Here Are 7 Reasons You Need A Content Marketing Calendar

You have already established that content marketing is the key to success for more authority, visibility and traffic.

You and others in the team are all pumped up thinking about the loads of traffic you are about to experience thanks to the well thought out content marketing strategy.

You are even more excited to see your blog prosper and move to new heights. (You have a blog, don’t you?)

 “No matter what, the very first piece social media real estate I’d start with is a blog.” – Chris Brogan

But, is it all that simple?

If it was so simple, everyone will be doing it.

So, what’s the difference between successful marketers and others even though both implemented their versions of content marketing.

Here is the best kept content marketing secret – The Content Marketing Calendar.

A content marketing calendar is all you need to turn your sluggish attempt at content marketing into the bazooka that will crush your website under loads of traffic.

What Is a Content Marketing Calendar?

In simple words, it can be described as a timeline of the content you are going to publish over the next few days, weeks and months.

It’s similar to the programming guide for TV, radio stations, newspapers and magazines.

They have to plan the content months in advance.

In the content marketing space, this calendar refers to visual representation of the content you’re going to post and promote in the future.

Why You Need a Content Marketing Calendar?

A calendar does seem like a simple tool and everyone is not sure of the impact of such a simple tool.

Consistency Is the Key

A lot of people like content marketing but only a few succeed. People who fail do not realize that consistency is the key to success in content marketing.

If you are not going to post useful content on a consistent basis, you will have a hard time in creating your brand and driving traffic to your web property.

A well-planned calendar helps you in being consistent.

Since calendar is a tangible item, it also ensures that everybody sticks to the calendar. In other words, it also acts as an accountability tool.

So, if you are one of those who are still not convinced on the usefulness of having a calendar, here are 7 reasons you need a content marketing calendar. You’ll save tons of time, and get more productive and organized at the same time.

#1 – It’s a Strategic Tool

Content marketing is a marketing strategy and you need tools to execute and measure the success of your strategies. A calendar acts as a strategic tool that gives you a panoramic view of the overall content marketing efforts.

It gives you a bird’s eye view of the whole content. It also allows you to easily get an overview of the overall strategy. It also helps in keeping the content consistent.

#2 – It’s an Organization Tool

A successful content marketing strategy requires one to do a lot of things.

It requires you to create high-quality content, distribute the content to other high traffic websites, post about content on social media profiles and a lot of other things.

In simple terms, it’s a lot of work and it’s complicated which means that you need something to keep track of all the content that has been published and that is going to be published in the future.

This problem grows multi-fold when you have multiple members in the team.

A calendar helps you and everyone else in the team to remain organized while planning activities related to creation, posting and promotion of content.

#3 – It Makes Content Marketing Easy

Content marketing does sound easy but it’s not easy to implement.

It involves producing high quality content on a consistent basis and a lot of other things to promote that content.

Without a calendar, you will quickly feel lost as you’ll find it difficult to keep track of various content ideas, posting and promotion.

A calendar also allows you and others in the team to visualize the results of content marketing efforts and motivates everyone to keep doing what they have been doing.

#4 – It Makes Sure That You Do Not Miss Anything Important

As mentioned above, you need to have a strategy to succeed in content marketing.

A calendar helps you in keeping track of various important holidays, industry events, product launches and other such things to ensure that you can take advantage of such opportunities by planning in advance.

A calendar will allow you to plan creation and promotion activities to coincide with the launch of a new product or other such events to derive maximum benefit from your efforts.

#5 – It Helps in Saving Time

Many people whose job is to write quality content on a consistent basis struggle with ideas.

A calendar will help you in saving a lot of time as everything is already planned and you don’t need to think about the topic you are going to write on.

In other words, you don’t need to constantly reinvent the wheel.

It also helps in maintaining quality of the content as when you are short of time and facing a deadline, you may slip and go ahead with content that you won’t normally post.

#6 – It Helps in Building Credibility

Content marketing works only if you work it.

According to a recent study, infrequently published content or low quality of content leads a significant number of consumers to believe that the business is not aware of customer habits.

In other words, infrequent publishing or publishing low quality content damages your reputation and your brand.

On the other hand, if you publish high-quality content on a consistent basis, it helps in building credibility.

Keep in mind that you will struggle to produce high-quality content consistently if you do not plan it in advance.

#7 – Total organization via the Content Marketing Calendar

A content marketing calendar can be in the form of a simple spreadsheet with a number of rows and columns outlining various things.

As far as the actual heading in the calendar are concerned, it may include various business events, holidays, selling cycles, deadlines, product launches, type of content, target audience, promotion, due date, status, title, publishing date, content category, notes, call to action and other such things.

“Content is the reason search began in the first place.”
–Lee Odden  

CONCLUSION:

Overall, the goal is to keep track of all the metrics related to the overall content marketing strategy.

So, if you have been struggling with content marketing efforts and have tried a lot of different things without using a calendar, you should start using a calendar to plan your content.

Consider coschedule and buffer. There are also custom plugins for WordPress you can use. Of course, calendar templates are available too.

Make this calendar the hub of your all activities related to content marketing and you will start seeing the results within a short period of time.

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