What is a content calendar? What are the best practices to create it?

What Is a Content Calendar?

A content calendar is also referred to as an editorial calendar. It is preparing a schedule in advance on when and where you want the content to be published. All in all, content calendars include the followings:

• • Status updates

• • Upcoming Pieces

• • Partnerships

• • Scheduling promotional activities

• • Making changes to existing content

What is the importance of content calendars?

If you are into writing blogs, then make sure that the content is published occasionally. In that case, you might not need the content calendar. Although, there is no denying the fact that competition is growing, and for that, you need to prepare a content marketing strategy. It is important to grow your business digitally and everything will be much organized. Given below are the 3 main content calendars which you need to include:

The content calendar will ensure that all the content is posted on time. On the other hand, when you are organized it will result in: You won’t make it public Old articles are not updated frequently

It helps you stay in touch with everyone on your team. Everyone will know what content needs to be posted and everyone is on the same page.

You will be aware in advance what content you need to post in the coming days or have to work upon.

Which are the best practices to make a content calendar?

• • Focus on the main features

You can take advantage of the content calendar and it should only include the main features. Initially, you need to make use of the Google sheets, and here’s what you need to include:

Editorial	Content pieces to be published on social media, podcast, or blog. If you want you can prepare for the whole year in advance.
Platform	Choose the platform on where you want to host the content
Promotion	Promotional is another important aspect of the content calendar. It means: How to promote the content? When do you need to share it on Facebook? Do you need to send a newsletter to email subscribers?
Plan for the future	While planning, it is possible that you come across something for future ideas.

• • Take benefit from content calendar tools

There are specific tools out there to use for the content calendar to create, manage, and collaborate. Some of the great options which you need to use are Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, Google calendar, Editorial calendar, basecamp, loomly, and schedule.

• • Include items in the calendar

Initially, it might seem daunting in the first place but as you get started the things will be easy to manage and get done. Here’s how you need to create your content calendar:

Step 1: Include the content ideas which you need to work upon. Make sure that you include the topics.

Step 2: Decide on how much you need to post per day or month, depending on what you are writing.

• • Make sure to schedule everything

Some people might focus upon the title of the post and at what date they want to make it live. Although, if the content is larger or the project is complex then it is better to schedule all the necessary steps in the content creation calendar.

Step 1: Write down all the content you want to publish. Make sure that you combine the podcasts and videos to make it better.

Step 2: Make sure all the content is divided into steps and you need to outline the process in 4 steps like: Keyword research Outlining Writing the content Designing

Step 3: Include different things to get the work done and mention the name who will specifically handle the work.

• • Do not limit yourself to the blog posts

Through content calendars, you can schedule various types of content. So, make sure that you are limited to just one thing and make it flexible & useful. Here’s what you need to do:

• • Keep the content updated from time to time.

• • De-indexing will increase the overall search traffic by 75%.

• • Off-site work should be included in the content calendar like live talk, podcast interview, off site-promo, and any other thing.

So, here’s how you can prepare the content calendar and have the best kind of content strategy for a long time.