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Content Marketing

Content Marketing

Content Marketing

Content Marketing

3 Tips to Create Your Content Marketing Blog Calendar

Content marketing is the most recent development in marketing strategy- develop content that both informs and educates your prospects without any overt or obvious marketing message. It’s all about winning your prospect’s attention and trust while establishing you as a content expert, eventually winning their business.

Content marketing has virtually exploded since it came on the marketing scene in 2014. Your company now has to stand out in its messaging and content and it has to deliver it to the right audience.

Publishing a blog that is regularly updated with informative tips and educational content can be a challenge. Posting regularly is a must!

Here are 3 steps in creating your content calendar blog.

Step 1: List Blog Post Ideas

Don’t start your content marketing calendar with how many blog posts you’ll need. Start by listing all of the topics involving your product or service that will be interesting to your prospective and existing clients.

Don’t stop generating ideas until your list is at least 20 – 30 ideas long. Now you can move to Step 2- but set aside time in the future to come up with new ideas for your content.

 

Step 2. Plan Your Posting Schedule

Armed with some great ideas for your blog, the next step is to decide how frequently you will publish the new content to your blog. Frequency of publishing your content is crucial and you’ll want to assess realistically that you have the resources to fulfill your content marketing commitment.

Best practice is to start off slow and build up your blog post frequency. Try posting 2 blogs per month and work your way up ideally to once per week. Remember to keep your content fresh and relative.

If you don’t have the resources to publish daily, then start with once a week and increase your frequency.

Schedule complete? Move to Step 3.

 

Step 3. Put Your Ideas Into Your Calendar

Now that you have developed tons of new and relevant content, you just need to drop the post ideas into your calendar.

Here are some useful content marketing software tools that will help you with your new blogging process and help you maintain your blog :

 

  • Edit Flow – A WordPress plugin that is 100% free. A very complete turn-key solution.
  • CoSchedule – A great content calendar app that works on all platforms.
  • Editorial Calendar – another WordPress plugin that is helpful. Here’s a demo.
  • Content DJ – an editorial tool that also manages your social media posts. Starts at $29 per month.
  • Use Google Calendar.
  • Create a spreadsheet, store it on your computer or on Dropbox – invite participants.
  • Use pen and paper or post to a whiteboard – writing your schedule is helpful for focus.

As you post content to your blog think about providing some variety for your readers. Here are some tips:

  • Create a good mix of topics
  • Mix the length of your posts- long and short posts should be alternated
  • Break complex topics into sections – “Part 1 of…”
  • Use language that the layperson can understand

By following these 3 steps, you’re on your way to informing your prospects and clients with content marketing that will improve your bottom line.