A content calendar (also known as an editorial calendar) is used by bloggers and businesses to help plan upcoming content on both their website and for social media. It can allow you to plan for blog posts, Instagram stories, paid advertisement, and lots more.
It will help you and your business stay organised, and will ensure that content is being regularly so your audience knows when to expect new content.
1. It will save you time
Creating a content calendar will help you save time with your content marketing in the long run.
Planning and creating content in advance will allow you to stay on top of your work. Setting aside a couple of hours to plan your content properly will allow you time to thing of your ideas in advance and prevent yourself from having a panic when you realise you don’t have a any fun and new ideas.
You will know what content is being published when and you can use tools like Hootsuite’s Publish that will automatically publish your content for you.
2. You can keep your posts consistent
Pre-planning your content will help you ensure that you are regularly putting out content, and regardless of it its page views or YouTube subscribers you are wanting to grow consistency is key for growing your platform.
Planning and creating out what content you are publishing where ahead of time will help you stay consistent even when you are struggling to come up with new ideas. If you ever do struggle with content ideas Pinterest has some amazing prompt posts that will help you stay on top of planning.
3. You can plan for key dates
All businesses or blogs will have important dates that will be important for you and your audience. If you are a cosplay blogger Star Wars Day (May the fifth) may be the biggest date on the calendar for you.
Using a content calendar will allow you note that date months in advance and will give you plenty of time to make sure you have the best content created ahead of time. Clear Voice has a great webpage full of important dates for 2021 to make sure you have content planned well in advance.
4. Keep your audience engaged
Having an engaged audience is fundamental to help grow your platform. If you audience know when to expect your next post they are likely to stay engaged with your content. If you are posting on social media, engagement can affect if the algorithm will show your post, which in turn can either help or hinder your platform, from your audience from seeing it but also from new customers.
Creating regular content will help to grow your brand, if your audience knows that you upload a new blog post every Monday at 12pm, they are more likely to go to your blog and catch up on your content, more than if you just post sporadically.
5. You can collaborate with ease
Having a planner will help collaboration with your content. If you are working in a team having the content calendar planned in advance will allow everyone who has been working on the strategy know when the content is coming out.
Even if you are working on your own having a content planner can help you collaborate with other companies and brands. It will allow them to know when to expect the content from you. Also, if you are working on sponsored work, the company will need to know (and approve of) when that content is being released. Planning in advance will allow you and companies you are working with to stay on top of things.