9 Steps to make your content creation process easier.
Have you ever been stuck in the rush of producing content for your social media channels?
Have you ever felt that the time and energy spent to produce a piece of content is the reason for your lack of consistency?
Have you ever thought about why so many people can produce such great content at such high frequency?
The answer to all of these questions is one, and that is the content calendar.
It solves all of your time management problems in producing content.
Now it must have raised a question in your mind.
What is a Content Calendar?
Content Calendar is a format used to organise ideas and overview the production schedule of a piece of content.
It is as helpful as its name suggests; it can help you in multiple ways, such as :
- Better Organisation: A content calendar can help you create an organised sequence of how your piece of content should be produced efficiently.
- Improved Consistency: A big boon from making a content calendar is as you have a set of ideas organised and prepared in advance, you can effectively publish them.
- Effective Time Management: Have you ever felt rushed while producing a piece of content and felt how much burden it puts you in? A content calendar helps you avoid it. You feel free as you plan and curate the content in advance.
- Strategic Planning: With the help of Content Calendar, you can allocate the best resources that align with your brand value.
- Synced Teamwork: Content Calendar helps in the work distribution across the team as you can simply tag the person with their respective responsibility in the project. It helps save a ton of time.
Work before creating a Content Calendar
After reading the paragraph above, you must have generated some interest in what is called ‘Content Calendar’.
And now you must be looking for a way to create it, right?
That’s great, but wait!
There is something we must focus on, that is Understanding.
Yes, you heard it right. Your understanding is the most important.
Now you must be thinking what you must understand?
- Your objectives of creating that particular piece of content.
- The actual target audience for that piece of content.
- Key topics of your brand/niche.
- The brand voice of your brand.
With all of that knowledge in hand, you are equipped with the ability to lay down the framework of your calendar.
Steps to create your Content Calendar.
Finally, it’s time to create your helper in the content production, Content Calendar.
Step 1: Choosing the location of your content calendar.
You heard it right; choosing where you want to create a content calendar is the first step.
If you are starting, then you can simply start with Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets.
Later on, if you’d like, you may always go towards more complicated but specialised tools for content calendar production.
Why, you may ask?
Because they are simple and have no learning curve, you can simply create a table of the fields relevant to your content production and keep track of it.
Step 2: Choosing the timeline of your calendar.
After you have chosen in what manner you want to produce your Content Calendar, you have chosen the timeline you want to create a timeline for when you want to have it planned.
- For smaller goals, try making a monthly goal.
- For medium goals, make 3 months ~ 6 months.
- For longer goals, make a yearly content calendar.
It depends on your work size and goals, so start simple if you are beginning.
Start with monthly goals and make a Content Calendar for monthly content.
Step 3: Structuring the design of your content Calendar.
After you have chosen crafting categories of relevance, you can start setting up the table (If you are working in a tabular manner).
For example, if you want to post blogs in the upcoming week, then you can set up categories like:
Step 4: Brainstorm the ideas.
Now that you have set up a structure for the calendar, here’s the time to fill it with the ideas that you have to work on to create them.
Method 1: Using the keyword to research.
Using the keywords related to your industry, you can easily find out what topics bear how much weight in your industry.
Tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush or Ahrefs can be beneficial in that.
Always look for high search volume and low competition keywords to create a better reach.
Method 2: Keeping up with the competitors.
Always read competitors blogs and try to find where you can give your perspective and provide value to the topic.
Keeping up with the domain experts on their accounts is a good strategy; it keeps you updated on the latest trends on topics.
Method 3: Learning from the audience.
In the end, you have to provide knowledge to your audience about your service/product, So the best method is to ask them what they want to know and make content accordingly.
Step 5: Choosing your consistency.
Now that you have made up a list of all the topics on which you have to produce the content, It is time to choose with what consistency you’ll post.
See, I was someone who has always thought that consistency in publishing content should be as high as possible, which used to stress me out so much, but once I understand that consistency is what you define, it makes life easier.
You should decide your schedule, start with what you like and set it accordingly.
Tip 1:
One easier thing in social media posts is to divide them on a daily basis.
Tip 2:
Make sure to post a variety of evergreen content and Time-sensitive content.
As Thanos once said:
Everything must be balanced.
Step 6: It’s content creation time.
Content creation is an arduous process, especially in this day and age when people’s attention span has reduced.
But it is also a process when you have to work your level best to show your expertise and experience towards the domain you will work in.
So to simplify it, note down all the processes that are going to be put into it i.e.
- Research.
- Writing.
- Editing.
- Design.
While the process, tools and time used differ for a variety of content, but overall, the process remains the same.
Tip:
If you work in solo mode, It is easier to do things in batch than to work on individual pieces. i.e. do research for all the articles you plan to write this month, Record the video for the whole week’s content together, design the slides of the carousel together etc.
Always make sure to put realistic deadlines for the work to ensure its satisfactory completion.
If you put up a deadline too large, you may unknowingly extend it further due to a trait called procrastination(Yes, it exists in us all).
If you put up a deadline too small, you may rush and ruin the work done and would be doing repeats.
Step 7: SEOing the content.
Now I understand your first thought; maybe it is only used for Blogs, right?
NO, SEO is used for blog writing, yes, but actually, it is the means to optimise your search engine to pick up your content as more relevant and show up at the top of the results bringing you more visibility.
Remember the keywords that you searched earlier?
Yes, they are the words that a search engine scans to find the relevance and trustworthiness in your content.
So use them as much as possible.
No, Wait, that came out wrong use them as much as possible sensibly, as if you’d just stuff up the keywords; it’ll become repulsive to read and will be downgraded.
Always make sure to update your keywords based on their strategy.
Step 8: Post them up.
After making the content, only one step left, which is to post them.
Search for the best channels and make them online, and show the world your expertise.
Tip 1:
If you can, try to leverage tools for automation to make the process of posting content easier and simplifier.
Tip 2:
Focus on the best time to post(when your audience is most available) or set up a fixed time to post.
Step 9: Aftermath of the content calendar.
Your content calendar is set as your schedule is set and the content is posted.
This is an extra step that includes the only and only EVALUATION.
Yeah, it sounds like something from our school times, right? It is a scary but essential process.
As I said before, we live in a changing world, so we must constantly update and upgrade ourselves according to the audience and their preferences.
You can do the easiest part of content calendar updation by simply listening to the audience’s feedback on your content, so listen to it and make the change.
Try it for some time and see how it affects the performance.
Conclusion
Overall the content calendar is something that helps in your content creation process in a lot of ways:
- Organisation: Efficient content calendar keeps your content strategy organised and well-structured. It helps you plan and manage content creation systematically.
- Consistency: With a content calendar, you can maintain a consistent publishing schedule, ensuring a steady flow of valuable content for your audience.
- Time Management: A well-planned content calendar allows you to allocate time effectively, avoiding last-minute rushes and reducing stress.
- Strategic Planning: Content calendars align your content with marketing objectives, ensuring it supports brand messaging and targets the right audience.
Overall it is a great tool to improve your skill set, reduce your time consumed in content creation and do your work faster.
So let me know in the comments how it helped you become more efficient in your time.
