As a business or agency trying to build a brand or increase reader engagement, you want to produce the best content for your audience and stick to a regular posting schedule.
However, wanting to produce the highest performing content with a quick turnaround is one thing; achieving your goal is another thing altogether.
Managing all the elements of content creation isn’t easy, especially if you’re producing multiple types of content on a regular basis.
This is where it really plays to your advantage to use a content calendar.
As the name suggests, a content calendar is a calendar that helps you to plan and keep track of your content.
This simple concept can revolutionize your content strategy!
Take a look at some of these top reasons to have a content calendar, and decide for yourself whether it’s the right move to improve your content production:
1. Creating a Content Calendar Is Easy
There are no rules for creating a content calendar.
It’s up to you and the needs of your business as to whether you make a simple calendar on paper or in Microsoft Excel or use a more comprehensive online tool.
Tools like Trello and Google Drive are brilliant for creating and managing content calendars.
The tools are easy to use and customise, plus multiple people can use, view and interact with the calendar, so everyone on your team will be on the same page.
2. You Can Manage All Your Content Elements in One Place
Not only will a content calendar help your whole team to stay organised, but it’ll also help to keep all the elements of your content on schedule.
You can manage the creation and publishing of different campaigns and content types, as well as keep track of writers, images, infographics and everything else that goes into content creation.
Something as simple as knowing exactly when the images for your blog posts will be ready, can save you a considerable amount of time.
3. It’s Easier to Stay on Track and Achieve Your Goals
Content calendars are a crucial tool for achieving the goals laid out in a content marketing strategy – something that 58% of the most effective B2C content marketers use.
With an overview of your content schedule, you can make sure that things like content types, topics and publish dates are coordinated and in line with your main goals.
At a glance, you’ll be able to compare one month to the next to better optimise your strategy.
4. Content Calendars Prepare You for the Unexpected
Running a business and dealing with the unexpected go hand in hand.
Plenty of things can affect content creation: a writer may fall ill or fail to deliver; a new trend or news story may emerge that absolutely needs covering; or a crisis could occur that requires you to scrap half the month’s content.
You can react to unexpected problems a lot faster when you have a content calendar.
With a complete overview of your content plan on hand, it’ll be easier to see where you can make adjustments for a quick and effective solution.
Your whole team will also be able to see the changes and immediately spring to action!
5. Better Management Means Less Stress
60% of marketers produce one or more pieces of content every day.
Overseeing so much content can be extremely stressful, especially when it comes to important campaigns and events that need to go off without a hitch.
Having all the information you need in one place and an outline of the entire week, month or quarter will make managing content creation easier for all parties involved.
There will be less errors and miscommunication between writers and contributors, which will help to prevent stressful and time-consuming problems.
6. Stay Ahead and Keep Quality Consistent!
Less time spent on managing content means more time to focus on quality and a chance to get ahead of the game.
When you plan your content in advance, you won’t have to scramble for ideas at the last minute; you’ll have all the time you need to cultivate ideas and turn them into great pieces of content.
Combine quality content with consistent publishing, and you have everything you need for an excellent content marketing strategy and brilliant audience engagement!
Want to master the art of planning, managing, creating and publishing exceptional content? The experienced project managers at Anglo Content are here to help you execute your content calendar to perfection with content types and expert skills for every occasion.