5 Steps To Build An Editorial Calendar For Content Marketing

Building an editorial calendar is voted as one of the most difficult tasks by content marketing teams around the world. Even if you have the most idealist content calendar to guide your content creation and distribution throughout the years, you might feel lost at times. If you too have been asking yourself, “How do I create a content marketing calendar that doesn’t fail you” here are certain tips that will understand what an editorial calendar in marketing is, how you can create it, and what are its underlying benefits. But first things first –

Why some editorial calendars not workout for content teams?

As per our observation, the biggest thing that is stopping people from using the editorial calendar effectively is not understanding the usefulness of the calendar itself. To be very honest, not many people take the editorial calendar seriously and see it just as a professional obligation. It is one thing to use to download an editorial calendar template and add fill it with tentatively planned content and to understand what should be included in an editorial calendar?

After in-depth research and personal experience, we have concluded that for any editorial calendar to be successful it is essential to create content that is relevant and useful for improving your content creation process for maxed marketing outreach.

So, is there a proper way to create an editorial calendar? And if yes, how do you manage an editorial calendar? Here we are presenting you a proven start-to-finish process of creating and organizing your editorial content.

How do you create an effective content calendar?

1. Finding the right editorial calendar template

The best way to create an editorial calendar is by knowing what will work out best for your content marketing efforts. For any editorial calendar to work, it has to be created as an actionable system to coordinate between various content marketing efforts.

A content calendar is built to pre-hand to guide you throughout the year. It is a very long time, which can make you forget a lot of things potentially missing out on important information. The best editorial content would be something that can make the process of content creation less stressful and especially by making coordination between different parties (content writers, graphic designers, SEO strategists, editors) easy. This also means a better understanding of their roles and how to keep them on track.

In combination with your editorial calendar, you can use several other coordinating tools such as Trello and also check out some of the best templates offered by HubSpot.

2. How do you create a content editorial strategy?

An important part of the content is making sure it is covering a wide range of subjects to keep your readers engaged. Be specific about what you have to offer to your clients like your products and services. Be clear, rather than being everything for your readers. The idea is about being purposeful in your content strategy.

A good way to achieve purposefulness in your content creation process is by creating blog categories understanding what you think is important for your sales funnel and search intent.

Not always your first interaction with your brand be about conversions, it can also be about creating bong with them for them to eventually lead to a sale. To achieve it you can align your content strategy for creating content for their search intent.

Informational Intent

A sales process has stages and informational intent helps you in the discovery/consideration stage of the sales funnel. Creating content that allows you to attract people that are not ready to buy but are sailing the internet for considering process can be beneficial for your business. Optimizing your content to meet Google guidelines and optimize it for long-tail keywords and phrases is an effective practice.

Transactional Intent

But if a person is ready to become your esteemed customer, their searches will include your reviews, discounts, and pricing and they are ready to buy from you. Your editorial calendar should be aligned to all the different levels of their readiness to buy and the information they are seeking to make an informed decision.

For your editorial content to work out perfectly for you, consider audience attention span and their need for diversity of content to make them your loyal customer. Make your content diverse, use different types of things to create a buzz for your brand in social media channels every day. Weekly or monthly start a new conversation with your readers.

3. Is keyword research important?

Blogs are an important part of SEO and thus, having a content strategy is important for your visibility on Google and other search engines. So, what is the difference between content strategy and content marketing? Well, content marketing is a large umbrella in which content strategy is a part. Other than strategizing, there is development, distribution, and management of the content too. So, what does content strategy deals in, a content strategy helps in the identification of major search intents of a user to find your product/ services and builds a well-defined structure of content around it for outreach?

An editorial calendar helps you in strategizing and creating the content for your content strategy better. It allows you to stay on track.

Coming back to our topic, blog content is driven by SEO traffic, and determining individual topics should be as per your keyword research. You can also refine your keyword research by keyword research tools that allow you to stay on track, the also provide you useful metrics to make a better decision.

Here are some amazing tips that you can use to improve your keyword research:

Keyword Relevance

Are the keywords relevant to your target audience? Consider adding a word modifier to get more specific? Are long-tail keywords more likely to be searched by your audience?

Keyword Difficulty

One of the most underestimated keyword research metrics but one of the most important. If you are already a well-known entity in the market don’t choose to go for high difficulty keywords. It will help you in ranking faster and also with a lesser number of backlinks.

Keyword Intent

Use a mix of keywords for variation in the content and also target your content for the audience at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

4. Adding comprehensive briefs for each content asset

Add detailed briefs for each planned topic for every content creator to understand the requirements well. This step allows you to create an editorial content calendar that will have a 360⁰ outreach. Here are a few items on your list you should consider adding to each content brief:

Blog Category

Consider various categories so that you can quickly see how well you’re fleshing out content for various focus niches.

Title

It doesn’t have to be something permanent, but give them a rough idea, provide a skeleton for them to get started for content creation.

Primary and Secondary Keywords

Provide secondary and primary keywords to be included in the content. Also, suggest some information and brief them about it.

Potential Source Material

Adding a reference can be a huge help for them and will cut down the research work. It means faster creation, faster distribution, and wider engagement.

Feature Image

Featured images are an important part of blogs and also help you improve your SEO, add a brief for featured image for your graphic designer providing them some reference for the kind of image you have in your mind.

Publishing / Promotion Checklist:

The most important part of the brief game, you should also have a process of publishing and promoting your content and thus, adding a checklist directly to your editorial calendar helps you stay in line with creators, publishers, and promoters.

5. Try out other mediums too

What is editorial content? Is it predominantly blogs? No, you can have a content calendar for about every type of content that you are wishing to create. It has major SEO benefits but it also means you can use these tools in improving and optimizing content all across the other mediums too. A few other content assets that you build into your editorial calendar are:

Social Media Posts
Social Ads Promotion
Email Marketing
Webinars
Whitepapers
eBooks and More.

Summary: Why is a content calendar important?

Using a content calendar, you can ensure a hassle-free content creation, distribution, and promotion of your content throughout the year. It helps you in simplifying the entire process and stress associated with last-minute coordination. The better you plan the more advantages you reap for maxed outreach.