The importance of maintaining a content marketing calendar

In my previous blog post titled How to Add Method to The Content Marketing Madness I briefly touched upon the point of maintaining a content marketing calendar so that you always know what you’re doing, how you are doing it and at what time you are doing it. Most people call it “Content Marketing Editorial Calendar” but here I’m not just talking about writing content and hence, organising topics and assigning them to various days; I’m talking about scheduling everything that you need to do in order to implement a result-oriented content marketing strategy.

Content marketing calendar helps you define a vision

The biggest problem with content marketing is when the enthusiasm wears off people are often at a loss, especially when you are a small business. What to do? And even if we do it, is it worth it? Aren’t we wasting time needlessly publishing blog posts that nobody reads? Why post links to various social networking websites?

You don’t come across such doubts when you are just launching your content marketing campaign because then you’re full of enthusiasm and confidence. Then, after maybe a month or so, you don’t experience much improvement. The search engine traffic doesn’t improve. You don’t see many people coming to your website. Your sales haven’t increased. You aren’t getting more leads. Your developing doubts – are you making a big mistake investing so much in content marketing?

But you know content marketing works. It is working for other businesses. Then why isn’t it working for you?

It is working for other businesses because they have already gone through the phase that you are going through right now and passed through it unscathed. They had prepared. They had a calendar and they simply stuck to it.

Once you have developed a content marketing calendar and written down the sort of effort that would be required, the sort of budget that will need to be allocated, and a long list of pros and cons that may come your way after a few weeks or a few months, you are already prepared for the phase of discouragement. Even if you are not experienced enough to anticipate lean periods, at least you know what you’re going to do for the next 2 months – yes, don’t create a content marketing calendar just for a few weeks. At least focus on the next 2 months.

A content marketing calendar will also help you formulate a strategy according to the resources you have or you may have in the coming days so that you don’t stretch yourself or go over budget. For instance, if you know that in order to publish new content for the next 2 months you will be requiring at least $ 3000, you must have that much money with you.

Doesn’t it all sound like a “plan” rather than a “calendar”? Yes, it does sound like a plan, but with dates allocated. I’m calling it a calendar because then you know that if today is January 20, 2015, exactly what blog post you will be publishing on February 15, 2015, what exact steps you will be taking to promote either your latest content or some existing piece of content and how you will handle or incorporate some sudden developments – having to write a blog post on a sudden political development or a natural catastrophe or scientific breakthrough.

Do you need a dedicated calendar application to maintain a content marketing calendar? Besides, how do you create such a calendar?

Rather than a calendar application I would recommend a spreadsheet application. You can use Google Docs (because then the documents can be accessed remotely by everybody) or you can use Microsoft Excel.

Open a new spreadsheet and rename the first worksheet as something like “Publishing Calendar”. You can insert another worksheet and rename it as “Marketing Calendar”. Why have separate worksheets? It is easier to maintain different activities.

Anyway, go back to the “Publishing Calendar” and in the top row, create the following columns:

ID: A unique ID can be assigned to every piece of content so that you can enter related information in different worksheets.
Date: On which date that particular piece of content will be published?
Format: What sort of content are you going to create? Blog post? Webpage? Video? Info graphic? PDF? Slide? Stop Motion Animation?
New or Existing: Are you revising/streamlining existing content for creating new content from scratch?
Topic or Headline: The topic on which the webpage or the blog post will be created.
Where: Whether you’ll be publishing the piece of content on your own website or blog or somewhere else.
Author: Who will be creating/writing that particular piece of content?
Responsible: If yours is a bigger organisation and you have a dedicated content marketing team, exactly who will be responsible for the timely publication of that particular piece of content?
Current Status: What is the current status of that content? Is it being written? Is it being edited and proofread? Is it being reviewed?
Visuals: What sort of images or videos will be used with this content?
Topic Categories: Under what categories this content will be published?
Keywords and meta data: What keywords should be targeted while creating this piece of content?
Call to action: Every piece of content must have a call to action. What is going to be for this piece of content?
Related URLs: Is related content already existing? Are there some existing URLs you would like to be linked to from this piece of content?

After you have created these columns you can start filling in the details and building your publishing calendar.

Simultaneous you can also move onto the marketing calendar and create the following columns:

Content ID: This unique ID was created in the “Content Publishing” worksheet.
Date: The date on which this particular marketing activity will be carried out.
Channels: What channels you are going to use to promote your content – Facebook, other websites, email broadcast, Twitter, LinkedIn, et cetera.
Format Conversion: Can this content be converted to another format? For example, can you create a slideshow or video presentation with the help of this content and then submit it to the appropriate social media website?

