Rockin’ Referrers: Editorial Calendar
If you have followed our previous articles, you now know how to grow your community, whether on Twitter or Youtube. Today we’re going to look at the planning behind it all, how to do it and why. As you can see, today we’re going to talk about editorial calendars! Are you ready? Let’s get started!
What is the editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar is a tool that allows you to manage the production of content for a blog, a newsletter, and social networks. The editorial calendar is an essential tool to deploy and carry out a content strategy. More than a simple calendar, it allows you to anticipate and have a global vision of the upcoming publications.
Why use an editorial calendar?
To have a global vision for the production of content
Built over a defined period of time (generally from 1 to 3 months), the editorial calendar allows you to have an overall vision for the production of upcoming content. This makes it easier to stick to the content strategy to be provided while respecting the publication rhythm.
Never lose inspiration
Animating a Twitter community, a blog, or social networks requires creative efforts and it is common to run out of ideas about what to publish. An editorial calendar allows you to avoid a blank page since it allows you to organize and spread out publication ideas over time. It also allows you to anticipate key and redundant dates such as world days and holidays. For example, pizza day for the crypto community. Finally, the archives of past editorial calendars allow you to dip into already published content to recycle them if needed.
It minimizes mistakes
A regularly used content calendar reduces the risk of mistakes made by you or your marketing team. For example, publishing content multiple times on different channels.By planning well in advance and clearly allocating responsibilities among team members, you can ensure that all necessary work processes run smoothly. This is especially important for large teams where responsibilities such as review and fact-checking are likely to be divided among members. Abrupting this process can lead to costly mistakes.
It facilitates collaboration
Editorial calendars enhance and facilitate collaboration, whether it’s within an internal team or with freelancers. With the accessibility features of content calendars, everyone knows the status of each post without having to contact people individually.
It prevents content from being published too infrequently
Scheduling content with an editorial calendar prevents you from publishing too infrequently and helps you identify any gaps in your content. This allows you to make any changes before the publication date. Publishing posts regularly has been shown to be one of the main ways to drive engagement, it also helps to build authentic connections with your target audience and increase reach.
How to create it?
You can make it as simple as possible by using a simple spreadsheet or complicating things a bit with a more developed tool. Either way, there are a few rules to follow!
The essential features in an editorial calendar
Title: With a title, your tasks are quickly understandable in the calendar.
Description: Usually the description will be a brief of the task to be done.
Status: Research, Draft, Under Review, To Be Published.
Link: All links needed for content creation (Inspiration URL, Brief URL, Draft URL, etc).
Image: Headline image, Linkedin thumbnail, or infographics to be integrated into an ebook. Any images that can accompany the resource.
Publication Date: When do you want this resource to be completed and published?
Main distribution channels: How will you promote each resource? Website? Social networks? Email?
Conclusion
In conclusion, knowing how to produce quality content is not enough to grow a community and your business at the same time. You will have to respect a precise publication strategy so that your content production bears fruit. The editorial calendar is exactly for that, don’t delay and create your own!
