The editorial calendar is an indispensable tool for planning the content of our blog. Do you know how to create an effective calendar? In this practical guide we detail how to do it. There are numerous reasons why you need an editorial calendar . Belgium Email List , If you don’t know them, it’s already taking time to click on the link to understand why you can’t live without it (just kidding … you’ll live, but your content strategy probably won’t).
Now you know? Perfect. As you can see, the editorial calendar will help us select the best content for our audience and mark the deadlines for its publication. This will improve our workflow and, more importantly, give us a visual reference to our planning.
Once you understand that this is an ESSENTIAL tool, let’s see what are the steps you must follow to create an editorial calendar:
1. Set the objectives of the campaign
It is impossible to create any action plan if you do not have goals. In the case of an Inbound campaign, our plan will be based on attracting new leads to a specific product or offer . Therefore, the first step will be to define:
What is the offer that is the object of the campaign (why are users going to give us their data?)
Who is it going to be addressed to (that is, your Buyer Persona )
Keywords that define the campaign (for the moment they will be indicative)
Purchase cycle (how we intend to guide the user through each of the phases)
These points will give us an approximate idea of which are, a priori, the themes that will best fit into the approach.
Keep this in mind:
Since our goal is to guide users through the purchase cycle , you need to know what content will serve each conversion phase. Defining the process in the reverse order (decision -> consideration -> discovery) will help you make it easier.
2. Look for the themes of your content
Once we have the idea of the type of content that can fit into our plan, it is time to look for them. Taking into account the previously defined guideline keywords, you will be able to draw a series of themes around them that will serve as a starting point.
Using tools like Feedly will be of great help to find quality references. Search through your collection of sources (you should have a powerful reference base already made) and select those topics that fit your plan.
Another effective exercise is to search platforms such as BuzzSumo for those references that generated the most interest in social networks. Look for the content that is most shared in those reference blogs or the most shared posts with the keywords defined above.
eye! It is not about copying posts, but about capturing ideas from quality sources that will serve to inspire you and offer your own vision of the subject.
“Great artists copy, geniuses steal.”
Pablo Picasso
With all this, create an excel sheet (or any other system, you choose) with provisional titles of your future posts and the sources that will serve as inspiration.
Tricks:
Look for references in English. You will have many more and (probably) of better quality.
Make a shortlist of twice the content you really need. It will be good for you to have “reserves” on the bench.
Keep in mind the future CTAs of the campaign, as this will be the link between your content and the offer. There should be consistency between all those pieces of content.
3. Select the posts that you will include in the calendar
Let’s recap: at this point, (1) you know your objective and a series of guiding keywords that have helped you to (2) pre-select, with the help of quality sources, a series of possible topics (3) which you have noted in a separate sheet.
Now is the time to choose the “headline” posts, to continue with the metaphor from before. To do this, refines further keywords of posts that you publish. USA Business , This will help you to choose, among those in your first selection, those topics that may be of more interest and have the best chance of positioning. Capturing the highest traffic (quality, of course) that we can must always be among our priorities.
