Why EVERY Business Should Have a Content Plan + How to Create One
Your content should target your buyer personas and be helpful at every stage of the buyer’s journey.
Building a great company is a marathon, not a sprint. In TANK New Media’s podcast, Manufacturing Growth, Krista Ankenman and team tackle growth challenges. In this episode, Krista and Kristen talk about developing a practical and relevant content calendar that will help your business grow.
What is a content calendar?
A content calendar — also called an editorial calendar — is a documented plan that provides a bird’s eye view of all of your content for the year. You could use a traditional paper calendar, a software or SaaS platform, or a Google spreadsheet.
A content calendar exists to:
- Keep your content marketing strategy organized and strategic
- Keep all pieces of content on track and on time
- Ensure that your content is targeted to your buyer personas
- Ensure that your content is helpful at every stage of the buyer’s journey
- Reduce the tendency to be reactive or last minute
- Help publish new and valuable content consistently and methodically
- Keep plans for blog posts, videos, emails, content offers, and social post in one place
A content calendar is an asset that the entire marketing team should be able to access and view. It keeps everybody on the same page and working toward the same goals.
Bear in mind, while a content calendar embodies a plan, it’s not unchangeable — you can move things around as time-sensitive topics come up or new products are announced.
What should a content calendar include?
There’s no one right way. It’s different strokes for different folks. However, here are a few recommendations.
Let’s use Google spreadsheets as our content calendar medium in the following examples.
Creating a tab that’s dedicated to your blog, a tab for email, one for social media, etc. will allow you to map out your content for each without cramming them together, making things confusing or complicated.
For example, the blog tab could include:
- Blog post title or idea
- Target publish date or the week that it should be published
- Target buyer persona
- Buyer’s journey stage
- Blog post keyword(s)
- Pillar page to include in the post
- Call-to-action (CTA)
And the email tab could include:
- Target send date or the week that it should be sent out
- Recipient list
- Content notes (e.g., highlight recent blog posts, 15% off sale, happy holidays, etc.)
- Call-to-action (CTA)
- Subject line and the preview text (optional)
Housing all of this information in your content calendar keeps everything neat and organized, but it’s also a great way to see what’s being covered within the course of a month, quarter, and year. This helps with consistency and message alignment, making sure that the same things are being addresses across different platforms using the same language so that there’s no confusion or disconnect for those engaging with your content.
Doing this also provides a dynamic content inventory. If the calendar is being continually updated, then you’ll always have a current record of your content. Doing this work upfront means you don’t have to spend hours digging up and researching what you’ve done in the past to get your bearings because you’ve been faithfully doing it all along.
Here’s a tip: it’s valuable to have a column in your spreadsheet (if that’s what you’re using as your content calendar) that’s for URLs. For instance, when a blog post goes live, put that link in the content calendar for quick reference.
Should social media be included in the content calendar?
Many businesses feel overwhelmed at the thought of maintaining a social media presence if they don’t have the internal staff to handle it. Concerns include:
- Do I have to post every day?
- Do I have to post in real-time?
- What should I write about?
- What if I run out of things to say?
Can you relate to any of these?
If so, creating a social plan can help alleviate these concerns. For the most part, it’s OK to preplan a good portion of your posts — you do not NEED to post in real-time regularly. While doing so is a best practice, planning ahead and scheduling posts through a social media management platform is not only acceptable, but it’s efficient.
So, going back to our Google spreadsheet content calendar example, the social tab could include:
- Platform (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.).
- Target publish date or the week that it’s targeted to go out
- Type of post (blog post, third-party blog post, question, poll, quote, etc.)
- Post content
- URL if applicable
- Image
It’s a best practice to slightly tweak your messaging from platform to platform so that your message is somewhat modified to resonate with that particular audience. It doesn’t have to be drastic, but it should be thoughtful.
Remember, even with a social publishing plan, you can still post in real-time — that won’t throw the plan off track. For instance, if you’re at a tradeshow or an industry event, it would be great to post a photo to Instagram or LinkedIn. That’s OK! Just be sure your messaging is in line with your brand.
How often should a content calendar be updated?
People wonder how often content calendar should be updated: is it weekly, monthly, quarterly?
While the time frame may vary from business to business, generally speaking, it’s usually most helpful to look at blog posts, content offers, and videos quarterly, and emails and social posts monthly. Doing this keeps an active plan at the forefront, but allows some flexibility to swap or add things if it makes sense.
Do you need help with your content plan?
Every business and every industry should be creating and implementing a content calendar as part of their business growth plan. Developing a content calendar is a lot of work, but it’s always, and in every instance, worth it.
To learn more about creating a content calendar for your business, listen to the podcast episode, Content Strategy: Creating a Content Plan That Works.
If your manufacturing company needs help creating a marketing plan for business growth, TANK New Media would love to help.
