Marketing and communication teams often struggle with the challenge of continuously producing relevant and exciting content for existing and potential customers.

Even with skilled writers and experienced social media specialists, continually producing new pertinent material might seem difficult. The solution lies in creating a content marketing calendar.

Making the most of your company's time is simple with the help of a content calendar. It works well for organising content development and helps tackle future tasks for your team into manageable chunks.

With a content calendar, you can focus on the work itself and spend less time worrying about what to write. To get you started on making your own content schedule, we have outlined key principles for a successful calendar.

Set your objectives

What are your main marketing goals? The best channel and format should be chosen based on the response to the inquiry; is the goal of the article to generate new leads, direct readers to a website, increase the visibility of your brand, or even increase your social media following?

The targets you establish have a big impact on who, where, and how frequently you create material. Everyone involved in marketing efforts must be aware of their objectives both before and during the planning process.

Audit your content

You need to have a comprehensive understanding of your current digital footprint before creating your calendar.

You should consider:

• Outdated profiles
• KPIs and objectives by the platform for each branded account
• Your intended audience's personas and demographics
• Who in your team is responsible for what?
• Your most effective campaigns, postings, and strategies
• Campaign failures and areas for improvement
• Each platform’s KPIs

Make a note of how frequently you now post on each social network as part of your audit. Analyse your analytics to see if there are any hints regarding how posting frequency or timing affects engagement.

Choose your channels

Learn which channels are used by your customers, both existing and potential. This will enable you to pinpoint the content you ought to concentrate on.

Publishing material in a variety of formats and on different platforms can help you reach a wider audience. However, you must first ensure you have the resources necessary to use the platforms you select. Instead of randomly posting on every platform you can think of, give priority to your most significant channels and concentrate on producing high-quality content.

Commence with the current year

When you begin to plan your material, start with finding appropriate holidays, celebratory days, trade shows, and seminars, and use these as the basis for brainstorming ideas for content. This simple step will assist you in determining the type of seasonal content you will require in the future and assist you in projecting the workload, allowing your team to plan ahead.

Add your own content

Once all of the crucial dates have been noted, begin to fill in the blanks with relevant content suggestions. This material may consist of:

• Theme posts: Do you attend a conference or a trade show? Is there a debate unfolding in your industry? Follow the story and quickly seize the hot topics.Articles written by subject-matter experts for other blogs that discuss your products and industry news.
• Press releases about a new product or service, study findings, or the expansion of your business, to name a few examples.
• Videos or images from projects, campaigns, and events.
• Stories and interviews that can be viewed as video or written content.
• Use evergreen content 
• Evergreen content - content that will never be out of date - will always be beneficial to your clients and your business. Themes that remain relevant are frequently searched for online, so this type of content is likely to continue receiving traffic even after it has generated some initial buzz.

By including links to your current content on related subjects, you can also easily reintroduce your readers to your earlier timeless articles and blog entries.

When your timetable is delayed, evergreen material can also come to your rescue. Since it can be developed and published whenever you want, it is a good idea to have pre-written material somewhere so that you may use it when your team needs to focus on other efforts. Your calendar should have a spot designated for ideas for evergreen content that can be used at any time.

Repurpose earlier content

Not every content needs to be written from scratch. The majority of businesses have valuable content in their archives that hasn't been used, like consumer survey results.

Older blog posts can also be updated and utilised through various means, such as by repurposing them into videos. Your potential customers may look for information on various platforms, which is why it can be a good idea to present similar ideas in different formats. By addressing several target audiences, you will maximise the value of all the valuable material you have produced.

Need help with content marketing? Get in touch!

I-COM have a dedicated content marketing team working across a broad range of ecommerce, legal, recruitment and education, plus many more. Get in touch to see how we can improve your brand awareness, obtain links back to your website, grow your visibility, and help generate leads through engaging, strategic content. 

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