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Creating Content Calendars: Principles for Properly Planning Ahead

Creating Content Calendars: Principles for Properly Planning Ahead

There’s an expression that goes “if you’re not one step ahead, then you’re three steps behind.” I’m not sure who came up with it, but as someone who works in digital marketing, I know they were right.

Staying relevant in the digital marketplace requires dedication and consistency, two things that are very difficult for your brand to maintain if you’re not taking your marketing seriously. You won’t exactly lose all your followers and reputation if you go a day without posting, but you do stand to lose massive amounts of potential customers if you fall behind and fail to deliver regular content.

Be it blogs or social posts or videos, (or even better, all of them) you need to be sure you have a steady supply of content to keep your followers engaged, otherwise you risk losing them to your competitors who are updating regularly. Capitalizing on current trends is all well and good, but the very nature of them makes it impossible to plan for. While you’re busy putting together timely content, it helps to have a backlog or evergreen material that you can be providing your viewers in the meantime.

By establishing a standardized format they can rely on, you ensure that you’ll have their attention when you do decide to mix things up. This takes a great deal of pressure off of you, as passing fads are great for brief flashes of attention but cannot be trusted for a building a sustainable following. Not only do current trends tend to come and go like the wind, but the amount that pertain to your industry could be very rare indeed, which only makes scrambling to capitalize on them as they appear all the more arduous.

This is why you need to develop a Content Calendar, a schedule of what material you’re develop and which platforms you’ll post it to. As I mentioned before, you can and should try to capitalize on relevant trends as they spring up, but you should also plan ahead and prepare content for major holidays or events, such as sales or product releases. 


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When planning your content calendar, you must first understand what kind of persona you wish to establish for your brand. This can be tricky for some, not everyone knows what kind of content will work best for them. The answer, however, lies in understanding your target demographic.

Who do you what to reach, why do you want to reach them, where do you plan to reach them?

What do they want to see, when do they want to see it, and how can you deliver it to them?

Once you have this information, you can truly begin developing a proper content calendar, but this is where the real work begins.

You must maintain a careful balance between the kind of content you develop and the sort of platforms you release it on. Delivering only sales pitches will drive consumers away, while constantly sharing other brands’ content will drown out your own. Granted, interacting with others in your field does help to build strong networks and increase everyone’s engagement, as does collaborating with others on campaigns or special occasions. However, certain forms of content perform better on certain platforms, so you’ll need to investigate the preferences and plan your calendar accordingly.

Schedule as much content as far forward as efficiency allows, but keep on top of the content as it’s going up. Be wary of changing trends or current events that could make your scheduled content irrelevant or inappropriate, so try to have back up plans to swap posts or a reserve of evergreen content that can be turned to in the case of emergencies.

But above all else, remember that this schedule doesn’t have to be set in stone.

Don’t be afraid to deviate from your content calendar as you obtain analytics from it. If the amount of content produced is too difficult to keep up with, then scale back and focus on the forms of content that performed best. Keep abreast of new platforms as they gain popularity, but remember that they are as likely to shut down as any other business, so don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

One of the hardest parts of developing your calendar will be the impatience of it all. You have so much material in mind, having to put it off until later can be maddening at times. It’s a struggle I’m well aware of, but I assure you, it’s always better to wait than to rush.

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