There’s no question about it, content is a substantial component of a successful digital marketing strategy, and as savvy marketers, we know the best way to map content is with an editorial calendar. Surprisingly, we heard from LinkedIn that only 30% of marketers have a content strategy documented.
To help close the gap we’re revealing three tips to improve your content calendar. So, whether you’re in the midst of creating a calendar or refining it, here are some important considerations.
1. Keep Your Calendar Current
What’s happening in or around your industry? Is the economy impacting your business or does it affect your customers’ interaction with your business? Perhaps there’s a new regulation that is affecting your business or services that you can speak to.
It’s important to produce content that it is both informative and timely. After all, chances are your clients are searching for that information online. Increase your reach, while also positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Revisit your content calendar and update based on these things. Do not just set it and forget it.
2. Make Your Content Accessible
Optimize your content to rank on search engines. Because, unless you have a built readership actively visiting your site or blog, you’ll need to make your content easily accessible online. Including a strong SEO strategy can help maximize your content’s reach and increase traffic to your site.
Approach your content from a customer perspective and use personas to help develop topics. Personas can be instrumental in uncovering customer interests, challenges, and ultimately, what they’re searching for online so that you can create content topics around those subjects.
Now that you have content topics we recommend honing in on a keyword strategy. There are a number of platforms and tools to help you build a strong search strategy. We’re partial to MOZ, SEMRush, Buzzsumo, and, of course, Google’s Keyword Planner.
3. Choose the Type of Content
Is your topic better suited for a blog post, white paper, guide, or video? To help decide which is right start by answering the following questions:
- Is the topic bringing awareness to a prospect or is the prospect further down the funnel in the consideration phase? Shorter, less involved pieces of content work best for building awareness. Whereas more in-depth pieces are better suited for consideration content.
- Will the content be gated? Gating content lets you to capture visitor information allowing you to collect more data from prospects and further market to them.
- How long will it take to create the content? Establishing an appropriate (and feasible) amount of time for production will help keep the calendar manageable.
Content calendars don’t have to be daunting. Use these tips as a framework to uncover topics, increase visibility, and execute realistic timelines.
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