An editorial calendar should run a full 12 months. That allows you (and your team) to see clearly what content needs to be published months in advance. It enables you to coordinate your content with your calendar – both your business’s calendar and your own personal schedule. You can set out a timeline for sharing relevant, valuable content to help your target audience get the information they need when want it.
By using an editorial calendar, you can publish content event at your busiest times of the year. During slower months, we can write the content for the expected busier times. Then, when that busy time arrives, you need only quickly review and update the content should anything have changed.
2. Use a Flexible, Easy-to-Access Planning Tool
There are countless project management and editorial calendar planning tools available. While some are definitely better than others, whatever works best for you is the tool that you should use: Google Sheets, Asana, Trello, and more can all be effective methods for plotting out what and when you will share online.
3. Be Specific in Editorial Planning Notes
A key purpose of advanced planning of your editorial calendar is to be efficient. Part of being efficient is making sure that your planning notes are detailed enough so you can make sense of them months later. For example, for a blog post, make sure that you document the topic, required length, expected title, anticipated keywords, potential links, and an image or likely image to include. Of course, you might need to adjust the keywords or focus when you sit down to produce the content, but with detailed, specific notes, you will not need to do so from scratch.
4. Use a Single Calendar for All Your Online Content
For smaller businesses, consultancies, and organizations, it can be overwhelming when pressured to be everywhere online. While that’s not necessary, it’s helpful to use a flexible enough planning tool so that as you expand into new areas of content (from monthly blog posts, to a monthly newsletter, to active social media posting on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) you can maintain a single place for organizing all of that editorial calendar content planning.
5. Create Your Editorial Calendar Today!
There is no time like the present! While we’re still in the first month of the new year, it’s a great time to put together your organization’s editorial calendar. Take advantage of the power of this great planning tool to deliver meaningful results from your online marketing efforts. Whether you prefer to use a template, want to add one to your WordPress website, or would like our help in moving ahead, don’t wait to power up on your marketing practices.
Get Help Creating Your Editorial Calendar
