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Every website today is heading for the best marketing strategies. Blogs and social media posts are some of the best ways to amp up your business game. It helps with a tremendous increase in the website traffic of your target audience. But if blogs are all about audience retention, shouldn’t they be planned according to your audience? What do they prefer? And when do they like to see it?
Editorial calendars are the best way to stay up-to-date with your blog posts and popular with your audience.
How does an editorial calendar work?
An editorial calendar can keep your blog sorted forever. But what does it look like? What are the components of an organised editorial calendar?
It is an inventory of the content and keywords you wish to post on your website or social blogs within a particular period. It begins with a basic idea of the keywords and contents for your target audience and expands over deadlines, publishing dates, tests, and trials.
points to include in your editorial calendar
Keywords
Any website today is driven by SEO. Thus, keyword research for your blog is the prime step to create your editorial calendar. You must figure out the keywords your target audience is most likely to type on the search bar. You may turn to online tools to help you with optimised keyword research.
List of content and ideas
Now, that you have your keyword list prepared, brainstorm to build ideas and content around those keywords.
Dates and deadlines
An editorial calendar is not complete without assigned dates and deadlines for writing, editing, and publishing your content. This helps to plan the events and posts to be published on your blog over a month in advance.
How can an editorial calendar help with your blog?
Stay Organised
Organisation and systematic approach to any blog is the distinction to recognise it as professional. Otherwise, it seems to be just a hobby. With a prepared list of content ideas, dates, and deadlines you can stay consistent without a speck of stress in your life.
With all the bulk work you have to do while running a blog, the last thing you want is to work haphazardly with your content. This disorganised approach may lead to less traffic, poor quality of content, excessive stress, and burn-outs.
Getting an editorial calendar to help organise your thoughts, ideas, and strategies can work wonders for the growth of your blog. Editorial Calendar ideas and free templates available online may help you get started with strategic content planning.
Plan in advance
Ever heard of a blogger’s block? Well, it is quite common in the world of blogging and content creation. Coming up with fresh, innovative ideas daily is not a piece of cake! Brainstorming for content ideas before every post you sit down to write can be the most stressful job in the world. That’s where planning comes in.
Most of the lucrative blogging sites today have managed to retain their audience’s attention for years with consistent planning and publishing. Editorial calendars help you with just that.
When you have over a month’s content spread over a calendar template, it instantly becomes quite easy to maintain a certain cadence with your posts. What forms part of the plan?
Follow a particular pattern
You cannot get away with posting random content whenever you wish on a professional blog. There has to be a certain rule or pattern your posts follow. One of the popular ways to handle this is the ‘411 rule’. However, you need not necessarily stick to this. Choose a plan that goes well with your niche and your audience.
Consistency is the key
How consistent are you with your posts? Maintaining the correct balance in a blog is the most essential factor to ensure your audience doesn’t feel bored or overwhelmed with your content. Not too much, not too less. Once you have started, stick to the pattern.
Work with your team
There is a possibility that your team comes up with a better plan for your blog or a better marketing strategy. So, sit down with your team and work your way through a perfect plan.
Decide what works for your blog
There are no definite rules. It all boils down to the rapport you build with your clients or audience. Hence, it’s quite obvious that you have to find out what works for your blog and what doesn’t before you go ahead with a plan.
But how to find it? If you have a habit to maintain an editorial calendar for your blog, it is very easy to keep track of your successful and failed content. Editorial calendars are not only for future planning but prove helpful with recordings of the past as well.
Keep track of deadlines
Do you feel burdened with bulk work? Blogging is a multi-skill profession. You got to be good with writing, editing, planning, creativity, graphics, and the list shall go on. Who has got so much time? That’s the reason most bloggers have a team to back them up.
Editorial calendars give a roadmap to your entire team. With the calendar, it becomes very easy for them to keep up with deadlines and deliver their work on time. Because they have an overall picture in mind of what the blog is going to look like eventually.
Repurpose and keep it dynamic
Trends change, industries, and audiences evolve with it. Having your content planned and written on blog content calendars does not mean you can’t change it. Keep it dynamic with the upcoming news and trends in the month. Repurpose it if required.
For example, if you feel there is a shift in the trend and social media posts are suddenly getting more attention, repurpose your content for social media. Do what makes your audience happy.
Where can you get an editorial calendar?
Now, that you are aware of the benefits, the first question you may ask yourself is – where should you get an Editorial Calendar from? POSTOPLAN, Trello and Google Sheets are some of the popular management tools that can help you with developing your own Editorial calendar.
So, when are you starting with your Editorial calendar?
