Are you ready to jump into content marketing? Then a content calendar is the best, first step. Like any good calendar, it will keep you on task, motivated, and mindful. But for it to work you’re going to need to nail these five basics.
1. Define Your Goals
Whether it’s a blog post, a video or a podcast: your organization’s goals will inform your content strategy.
For instance: If you provide a service (like DeepWater Creative does) a valid goal is to demonstrate expertise in your area of practice. Another could be to attract new readers (potential clients) with basic strategies and tips for your target audience and asking them to sign up for your newsletter. Like this: sign-up for the Deep Water Creative newsletter.
If instead, your organization earns revenue by serving ads your goal should be to create shareable content with a high likelihood of going viral.
The plan for achieving these goals may share some common tactics, but the strategy will be entirely different.
2. Be Valuable
Creating value is hard. The Internet is a cornucopia of content, but 95+% of it is garbage. Stay out of the cesspool, and focus on creating content that brings value to your audience.
In the case of our service provider: creating clickbait rehashes of a competitor’s article isn’t likely to win you respect, repeat traffic, or newsletter sign-ups.
However, if you’re going after ad impressions a well-written summary (perhaps with commentary) of your competitor’s article with a clickbait title may have a spot on your content calendar.
3. Be Consistent
Consistently check and update your content calendar, and consistently create quality content.
Set your quality standards early and stick to them. While you shouldn’t let perfection get in the way of progress, be wary of releasing content that is half-baked or not proofread.
4. Be Intentional
Know your audience. Create or share what they want, when they want it. Keep the seasonality of your organization in mind and the path of your sales cycle.
5. Be Flexible
We live and work in a dynamic world. It can be difficult to predict shifts in the marketplace, or changes in technology. Be ready to jump on the chance of creating fresh, valuable content that relates to just such emerging dynamics. Not only will you get to ride the wave of increased search volume, but you’ll get to establish yourself as an early expert.
Do those five things when creating your calendar and you’re on your way ohf350h.
Interested in how we, mechanically, manage the Deep Water Creative content calendar? Sign up for our newsletter and be informed as soon as new articles are available – including an in-depth write-up about how we manage our content calendar. Complete with a free calendar template.