If you intend to put any content online in any form this year you should be thinking of yourself as a content publisher. You should know in advance the type of content you want to produce for each of the coming months. One resource that can help greatly with this is an editorial calendar.
Theme based content
Planning ahead means you can allocate themes for your content to different times of the year. These themes could be based on products and/or services you are promoting, the time of year, or anticipated developments in your business. A theme could last a month, a quarter, or could even be used throughout the year.
If you know the products you want to create or services you want to provide for certain times of the year it will be easier to plan appropriate content. If you can identify how content can help your marketing it will be easier to decide the approach and tone of the content you need to create. Planning a theme in advance on a calendar means you will be better prepared and have time to come up with ideas and content, and find the images you want to use.
Effective content
Planning makes it more likely that the content you are going to produce will be more effective, appropriate, and enjoyable for your target audience. It means you can build in time for editing, so your finished content has optimised titles, and is focused on conveying the message that you want it to send.
Quality content
By planning correctly and following the plan you will have more time to improve the quality of your content, whether you’re writing and editing it yourself or outsourcing the work to others. Planning in advance means you can build in the time to produce the highest quality content and have it ready when it needs to be delivered to your audience.
Repurposed content
Planning means you can also build in the time to create the different forms of content you need. You can ensure you have the time to create blog posts, reports, videos, Facebook posts and more, all based around a particular piece of content or theme.
Regular content
Having a publishing schedule that gives you time to create your content increases your chances of producing content regularly. If your audience learns to expect a certain type of content from you at certain times, in certain places, they are more likely to adopt the habit of consuming your content.
We’ve all seen blogs and websites that have been abandoned for months and we rarely return. An editorial calendar can help you get in front of your content creation workload and save your sites from becoming neglected ghost sites.
Enable collaboration
Having an editorial calendar you can show to others can also help increase collaboration. It will be easier for you to give guest writers, bloggers and outsourcers guidelines for the content you require and show that you are well organised and have given your content a lot of thought.
Monitor your progress
Completing an editorial calendar means you will have to set expectations and deadlines. Once it is set up you can refer to it and be clear on the content you should be creating right now and in the near future. If you begin to drift from those deadlines you should have plenty of time to adjust your efforts and publish on schedule. You will also be able to spot content that is going off topic or that needs to be moved to a more appropriate time. It can prevent you creating content at the last moment and being rushed into publishing content that is irrelevant and has no purpose.
An editorial calendar will help you have a better organised and planned business. It will keep yourself and anyone you outsource to on track. It will help you create content that is published and distributed according to a plan which means it will stand a better chance of achieving its objectives.