Creating engaging content is crucial for business growth. Why? Because informative content keeps the customer engaged, builds brand awareness, and increases SEO.
Content marketers tend to work in two different ways.
According to the content marketing institute, only 43% of content marketers have a documented content marketing strategy. They approach content marketing with fine precision. Every marketing piece they publish is carefully constructed. Their content scheduling tools work together, and their audience knows when to expect the new content.
The remaining percentage resort to an ad-lib content marketing approach, meaning they come up with the topics on the fly. While the impromptu approach to content marketing may seem to work for your business, the benefits may be short-lived. Of course, there isn’t much content planning, and the marketers pick topics as they pop up, and their target audience does not know when to expect a new post.
Therefore, you need a content calendar to streamline your digital marketing efforts and achieve measurable results.
What is a Content Calendar?
A content calendar is a documented content strategy that businesses use to schedule content and share it across platforms for the coming period. Ideally, the content calendar stipulates the detail for what to share, when, and on which platform.
How Does A Content Calendar Impact Business Growth?
Here are invaluable reasons you should be using a content calendar
-
Customers Expect High-Quality, Consistent Content From Their Favorite Brands
In today’s age, customers tend to research products online. They expect their go-to online resources to provide informative, updated insights that concisely answer their questions. That means content marketers must plan what content to post, when, where, and for which audience.
A well-managed content calendar is a secret to staying organized and on track. Ideally, the content calendar gives you a better perspective of your overall marketing strategy. The content plan aligns your post topics with the overall marketing strategy, enabling you to provide customers with quality results.
The content calendar is a transparent depository of what is due, what is done, and the status of your overall content plan. A content calendar helps you mend content gaps, preventing you from missing the content’s mark.
-
A Content Calendar is an Excellent Brainstorming Tool
When creating a content calendar, you start with organizing content topics. The chances are that you and your team will brainstorm and end up with many new ideas. Ultimately, you select better topics and reserve some for later use.
In addition, whenever you post content based on the calendar, you start receiving the audience’s engagement and feedback. You gain valuable insights into customer preferences, which you can apply to your content and adjust accordingly.
-
It Helps You Maintain Consistency
Content consistency helps you establish credibility, build trust, and strengthen your brand’s reputation. Using a content calendar enables you to maintain a consistent voice and persona across social media channels and other content marketing platforms. Ultimately, more consistency and high-quality content will positively impact your SEO efforts.
Posting irregularly leads to an out-of-sight-out-of-mind situation, no matter how much your target audience likes reading your post.
Use a content calendar to ensure consistency in your content marketing efforts.
-
It Ensures You Keep Your audience Engaged
Picking content topics randomly may create a repetitive scenario, and your chosen content may not always resonate with your audience. However, sticking to a planned content calendar allows you to spot content that does not resonate with your target audience.
A planned content strategy also means you publish fresh and relevant content, with greater chances of keeping the audience engaged.
-
Content Calendars Provide Visibility Across Departments
A shared content calendar makes it easier for each department to see what other departments are working on. Therefore, departments collaborate seamlessly while ensuring all content fits within the overall marketing plan.
-
It Fosters Quality Control
Planning your content marketing gives you some space to error-proof your content. The chances are that you have a streamlined process for checking and editing the content before posting. A content calendar helps you coordinate posting across multiple platforms.
Conclusion
The broader goal of content marketing is to educate and inform your audience, not just create a sales pitch. To achieve the content marketing objectives, you need to plan your content calendar around the broad topic areas and address prospect questions in all phases of the buying cycle.
When you start using a content calendar, you ensure consistency and keep the audience engaged. Ultimately, you build brand trust and credibility.
SwingPointMedia
SwingPointMedia is a marketing company focused on using content marketing, such as written articles, videos, and podcasts, on attracting their customers’ ideal audiences. This approach has proven to attract higher-quality customers while simultaneously reducing the sales cycle by 70%.
SwingPointMedia serves local businesses in Southern California and can be reached by calling 760-422-5176
You are invited to also attend a free weekly presentation, providing you the tools and strategy to roll out your own content marketing program for your company or see exactly what SwingPointMedia does for its clients to achieve success. It can be viewed live on SwingPointMedia’s YouTube channel Wednesdays at 11 am pst.