Actually, this can go on and on and it depends on how comprehensive your content marketing is going to be. Somewhere you can also include analytics and the changes carried out due to the data derived from those analytic tools.

How to add method to the content marketing madness

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Adding method to content writing madness

There is so much talk about content marketing on the Internet that it has become a panacea for all Internet marketing and search engine optimization problems. Interestingly, the hype is not misplaced. Content marketing is actually powerful. Still, it works for a selected few. Why?

People often forget that you need to have a marketing bent of mind in order to be a successful marketer. What makes you a successful marketer?

You understand the inherent strength of the product or service
You understand the inherent desires and problems of your target audience
You create a compelling message (or get it created by someone who can) that can convince people that the product or service you are trying to market can actually solve their problems
Use the most appropriate channels to spread your message
Analyze people’s reactions
Tweak the message and reconsider the broadcasting channels based on the conclusions you draw out of the analysis
Repeat steps 3-6 until you feel that you have optimized your marketing strategy

Sounds simple, right? Businesses are ready to pay millions of dollars to individuals who can carry out these activities. So no, it is not as simple as it sounds.

What I’m getting at?

What does it have to do with adding method to the content marketing madness?

The problem with content marketing is everybody who can write and publish blog posts and social media updates (mostly on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn) starts calling himself or herself a “content marketer”. An ability to write content is a different thing and marketing content is a totally different thing. Since many people think that, since they can write, they can also market, they start providing content marketing services, and this is where madness manifests. There are hundreds of thousands of content marketing companies on the Internet adding little value.

I have been providing content writing services for almost a decade now and even till now I don’t market my services as content marketing services although I offer it truncated version of these services because of the experience that I have gained over the years.

Anyway, how do you add method to the content marketing madness, within your organization, and while you’re hiring someone who seems to know his or her job? Here are a few things to keep in mind:

Find out what sort of content your target market prefers – text, videos, images, slideshows, ebooks, case studies, PDFs, social media updates or a mix of different formats
Carry out an audit of your existing content – You must have some content on your website, right?
- How does it sound?
- Is it well-written?
- Does it address the issues it was meant to address?
- Does it solve its purpose?
- Can you remove some pages?
- Can you alter them?
- What about the titles? Are they appropriate?
- Is your content full of distractions?
- Can lengthy paragraphs be rearranged in bulleted points?
- Do you have lots of junk content that is harming your search engine rankings?
- Have you been creating content simply to improve your search engine rankings (nothing wrong in that unless you are preparing nonsensical content)?
- Do you feel that there are some pages or some topics that are missing on your website?
This may take a few weeks or a few months to sort out so don’t hurry and certainly don’t be impatient. Content marketing is not something that you can do like a small project. It’s an ongoing process and no matter how much hurry you are in, if it is going to perform, it is going to take its own good time.
Do you send email updates? Have you been building a mailing list? Do you have a subscription form on your website where people can subscribe to your regular updates?
If not, start building your mailing list NOW.
Do you have a blog? Can people in your organization create content for your blog? Do you have a budget to hire a professional content writer? Setup a blog and then start adding valuable high-quality content to it.
Start building your social media presence. You can curate content from other websites and routinely post under your profiles so that people gradually begin to follow you for your particular topic. This will help you when you start promoting your own content.
Start diversifying in terms of formatting. I provide content writing services but it doesn’t mean I advise my clients to only have written content. It depends on your audience. As I have already mentioned above, explore different channels and use the ones that give you maximum output and exposure.
Use tools like Google Analytics to study what sort of content you create gets maximum attention on the Internet. Create more of that content without losing your core focus.
Setup a content marketing calendar so that content writing, publishing, production and dissemination happens on an ongoing basis.

This is how you add method to the content marketing madness. You take care of all the aspects of content marketing and not just routinely publishing a blog or posting “SEO articles” on various websites.

Are you ignoring blogging and losing business in the process?

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Business blogging gets you more business

Yes, the good old topic of blogging and how it impacts the growth of your business. Here is a nice infographic on blogging and not blogging affects your bottom line.

