How to set up a content marketing calendar

In short, a content calendar:

• helps everyone involved in the creation and publishing of content know what’s happening when it’s happening, and who’s responsible for it. It provides a full framework for content creation.
• provides structure to your content marketing process. You can plan out far in advance what topics you want to cover and when you want to publish them. This also gives you time to find writers or create other assets like photography or videos.
• is a central point for information about posts/content titles or ideas; campaign themes; blog post tags; author name/team member assigned; target keyword(s); publishing dates; links that need updating.

The additional information you can add are status updates, the desired length of the piece, draft and review dates, internal notes, and anything else that your company needs to share. You can set up a simple blog editorial calendar in Word or Excel, or use bigger tools such as Google Calendar, ClickUp, or Trello.

Check your analytics & strategy before creating a content calendar

It’s not just about what you create, but how you create it. To effectively plan for your content calendar, review your content marketing strategy again. Here you’ve decided who you’re writing for, what the goals are you want to achieve, and how to get there. Reflect this in the content calendar. What questions do you still need to answer for your audience? Are there any events or holidays in the year that you can target? The calendar will help you address the timelines of the implementation of your content strategy. You can also use data to determine when it is best to post or schedule an email campaign blast, a social media post, or a blog post. Targeting the calendar for events is part one, but you have sources of data from your social media engagement and email engagement that tells you how YOUR audience likes to get content: use that information to get the most response.

Share your resource requirements

It’s really important that when you create your content marketing calendar and plan out your content ahead of time, you think about all of the resources required to actually get things done. Whether it’s a live stream that needs a webcam and internet, or a copywriter to help support your blog, you need to plan your resources to be able to deliver the content. A content calendar showing this (and if they have been sourced successfully) will help prevent things from falling through the cracks.

No matter how your team likes to work, a content calendar can help you better manage your workflow.

Whether you’re a team of one or 100 content creators, having an organized calendar for your content strategy can make it easier to manage your workflow and keep everyone on the same page. It allows you to clearly outline all of your upcoming pieces across channels and organize them within a system that makes sense for your business. In fact, a content calendar can work wonders in streamlining your entire process, helping you:

• Keep track of all your content in one place
• Make sure you are publishing new content regularly
• Plan for the needs of any campaigns or projects throughout the year