Creating the Top Content Calendar – Steps and Tips

Internet… Oh, a miraculous discovery that went to change our lives completely. Nowadays, whether you are a student, an employee, a freelancer, or any other sphere of social life, you have access to everything – just at the tip of your fingers. Say, students can easily trust my paper reviews. Employees can go on an online certification course and get better skills in order to get a raise. Freelancers, on the other hand, have so, so many opportunities. Not only does the digital world open new spheres of employment but it also gives us tons of tips on how to get the most out of our work and perform extraordinarily. One such example is our article – today we are going to give you some insight on how to create a top content calendar.

Content Calendar – What is That?

Now, a content calendar is not something that we use just to hang on our walls, of course. It is but a system that can be utilized by marketing experts and content practitioners. They use it in order to not only organize neatly but also manage and schedule the production of their content. It gives you a broad view of what you need to publish in what time period.

It also shows data about the various individual content pieces, including its topic, author, the contributors, the status – written, for editing, for proofreading, etc. Plus, it can show you when the content is due. It gives you info on what the format is, too. Last but not least – it mentions the channel via which the piece is going to be broadcast.

Usually, content calendars are not ‘an-idea-that-come-to-my-mind’ and ‘something-that-is-going-to-be-worked-on-sometime-later-on’ but rather pieces that you’ve already planned and that are currently worked on. After we clear those things, let’s keep on going.

Prioritize Through Reviewing the Content Strategy

Well, whatever you’d put in the content calendar is dependent on what your content marketing strategy is. That is, you need to plan for the creation of high-quality content that attracts customers and how you do it is going to change how you create the content calendar. For example, if your content strategy consists of publishing content on topics that are the most searched for, you are going to put those keyword ideas in the calendar. Still, you’d need to go through some steps first. For instance, you’d research the keywords and see which of them you’d cover. Then you’d see what their traffic potential is. This is going to determine what their business potential is. Now you determine the best of them and put them into the calendar. After you’ve delegated some of them to writers or designers to work on, you’d put this into the calendar, as well.

Content Calendar – Setting Up

Okay, content calendars can be created via the usage of various tools. Some of them include just the basic spreadsheets, while others include the utilization of specialized software for content management. Still, the easiest thing is to choose the tool. The harder and more important thing is to decide on what data you put in.

The most basic calendar just needs a field for the title and a field for the due date. Afterward, you can put in as many fields as you’d need. For instance, you can put fields for the category, content type, status, keyword, who is assigned to it, etc.

No hard and fast rule exists on what to put in the content calendar and what not to put. Just type in the data that you, as the content manager, and the others on your team will need for the production of the content.

Adding Content

Okay, now we have the structure. Here comes the data inclusion. You need to put the data about upcoming pieces on the calendar. Try to adhere to your general strategy. For example, if you are marketing long-term educational content, you may need fewer topics on a more stretched-out basis. On the other hand, if you are focusing on social media, you may need to make publications many times a day.

The general goal, though, is for the calendar to be a comprehensive overview of what you are going to work with together with other members of the team. Include the formats that are your responsibility. Also put in both the old and the new pieces, especially if you are planning to optimize the already existing pieces.

A helpful piece of advice is to experiment and see how you comprehend and visualize the information the best. For example, you can try to color-code the different entries for the calendar to be easier to use.

Relevant Subtasks

The pieces you’ve entered into the calendar will need several different steps for completion. They may even include numerous people working on them to complete them. So, you can easily break down the entries into the individual tasks that shall be done. Think of what needs to happen to an entry before it’s publishable. To do so, you can reminisce back to other pieces you’ve published already. This will give you a general overview of what would need to be done in order to get the future pieces off and about.

Okay, now once you have that data, you can use it to separate future pieces into individual steps. This will give you a broader view of what needs to be done and an easier organizational process. You’d be able to see who is currently working on the piece, who’s done working on it, who’s about to work on it. You’d see how far the piece has gone through the process and how much is left.

Usually, here specialized software is the most important and useful. The spreadsheets or other basic calendar tools generally don’t contain enough space for all the steps and the data that you need and they cannot organize it neatly enough. On the other hand, when you are using specialized software, you’d have a neater and more broken-down-into-subtasks overview of the process and the plan.

Top Content Calendar – Conclusion

Using a content calendar is a great way to keep your content publishing schedule neatly organized and easy to assimilate. You’d be able to see where you are right now, what you need to publish, how much until a particular piece is done, who’s working on what, who’s done with what, etc. This is a great way to manage lots of content. Remember, focus the content calendar in such a way that resonates with your strategy. Then try to break down the overall process into steps and put them separately into one general bullet. This will ensure you’d have an easier time getting all done and set for success.