Content marketers are tired of creating content at the last minute to meet the congested, weekly demands. While trying to create quality content in no time is never a satisfying experience.
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How to Set Upon Editorial Calendar?
This is one of the biggest issues pertaining the digital marketing industry where people often stress on how to create a sustained content.
According to Dazzle Media, around 79% have faith in the fact that content marketing is surely powerful, but only 6% know how to make the best use out of it.
This is where experts advise to develop a well-thought editorial calendar in order to streamline all your content creation activities and processes.
An Introduction to the System
Prior to start talking about the steps required for setting an editorial calendar, let’s brief how your stuff can be stored in three places.
First, all your articles will be stored in the Google Spreadsheet along with the notes and general references needed for content creation. (contd.: How to Set Upon Editorial Calendar?)
Second, you’ll enlist your deadlines with your Google Calendar. Although not a mandatory chunk of the actual framework, but it helps the editorial calendar becomes more visually effective.
Third, you can use Trellis, a web-based project management tool, to keep your articles organized. This allows a seamless teamwork for creating content.
Having an editor in your team to review the completed articles is a plus. Further, you can also create multiple levels for each content piece and keep each team member’s work hassle-free without interference from others using the calendar.
This is especially for complex, long articles that pass through specific stages such as researching, drafting, writing, editing and publishing.
Let’s jump to where we started on creating an editorial calendar.
Create a Backlog of Content
The first step is creating a list of all the content you intend to write. Apparently, you might have come up with numerous topics but forgot them along the way in all the hassle.
This is where we will store all the content ideas in one place, hence, helping you pick one by one for your blog in future.
Do note that all the lenticels added don’t necessarily mean that every idea will be essentially used for writing. In fact, there are many ideas that you leave out of your blog. You might tweak your execution by merging two ideas into one, changed the topic title to another aspect, or entirely replacing an idea.
Understandably, it will be very difficult for you to this without recording your ideas in the first place. (contd.: How to Set Upon Editorial Calendar?)
Starting the Google docs
To start, we open a new document on Google Spreadsheet to cater our content ideas. Here we will name each column heading with title, the designated author, the content status, publication date, the project rating, and notes.
Filling the columns
The rating informs whether the content is ready for publication or not. For example, consider a scale of 1 to 3, where 1 equals an idea, 2 is partially created, and 3 is ready for publication. This tells the user which article needs to be prioritized.
Yes, you can add additional ideas over the course of your sheet preparation, but you need to be aware on what’s ready and what is still in the process.
If all your article ideas are dispersed in your phone memory or system’s hard drive, now is the time to compile them in a unique location. A great help on what you need to take to your blog!
In the status column, we’ll mark all the added topics as ideas. And after reviewing all the topics from the title section, you’ll decide which are ready, or near-ready for publication from the rating column.
For the ideas that are still in infancy, add a short description for each in the notes column on what is required, for example, “Looking for an expert quote to add here”, “Need to analyze the eBay reviews for further clearance”, “Need to write text affirming the relevance of images added”, and so on.
Now sort the ideas on the basis of ranking number, i.e., I, 2, and 3. In the drop down box, select the “Sort sheet Z –> A” to put all the articles rated 3 at the top.
Hence, we have a clear view of all the articles that are ready for publication.
Just a refresher, before publishing we need to ensure that all the articles have a compelling headline with the aim to catch the attention of the readers instantly.
Craft a Comprehensive Plan
Before you dive deep in the minutiae of your content marketing strategy, you need to acquire a long-term plan.
Starting by figuring out the frequency of your publication, i.e., how often you want to post.
Although there is no fixed number, according to Express Writers, marketers or companies that post fresh content around 16 times a month register 4.5x times the leads than a blog that just updates 4 times a month.
Given the considerable difference and impact, it is wise to blog more often. Remember, more important than the number is the consistency that needsto be kept in check for posting regularly over weeks, months, and years.
Additionally, it is okay to create some repeated post types, this eases the content creators from the demand to post an entirely, fresh content every time. (contd.: How to Set Upon Editorial Calendar?)
Different topics
Speaking from the last point’s perspective, it is also not okay to publish the same content type constantly. Therefore, better to keep your editorial calendar contained with a mix of different topics from your industry.
One of the common mistakes that content marketers and digital agencies make is running a single, huge series. Although the prospect might seem fascinating, but in reality they are starving a large chunk of their target audience from consuming the content they are primarily interested in.
I suggest you should inspect your articles in the interval of a month. A month is sufficient to acquire a plethora of opportunities, at the same time also short enough for easy management.
Using Google Calendar is a great way to view the content beforehand of their scheduled date. Therefore, covering more than one topic per month shouldn’t be a problem, especially if you are catering various different buyer personas in your blog.
How to Set Upon Editorial Calendar?
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