How To Design A Content Calendar [Free Template]

So your content marketing strategy resembles more of a disordered and chaotic mess than the neat and polished schedule you had in mind. Your ideas and tasks are all over the place and not where you want them to be. Work is piling up and you just don’t know what you’re doing and when.

But don’t panic, we’ve all been there. All you need is a bit more of an organised approach to your content and a more efficient way to accomplish tasks. A nifty little content calendar plotting your content’s marketing journey should do the trick. This will keep your content consistent, on track, and organised. Content marketing requires strategy and planning to implement and execute effectively. By designing a content calendar and preparing what you are going to produce, why, how, who for, where, and when, will ensure that your content is optimised and does what it was made to do and get results (kick ass).

 

Each content calendar is unique to the business it is created for. The elements or headings included in the calendar differ slightly depending on your needs and requirements. I’ll share with you what we include in ours, but you can tailor your calendar to suit your content strategy by taking out or adding more factors.

 

Publish Date – decide when you want to publish your piece of content. You could publish weekly, monthly, daily. But remember to give yourself enough time to write, edit and upload.

Goal – each piece of content should have a goal. What is its purpose and what do you want it to achieve? Lead generation? Increased web traffic? Decide and pop it into the calendar.

Category – which category does your piece of content fall under. Content? Social?

Author – who in your team will create the content? Utilise the different knowledge bases in your company, from sales to web development, use them.

Type – what type of content will you create? A blog post? Video?

Topic – what is the specific topic your content will be on? For example, this piece falls under the category of content, and will specifically be about content calendars.

Headline – what is the headline of your content? You need to capture your audience’s attention so think about this carefully.

Audience – who are you aiming the content at? You should think about your target market and individual buyer personas.

Keyword – which SEO keyword will the piece rank for? Your content should be search engine optimised of course.

CTA – include a call to action with each piece of content to try to reach your goal. For example, an email capture form works well for generating leads.

Featured Image – Decide which featured image will be used for the piece and the date this needs to be sent to your designer to create or edit.

Editing Date – Your content should be checked for any mistakes or issues, including grammar, layout, and readability. Make sure you leave enough time to send to your editor for proofing.

Publishing Channels – which channels will your content be published on? You should be thinking about where your listeners and target market are. This could be on social media, on your own site, through email, or on forums.

Repurpose – in which ways can your content be repurposed in order to get the most out of it? Think videos, slides, podcasts and ebooks.

Goal Achieved? – have you achieved your goal? Ultimately this is the most important factor. Ask whether your content has done what it was set out to do. Use this to analyse and evaluate what works and what doesn’t for next time.

 

Your content calendar should look like this one below, ready to be filled in:

 

content calendar

 

Filling in your own content calendar will help you to get your content under control and functioning in a more orderly and organised manner. It’s an incredibly useful tool for keeping on course with your strategy and making sure that you understand what you are doing and where you are going with your content. All you have to do now is stick to it…

You can even download the unique template that we use here at BH HQ. Designed by us, it’s tried and tested by actual real-life marketing folks. Generous, I know, but it’s just the kind of thing we like to do.

Download Your Content Calendar Template

 

 

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