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I’ve always dreamed of just getting into the car with a wad of cash and setting off on a vacation with no particular destination in mind. A serendipitous foray like that sounds like the perfect vacation. But would you do that with your marketing efforts? I bet not!
CONTENT MARKETING OVERVIEW
When we started this series, we said that there were four key elements for building a sound framework for your content marketing strategy:
1. Knowing your audience
2. Conducting a content audit
3. Mapping your content to your prospect buying cycle
4. Creating an editorial calendar
We’ve already talked about knowing your audience and how to create personas. We’ve also given you guidelines for conducting your content audit . And finally, we’ve talked about ways to approach mapping your content to your audiences’ buying behaviors. Now it’s time to create the roadmap you’re going to follow to help you more purposefully share your content, sprinkling it with calls to action and tailoring it to events and news your stakeholders are looking for.
DIVIDING UP YOUR CALENDAR
The first thing you need to decide is how you want to divide up your calendar. Does it make more sense to work in increments of three months, six months or an entire year? Some of that will be determined by the size of your team. You should at least set yourself up with a three-month lead-time, but six months or even a year is better. There may be more work on the front end with the six-month or year calendar, but it could avoid stress in the long-term. Keep in mind that this calendar needs to be fluid, so you can react unexpected developments to news and events. Regular monthly meetings with team will help you stay current.
START WITH YOUR GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
As I’ve said over and over, if you don’t know what success looks like, how will you know when you get there? Looking at your marketing goals and objectives will help you set realistic expectations. Analyzing your previous marketing efforts can give you good indicators of how much and what types of content you need to generate.
How much traffic are you looking to generate? What about friends and followers? This is tied to awareness objectives. How many leads email subscriptions are you trying to capture? What about new customers? These are tied to your sales objectives. Times spent on your sites, repeat visits and social mentions are indicators of loyalty and tied directly to your community-building efforts.
IT’S THE MIX THAT MATTERS
Now create a spreadsheet of all your content channels. Columns should include types of content— blog, webinar, website launch, newsletter, e-books, social media sites, etc., publishing frequency, person responsible for content, topics, and titles, if possible. Other columns you want to include are targeted personas, SEO keywords, stage of the buying cycle, calls to action or other marketing goals that the specific type of content needs to address. A collaborative review of this spreadsheet, including all persons responsible for content, will help you make sure that the mix makes sense and targets all audience preferences. This would also be a good time to have discussion about content and how you might repurpose it in different formats and/or channels.
CREATING THE CALENDAR
Now you’re ready to fill in the calendar. Whether three, six or twelve months, first fill in important dates and external events that will be important to your audiences according to their interests. Don’t forget major holidays and anniversaries. Also include industry and trade conferences you plan to attend, so you can plan ahead for blogs, videos or interviews, if possible.
Once you’ve gotten a high-level view of the calendar, you can fill in the publishing dates for all of your content pieces. When possible, include topics and even titles. This will help you take advantage of opportunities to focus on topics across multiple channels.
KEEPING TRACK
Now that you have your map, add pages to your spreadsheet to track content, publishing dates and some simple metrics for your blog, newsletter, social media, etc. This will give you a quick reference for the overall picture and also help you keep track of the different audiences and topics you’re addressing for next year’s calendar. It will also take the stress out of your current year, giving you focus and confidence that you are working your inbound marketing strategy to it’s greatest potential.
With 2014 on the horizon, now’s a great time to get started on next year’s editorial calendar. Looking for help? Give us a call: 301-519-8101. We’re currently running a special offer on social media audits.