If you’ve been following our blog lately, you will have noticed that our volume of content has increased as part of our content marketing strategy – especially with the introduction of our new Digital Marketing Postcard.  Blog posts, newsletters, YouTube videos, guest blogging, social media status updates…it can all be a lot to keep track of, and stay on top of.  That’s why we rely heavily on our own editorial content calendar: we brainstorm to come up with a list of interesting topics at the start of the new year, and create a publishing schedule centered around those topics on a monthly basis.  From there, we can add and remove as necessary to visualize a complete and realistic content calendar to get us through the upcoming year.

Why Plan Ahead?

Can you ever think of a time when being proactive wasn’t a good idea?  Content calendars are a great way to stay organized and keep your team focused on the game plan.  Think of your publishing schedule as a path, with each topic as a stepping stone to your end goal (which could be to reach a certain number of followers or leads generated, etc.).  The easiest way to make your path flow is to see it all laid out before you pour the concrete.  Some topics may enhance the ones before or after it, or may be best put together in a series.  Figure out a way to have your topics build off of each other, so that it’s easy to integrate social media updates, or newsletters or videos, and have a sensible flow to reach your audience and business goals.

It’s also smart to take advantage of a content calendar if you business is seasonal or has specific product launch dates; book end your important dates with your best and most marketable content, and publish as often as possible leading up to them.  This will help to generate more interest and buzz right when you need it most.

If you’re a procrastinator or suffer from the occasional writer’s block, then this is another great tool for you.  Set aside a few days to come up with a few posts all at once and stockpile them for a rainy day when your brain just isn’t in a writing mood.

Stay Current

If current events present an amazing topic opportunity into your lap (which happens often!), don’t waste it!  Simply move your schedule down by a post or two, and squeeze it in. Even though you are planning your topics or themes in advance, it’s still very important to stay active in current events so that you can generate relevant content when your audience is most interested.

Speaking of your audience, they will be your most important resource for planning your content calendar.  Listen to their questions, respond to their feedback, ask questions back, and find out what they REALLY want to hear from you.  They are the ones reading your posts, so you need to make sure you’re writing what they want.  As we’ve been doing in our Monthly Marketing Mixer, collect questions from your audience and schedule responses to them in your upcoming posts.

How?

You can use whatever tool makes the most sense for your business: MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, a giant whiteboard, or the WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin…the team at Umami Marketing has recently been using Asana’s free task management tool.  It allows you to assign tasks to a specific user, input due dates, add comments, and receive email reminders when tasks are coming due.  It’s been working well for us so far, and helps the team stay focused on the upcoming topics on the schedule.

Optimization

Now that you see how easy it is to come up with a schedule, it’s time to optimize it.  Start with your monthly theme or topic focus, and do some keyword research (Are you already lost? Moz.com offers this great read in their Beginner’s Guide to SEO).  Use this information to create your longtail phrase, or what people should be typing to find your content, then come up with a few other variations of that phrase as well.

As you work on your monthly content, be sure to wrap these keywords or longtail phrases into your posts as best you can.  Try not to be awkward or obvious about it, and keep in mind that the main goal of your blog posts should be to educate and inspire with quality content; SEO optimizing is really just the icing on the cake.  If you can keep your posts organized under these monthly themes and write with your keywords and phrases in mind, you should start seeing more search engine traffic make its way to your blog.

Doing your content planning in advance will be a challenge at first, but having an organized schedule to rely upon offers significant benefits.  Your team will appreciate the defined direction of a editorial calendar, and your audience will enjoy a more cohesive blog, where posts flow into one another like a storybook. With half a year to go until 2015, it’s not too late to get started on what content you need to focus on; good luck and feel free to contact us for any of your digital marketing or SEO needs along the way!

What do you find helps when creating your business’ content calendar? Let us know in the comments below!