If you’re not much interested in infographics I’m going to write down a few figures that have been discussed in the infographic. Here they are:

57% of companies that blog have one way or another acquired customers from their blog. This is actually true. Whenever I am regularly blogging – although the nature of my business is such that blogging perfectly fits the bill because it is mostly about writing and content marketing – my targeted traffic increases which in return generates more queries.
You may have been underestimating blogging for business. Do you know that 77% of Internet users in the USA have read blogs? Here are some more figures:
- 61% of US customers and clients have made purchases after reading blog posts
- 81% of American customers trust advice and information published on business blogs
- 82% customers claim that they enjoy reading relevant and topical information from various brands
- 70% of customers and clients learn about the companies they do business with through blog posts and articles rather than ads
If you publish blog posts relevant to your business 16-20 times in a month you traffic doubles
If you blog regularly the count of new visits to your website increases by 80%
If your business blog contains more than 200 blog articles you may get 4.6 times more traffic than those that have just 200 blog posts or articles
Small businesses that publish a blog regularly get 126% more leads compared to those that don’t
In a 30-day period if you blog 16-20 times the number of leads you get will increase 3 times
B2B businesses that blog regularly get 67% more leads than those that don’t

Why blogging sometimes doesn’t work for some businesses?

The main problem is quality content of course. You need to provide value to your visitors by providing exceptional content. This is also important because there is lots of noise on the Internet and you need to stand out.

Regularity is another aspect that you strictly need to keep in mind. There is no use creating high-quality content if you are not publishing your content on an ongoing basis. Spurts of publishing doesn’t help much and in fact it also wastes the time that you spend during those spurts. Regularity is a must. In fact regularity is so important that the blogs that publish daily have 5 times more traffic than those that post weekly or less.

Another problem is lack of exposure. How do people know that you’re publishing great content on your business blog? You need to promote your business blog content using appropriate channels including industry-specific forums, social networking websites, LinkedIn groups and Quora.

What is the greatest benefit of blogging even if it doesn’t fetch you direct business?

Your search engine rankings improve
Your content is shared on social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, on a regular basis
The blog posts that you create will always exist in the search engine databases
Over the time the search engine rankings of your existing blog posts keep on increasing, getting you new traffic for a long time

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10 content marketing myths to avoid

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In every field there is herd mentality simply because it is much easier to follow a herd rather than chart your own path. Besides, we think that whatever the herd is doing might be the right way hence why not go that way? The problem is, when one of the sheep of the herd starts jumping over the cliff, sometimes all the sheep follow, including you. The same sort of mentality sometimes manifests in content marketing.

It is surprising that we are ready to put in more effort towards doing what others are doing whether they are doing it right or wrong rather than making an effort to understand exactly what our business requires. Every business has a unique content marketing requirement. So does your business. But are you losing the game simply because you are following the myths created or established by others? If this is the case, you might be wasting lots of money, time and worse, business.

This Business2Community blog post lists 10 content marketing myths that you can avoid and stay on the proper path. In brief, these myths are:

The more content you have the better it is: Well, sometimes it is true and sometimes it is not. Provided you can produce lots of targeted high-quality content and provided you have the budget, more content can certainly give you an edge, but if you are publishing content just for the sake of quantity, it does more harm than good.
Anybody can write content: Again, it depends on your ability to write, your experience as a professional writer and the time you have at hand. Content marketing is a full-time job better left to professionals. Simply because people can write a few sentences or a few paragraphs and sometimes a few blog posts, they get trapped in this notion that they can carry out the entire job of content writing and content marketing on their own.
Content marketing and content writing is the same thing: Just because you publish a blog doesn’t mean you’re doing content marketing. As the world goes, you need to market the content and just as you need to do multiple things in order to market something, the same is applicable to content marketing.
Content should be cheap: Why? It’s a business asset, just like your website. In fact your content is the most precious thing you have because people do business with you after they are exposed to your content. Getting cheap content means considering your business a cheap proposition.
It’s just about creating great content: Although having great content on your website is the topmost requirement if you want to execute an effective content marketing strategy, marketing per se, as already mentioned in bullet 3, is a lot more than that.
Content marketing is just a fad: Well, you think that? All the best with your business, really.
Content marketing isn’t for every business: It is a very potent tool and it depends on individuals and businesses how they use it. It isn’t about whether content marketing is for your business or not, it’s about whether you can use content marketing for your business or not.
You can use automated tools to carry out content marketing: I’m not totally against using automation tools like scheduling when your message is broadcast or scheduling when your email marketing campaign is triggered, but if you’re using automated tools to generate content for your content marketing, this is a sure shot way to fail. Content is all about human beings because it is produced for human beings.
Content marketing is a separate, unrelated business operation: It is not. Everybody needs to get involved otherwise it becomes difficult to create valuable content.
Content marketing needs to generate sales otherwise it’s a flop: The purpose of content marketing is of course to enhance your business presence but it rarely happens that it contributes towards an increase in sales directly. It solidifies your presence and it helps people engage with you. It increases your brand presence. It helps you get more leads.