Why Content Marketing?
These days, we all need a content marketing calendar, regardless of what you sell, or size of your business.
We need content to drive our marketing messages and customer engagement through various channels: from blogs and emails to social media and podcast.
If you are a small business owner, you are probably the content owner. Or, you may have a small team who can help you with creating, posting, monitoring and analyzing your content distribution results.
How do you ensure everyone gets onto the same page? By creating a content marketing calendar could just be the answer.
How do you then create a robust content marketing calendar?
Let me share some Pro-Tips based on my own experience.
7 Pro-Tips for a Robust Content Marketing Calendar
1. Identify themes for the year across your business
These are topics or news that you are passionate about following. You want to share them with your audience consistently because they speak to your brand and what you care about. They can be organic, unplanned, fresh content that you want to share, repost, or have deeper conversations with.
2. Align your content with product launches, major sales and marketing events
These are priorities for your business and can benefit from planning. Use a monthly calendar to plan out how you want to launch these activities. You want to give enough time to stage and distribute them in various social media and digital marketing channels in a coordinated effort. For example, one of my initiatives this year is to talk about “Becoming an Entrepreneur.” I will be creating a series of blogs and social media posts in a story-telling fashion that will lead to several workshops that I will be launching in the spring of 2021.
3. Assign content developers and owners
Typically, in a small-team environment, you may be the content owner and developer. It could work to your benefit because you own the brand. You would want to own your voice and represent the real person behind your product. Given enough planning and execution time, this task is not as daunting as it sounds.
4. Plan content details a month or two in advance
With planning, you have a bit more time to create or find images for your blogs, social media posts, or do a video production. For examples, I use Ubersuggest to find key words to be included in my blog post. Google Keyword Planner is another great tool on keyword search. I love using Unsplash.com to find ready-images that I can use for my blogs and social media posts, as long as you give credits to the photographers. Canva.com is another option to use your own images to create great social media and digital content.
5. Be intentional and consistent with your posting
Don’t post and run. If your intention is to engage in that channel, e.g., LinkedIn, Instagram, or Pinterest, don’t just post your content and run. Make sure you spend time engaging consistently with other people’s posts besides those of your own, and give your deepest thoughts to what they say. You will be surprised how much the engagement strengthens the relationships within your community before you can start doing social selling.
6. Repurpose content to extend reach
You don’t have to create different images or content for different media. For example, your Instagram post can be shared in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest with a slight modification to the copy, tone, and images. Because each medium has its own personality and demographics, you want to maximize your reach and exposure, tuned to the channel’s user makeup and its strength.
7. Monitor and review your channel and Google analytics
Check in with analytics offered by each social media channel. Also review your Google analytics to monitor overall traffic from your digital media assets. See where your efforts are giving you most gains. Monitor indicators that make sense based on objectives of your websites (e.g., ecommerce vs. non-ecommerce). Then modify your content based on data, your business and marketing goals.
By following these tips, you can develop your own content marketing roadmap with consistency, investing time and energy in the right places. And that’s an important step in making your marketing sustainable in this digital age.
** An edited version of this article will appear in the Los Altos Town Crier Business Matters Column **
