What Is A Content Calendar?
A content calendar is a framework that helps companies streamline content creation and distribution and ensure their strategic marketing plan is efficiently executed. If you're wondering how to create a content calendar using a template, you should know that it's much easier than you probably expected. Editorial and social media calendars come in different formats, including spreadsheets and tools integrated into your project management software. For starters, you choose your content types and topics, the channels you'll leverage to promote your content and generate new leads, and the keywords you'll optimize for. These documents are created with long-term success in mind in an effort to achieve marketing goals. Not to mention they help you track each piece of content's performance so you can optimize low-performing articles and create more top-performing pieces.
In this article, find out how you can create a content schedule and what the differences are between a content calendar, an editorial calendar, and a social media calendar.
The Benefits Of Using A Content Calendar Template
1. Consistency
Creating a content calendar every month or quarterly helps you centralize and organize your content marketing efforts. You don't have to search for topics daily or weekly, and your team members know what types of content they have to create. Also, you can create a balance of topics so you don't repeat similar subjects. This is invaluable for content creators and authors, as they know which topics have already been scheduled and don't bring the same ideas. As a result, you finish content quickly, and social media managers can schedule posting on time and measure content marketing performance.
2. Transparency And Collaboration
Filling out your content calendar template is important so everyone on your team can organize their work, collaborate efficiently, and finish their tasks without delays. Everyone can simply look at your content marketing calendar and see what you expect of them down the line. Additionally, social media managers, eLearning marketers, and managers can check each piece of content's performance and provide feedback. Therefore, you know which content types work well for you and which ones should be abandoned.
3. Accountability
A content planning calendar usually details who is doing what, when content is published, and how it performs. Therefore, everyone knows who worked on certain projects and what specific tasks they performed. This creates a sense of responsibility and accountability in case marketing results are low or small mistakes are made. Moreover, every team member is in the loop regarding deadlines and publishing times.
4. Competitive Advantage
Are you creating content based on research and analyses or guesswork? A comprehensive blog content calendar helps you create targeted content that already performs well among your buyer personas. Therefore, you know that the content you create won't go in vain, and there is an audience interested in reading and watching it. In fact, 64% of highly successful companies fill out a content marketing plan to establish an organized editorial strategy.
Editorial Vs. Content Calendar: Which One Do You Need?
While often used interchangeably, these two serve different purposes. An editorial calendar template offers the bigger picture of a company's content strategy and is usually produced monthly, quarterly, and yearly. On the other hand, with a content calendar, you detail the day-to-day content your team must create and publish on various channels. Editorial calendars provide an overview of the themes your team must focus on during the year, while a content calendar specifies the topics of each article. So, why choose one of the two? Why not create both of them to make your marketing efforts even more powerful and align them with company goals?
You may need to fill out a marketing plan template for your marketing initiatives, but content and editorial calendars are important, too, for a social media strategy. Additionally, content calendars allow team members to focus on their individual content and track down their work's performance. You also indicate deadlines so everyone knows when they should turn their tasks in. Moreover, editorial calendars plan for seasonal themes, including Christmas, Easter, and other holidays. So, content strategists ensure content is prepared for those occasions, making your content timely and relevant.
Steps To Create A Content And An Editorial Calendar
Yes, these two may serve different roles, but many of the creation steps are shared. Let's dive deeper and see exactly what you need to include in your content and editorial calendar templates.
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Define Your Goals And Target Audience
To create both content and an editorial calendar, you first need to establish your goals and target buyers. Do you want to generate leads, boost brand awareness, improve ROI, or become a thought leader in your industry? Maybe you want to aim for all of them. If so, you must highlight content types and themes for each one of them. Maybe webinars will help you establish yourself as a thought leader, and eBooks will serve as gated content to attract new leads. Ensure you connect each goal with measurable KPIs so you can track their performance along the way.
Next, you must identify your ideal target buyers and understand which topics appeal to them. To gather this knowledge, you should research their needs, challenges, and preferences. Only then can you produce content that aligns with their demographic.
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Find A Template
To create content and an editorial calendar, you first need to create or find an existing template, which is a pre-designed layout indicating your content creation ideas. In basic calendar templates, you'll find fields like content titles, types of content, target audience, dates of publication, and chosen channels. Therefore, you streamline your content creation process, making your overall content marketing strategy more effective. You may use easily accessible tools like Google Docs and Excel to create your own template, as these tools are understood by most professionals.
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Choose Your Channels
This is once again referring to both content and editorial calendars. Are you leveraging email marketing, social media promotions, and blog post creation? If you're utilizing social media, which channels are you publishing on? Your choices depend on your target audience and which platforms they are most active on. For example, B2B audiences use LinkedIn and Facebook more than Instagram and TikTok. Additionally, you may include podcasts in your calendar content, as they are quite popular with B2B buyers.
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Pick Your Topics
Creating content calendars depends on fresh and evergreen content ideas. Sure, you also account for holidays and trending matters, but your everyday content should be engaging and relevant to your niche. Depending on your audience segmentation, your topics should target each buyer persona according to their funnel stage. To that end, you can arrange brainstorming sessions with your team and come up with ideas that will generate interest.
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Competitive Analysis
When you build an editorial calendar, you can't guess which topics perform well. You should analyze your competitors' success and pinpoint which subjects bring them traffic and turn their domain into a lead generation website. We don't mean that you should copy what they do but simply take inspiration. Also, check whether they have gaps in their content and leverage the opportunity to create something unique.
