Do you need help keeping your content marketing efforts on track? Do you find yourself publishing content haphazardly without a clear plan or strategy? If so, it's time to consider creating a publishing calendar. But what exactly is a publishing calendar, and why do you need one? In this blog post, I'll explore the answers to these questions and provide tips on creating a successful publishing calendar that will help you achieve your content marketing objectives. What is a publishing calendar? A publishing calendar is a schedule that outlines when you plan to publish content, what type of content you plan to publish, and where you plan to publish it. It's a roadmap for your content marketing efforts. Your calendar should include goals so the team understands objectives clearly — this is essential to ensure your content is relevant, valuable, and aligned with your business strategy. Why do you need a publishing calendar? There are several reasons why a publishing calendar is essential for effective content marketing. First, it ensures that you have a steady stream of content going out on a regular basis. This helps build your brand's visibility and credibility in the eyes of your target audience. Additionally, a publishing calendar makes it easier to coordinate your efforts across multiple channels and team members, ensuring that everyone is on the same page. When working with a team, it is important to have some flexibility in your content calendar to allow for last-minute changes, updates, or additions. Leave some room in your schedule to accommodate any unexpected events. When should you create a publishing calendar? The best time to create a publishing calendar is at the beginning of an overall marketing campaign. Let’s say your company wants to develop leads for a specific product, territory, or audience type. To generate those leads, you’ll need several types of content, all working in harmony, to create a branded, coherent, consistent message that educates the audience on why they want to choose your company. Different types of content take different lengths of time to generate — while a blog post might take a day or two, planning a webinar or shooting a video could take a month or longer. The calendar will keep you on track so that all the different content pieces can be produced, published, tracked, and analyzed in sync. Doing so will help you create a comprehensive content campaign that generates new business. Content types to include in your publishing calendar Now that you understand the importance of a publishing calendar, let's take a look at some of the content types you can include in your calendar: Blog posts Blog posts are one of the most popular types of content for a reason. They're easy to create, they're shareable, and they're great for driving traffic to your site. Use blog posts to highlight thought- leadership, recap recent webinars, or write an employee spotlight post to support recruitment efforts. Your calendar should include time to interview an SME, draft, review, edit, and publish. And don’t forget to include the Graphic Designer so they have time to create a header image, that will also match the image used in the social media post. Social media posts - paid and organic Social media is a great way to connect with your target audience and build brand awareness. Include a mix of curated content and original content to keep your followers engaged. Always promote your blog posts on social media — this will help drive top-of-funnel traffic — so you don’t have to rely on SEO alone. If your company attends industry events, post which events you’re attending and encourage people to schedule a time to meet with you. And don’t forget to use hashtags and tag people to help drive awareness. Webinars and videos Video content continues to be increasingly popular, and for good reason. It's engaging, shareable, and great for building brand awareness. Always allow for more time to create a video than, say, a blog post due to the additional steps involved. While a blog might consist of an interview, draft, review, edit, and publish process, creating a video includes all that and writing the script, planning the shoot, filming the video, editing the video, and adding music and special effects. All of this takes time and should be planned at least a couple of months in advance of the blog and social posts. For webinars, don’t forget about adding an email campaign. eBooks and whitepapers eBooks and whitepapers are great for lead generation. They provide in-depth information on a specific topic and are perfect for attracting prospects who are interested in what you have to offer. They follow the same basic process as a blog in terms of interviews, drafts, and revisions, but for an eBook you’ll want multiple SMEs and will need additional time for review. Email is another integral part of any content campaign and should definitely be included in the calendar to coincide with social media posts — the idea being, they see the email in their Inbox and then they see a similar post on LinkedIn — this builds brand awareness through repetition. For webinars, you’ll want to send out at least 3 invitation emails, each with new information, that start a month before the event. And always send a follow up email after the event. For emails, you’ll want a simple banner image with your logo, and it’s always a good idea to A/B test Subject lines, email body, and even landing pages. Landing pages To generate leads, you’ll need forms for prospects to fill out. That’s where a well-designed landing page comes into play. To drive visitors to your landing page, you need to include links from your email, blogs, social media, and even pop-ups on your website — so people are funneled into your lead generation platform, like Hubspot. In conclusion, a publishing calendar is an essential tool for effective content marketing. By planning and organizing your content strategy, you'll be able to build your brand's visibility and credibility, while also improving your overall results. For more examples, contact Michael Rohde today and kick-start your publishing calendar today.
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