Creating a content calendar is essential for staying organized and aligning your marketing efforts with your business goals. Whether you’re a small business or a large brand, having a structured content calendar ensures consistency and simplifies your marketing tasks.
In our recent Geekspeak episode, we discussed how we set up our own business content calendar. If you want to learn how to build an effective content calendar for your business, keep reading!
Here’s a simple guide to help you build your own content calendar:
Before creating your content calendar, it’s important to define your marketing goals. Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive traffic, or boost sales? Your content should align with and support your specific objective.
In general, start by jotting down important dates such as holidays, seasonal events, and campaigns that will influence your content throughout the year. Use your favourite template, or make a copy of our content calendar template to outline these dates so you can easily adjust each year without starting from scratch. Organize by months, weeks, and days to keep everything manageable.
Take time to review your social media channels. What’s working? What isn’t? Track your KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). If you’re running ads or have a large following, focus on conversions. For smaller businesses, focus on audience growth and engagement to refine your strategy.
Ensure your content calendar reflects the platforms where you’re active—Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Having a posting document template can be incredibly helpful. This template provides an overview of your posts for the week or month and allows you to insert screenshots of your content, making it easier to plan across multiple platforms.
A content calendar isn’t just about dates—it’s about consistency. Have SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) in place for image dimensions, copy length, scheduling, and any internal processes that help maintain consistency across your posts. This ensures that your content is always aligned with your brand’s voice and visual standards.
While a content calendar is an essential tool, it’s important to stay flexible. Trends and external events can pop up unexpectedly. Make sure to build some flexibility into your schedule so you can adjust to changes. For example, when something big happens in your industry or a new trend emerges, leave space to jump on it quickly.
At Liddleworks, we map out our content yearly and monthly but schedule our posts weekly. Scheduling posts ahead of time is crucial for efficiency, but keeping room for flexibility is key. By scheduling weekly, we ensure we’re prepared for new trends or news that might emerge.
Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to monitor the performance of your content. Track important events such as form submissions or product purchases. Add UTM parameters to your posts to track both organic and paid conversions. Regularly check your content’s performance and make necessary adjustments to improve results.
In addition to tracking performance, meet with your team regularly to review results. Stay up-to-date on current trends and best practices that can help improve your strategy. Constantly studying online trends and analyzing your content will guide your future decisions, ensuring your content calendar evolves as your business grows.
By following these steps, your content calendar will not only keep your marketing organized, but it will also boost your effectiveness and streamline your content creation process.
Don’t forget to make a copy of our content calendar template and begin planning today! Plus, check out our video tutorial on how to work with Liddleworks’ Content Calendar for more detailed insights.
Ready to take your content strategy to the next level? Book a discovery call with us to learn more about our Social Media Training program and how we can help you create a content calendar that aligns with your business goals – we’d love to help you elevate your content strategy!
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Entrepreneur, Geekspeak Podcast, Marketing Basics, Social Media Content
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