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Decide On Publishing Frequency
This step is pivotal when you're building both a content and editorial calendar. Making your posting schedule predictable helps build trustworthy relationships, and your team doesn't have to worry about last-minute deadlines as they already know the schedule. The frequency depends on how much content you can produce—you can make it daily, weekly, or monthly.
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Indicate Your Budget
This step is included in editorial calendars so your teams know exactly how much money they have to create and promote content. Therefore, your editorial team can arrange a realistic volume of content to produce monthly, and your social media manager can decide on how many promotional campaigns they can start.
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Content Workflow
What is the process of starting and finishing a piece of content? This workflow should be indicated inside an editorial calendar template. For example, you may start with a keyword search, develop the title, write the article, edit it, make final changes, add visuals, publish it, assess its performance, and make modifications if necessary.
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Be Flexible
Have you heard the saying, "The only constant is change"? Your editorial calendar should always be open to changes and alterations depending on unique circumstances. You should be able to shift your content marketing tactics if your leadership provides you with updated company goals or if there is huge industry news you should cover. Be adaptable and embrace new opportunities that can push you to new heights.
How Do Social Media Calendars Differ From Content Calendars?
While content calendar templates detail the daily content creation activities, social media calendars focus on social media marketing tactics to promote the produced content. A social media content calendar is created after content like articles, eBooks, webinars, and podcasts is developed. These blueprints include the topics, formats, dates, times, and platforms where your content will get published.
There are several reasons you need a social media content plan. For starters, you save time as you already know what content you will publish without having to brainstorm ideas at the last minute. Audience consistency is another heavy plus, as people like knowing when to expect content from you. As a result, you keep audiences engaged and the algorithm alive. Lastly, content planning allows you to align your posts with important dates and holidays. For example, you may need to publish marketing campaigns on specific days and times.
So, what do you have to do before creating your own social media calendar? Start by identifying your top and lowest-performing social media posts to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Focus on those that had increased engagement and try to create similar ones. Take a look at your competitors' pages and highlight what they're doing right. Maybe their post types and publishing frequency are more successful than yours. Additionally, to accelerate business growth, map out your customers' journeys to understand the touchpoints you have to engage with them on social media. Lastly, pick an automation tool to plan your publishing needs beforehand.
How Can You Create A Social Media Calendar?
To create a social media calendar, you must start with the post types and formats. Consider what works best with your audience. It could be blog posts, videos, infographics, case study articles, GIFs, or memes. You can compare your content to your competitors' to see what works for them. However, it's best to identify your top performers, as what works for a competitor may not work for you. A social media strategy should also indicate the ideal times and days to post. This decision is based on your audience's location and what times they are active on social media platforms. For example, if you are operating in the UK but your target audience is in the US, you must schedule your posts according to their time, not yours. At the same time, you should analyze your engagement and see what times and days bring you the most traffic. Channels like Facebook offer you a chart showing which days and times your audience can be reached.
Next, you should figure out your posting frequency. Posting too little can result in diminished engagement while posting too much can make your audience feel overwhelmed. Experiment with your social media manager calendar to figure out the frequency that works best for you. Moreover, you may want to create a quarterly social media content calendar template. Why? Simply because it keeps you organized, focusing on themes and topics that have already proven successful. Divide each quarter into weeks and assign content for every day and week to ensure quick implementation.
Let's not forget about visuals. Make sure you create high-quality and engaging material that complements your content perfectly. This should be on-brand so potential eLearning buyers can see it's you. Lastly, you should use a content calendar tool to schedule your posts in advance and save time.
What Does A Content Calendar Template Look Like?
If you have decided to create a content, editorial, or social media calendar, you're probably searching for content calendar templates. Creating your own is also an option, but let's face it, it takes time, and there are so many free resources already online. If you want to create a marketing plan and content calendar, there are viable solutions that let you organize marketing projects, content, and social media posts. You can also create tasks and attach files to keep things fully organized. Asana is a great option, as it offers free content calendars and social media calendar templates. Inside the app, project templates and task templates are pre-designed, saving you time and effort. You start by creating a project and then adding subtasks in it, assigning individuals to work on them.
But that's not the only example of a content calendar template. Semrush offers SEO-focused content management tools that allow you to schedule your content. You may even use the platform to generate SEO briefs, conduct Search Engine Optimization, and analyze your written content. Furthermore, other templates concentrate on freelancer management as they collaborate with them regularly. One of the most popular and famous social media calendar templates is Hootsuite's. The platform offers a column-based layout, allowing you to view your upcoming and past social media posts while recommending optimal posting times based on past performance. Lastly, other templates are created specifically for small businesses with easy-to-read charts, automated expense-tracking processes, and categorized spending.
Key Takeaway
An effective marketing strategy execution depends on many things, including a comprehensive and streamlined content calendar template filled with all the necessary details. Organized content planning ensures consistency with your audience and improved collaboration within your company. Anyone can see who is working on a specific task, bringing an extra layer of transparency and accountability in case mistakes happen. But do you need a content calendar or an editorial calendar? While the first details day-to-day tasks and activities to produce content, the latter highlights the overall content needs within a year. Creating both of them requires many details, including topics and themes, templates, promotional channels, budget projections, competitive analysis, and your publishing frequency.
Social media calendars are also important for your lead generation techniques to shine and reach potential buyers. Once again, you must identify successful topics and themes that your audience reacts to. Whether it's videos, infographics, or memes, you should know what works best. Then, you should understand the right timing and frequency. To boost sales enablement, you should strike a healthy balance and not overwhelm people with too many uploads. Once you understand the necessity of content calendars, you can start looking for content calendar ideas and software that help you streamline various business tactics.
