Why You Need A Communication Calendar

Communicating with your network has never been easier/harder.

Easier because we now have hundreds of channels that allow you to keep connected. Harder because well, we now have hundreds of channels.

We not only have to decide which is best for the business but also juggle all the channels we picked.

The only way to keep track of it all is to stay organized. Now, everyone has their own way of doing things, but a communication calendar may just help you contain the chaos.

If you don’t have a communication calendar yet, you should put in the time to create one. There are many templates and tools online that can help you get started.

A few things to mull over before starting:

1. How often do you want to post? Are you going to do a blog post every Tuesday? Are you going to tweet five times a day?

2. What channels are you using?

a. Multiple channels can get confusing quite fast. If you using Excel it might be best to create a new tab for every channel. You can have a home page overview of the collected communication.

3. Mark off events and holidays. You should try to tie these into your portfolio and stay as current as possible. The more industry specific event’s you post on the better. For education company’s be sure to mark the different stages of the buying cycle, spring break and school closures.

4. SEO — what keywords do you want to associate with your business or brand? Write a list of all the words, then create topics around those keywords. Be sure that this information is relevant to your target market.

Begin writing a list of topics (using your keyword list as a starting point). Have another list of the different types of content such as infographic, bulleted list, or how-to. This will help to focus your calendar.

These will be ongoing lists, which you should add to often. Even if you think it’s a bad idea, write it down. You might just need to re-work it at another time to get it where you want it to be.

Start filling in the dates with your posts. You can include as much or as little information as you need. Do you just want the title and the type of post or do you want to have more granular details, like the CTA, images, and links? Pick what is most helpful for you that you are comfortable working with.

It is almost impossible to stay on top of all the incoming information. Don’t get bogged down with all the incoming and ignore the outgoing. Create a calendar to hold yourself accountable and give you better time management.

You might still forget your anniversary, but you won’t miss another blog post.