The secret to getting started with your content calendar is to keep things simple. It’s easy to jump into the deep end with content marketing and get overwhelmed with all your brilliant ideas. What we’ve learned is that if founders stay focused and keep things streamlined, they can get up and running quickly.
We’re going to make it really easy for you but in order to set this up right, you must commit three hours of your time. Your resulting highly effective plan and calendar will set you up for content marketing success!
STEP ONE: Set Your Goals
Before you get started creating your calendar, first decide how you’ll measure success. After all, what’s the point of producing content if you don’t have a goal you’re working towards? Choose measurable goals, like revenue, total new customers or sales, or increased percentage of page views. Keep these goals specific so you can get a realistic sense of whether or not your content is helping you in the ways that you want it to.
PRO TIP:
Goals are not “publish to instagram 3X a day” or “create more content for facebook”. These are TACTICS that help you achieve your goals!
STEP TWO: Identify Your Audience
Next, you need to think about your target audience. We never miss a chance to remind you how important knowing your audience is (and even if you think you do, you should still read our blog post to be 100% sure!).
When creating content, you need to understand who you’re communicating to in order to do it effectively—pushing out content just for the sake of doing it won’t help your business. Map out the details of what you know about your target audience: what they like, what they’re looking for, and how they communicate and engage with content. This will help inform the rest of your plan and ensure you’re creating relevant content.
STEP THREE: Choose Your Content Pillars
Before you get started making content, choose four or five high-level themes. These are the pillars that you’ll use when planning and creating your content. Each of these pillars should be closely related to your brand and be something your target audience is interested in. For example, you could choose products or inspirational quotes or founder spotlights—any of these ideas can serve as a content pillar as long as they’re relevant and related to your business.
Some examples of content pillar groups:
Motivational quotes, Customer Testimonials, Product Features, Team
Product Highlights, Holiday, Competitive, Educational, Inspirational
Customer Highlight, Fun, Promotion, Training, Events
STEP FOUR: Map Out Your Channels
The key to this hack is minimizing your effort to guarantee performance. When crafting your plan, be sure to focus only on the channels you can execute well instead of trying to do everything. Where are the best places to engage your audience? Where does your audience engage the most? Then make a choice: choose up to three channels where you can distribute your content to reach your target customers. By being focused, you will be sure to knock it out of the park and prevent scrambling which always leaves you with nothing in the end.
STEP FIVE: Pick Your Content Types
Objectively evaluate your resources and decide which content types make the most sense for you. If you’re a good writer, for example, you could choose to focus on blog content. Or if you have a relationship with someone skilled in photography or videography, instead focus on photo and video content. Think critically about how you can create the most high-quality content with what you have readily available, and then choose the channels that make the most sense.
Again, you want to be focused here to produce the best possible quality. If you are spread too thin not only will it not get done, it will not be good.
STEP SIX: Determine Your Publishing Schedule
When you’re first getting your content going, you should organize a schedule you can stick to. This all depends on your resources.
Just me, doing it all on my own: Then your publishing schedule is simply when you can commit an hour each day to doing it. Don’t overcomplicate it! If you can only commit to three days a week, then only do that. Block the time in your calendar and commit to those days/times.
You have an individual who is dedicated to managing your social: Same as above, but hopefully they can commit to daily publishing.
You have budget to invest in a tool: This is your best option for success because the tools out there make it easy to schedule in advance and basically set it and forget it. We do not recommend any of the free tools available as you will be wasting your time on software that does not perform. Tools we love because they are inexpensive and easy to use are Buffer and Planable. If you are only using Instagram, consider Planoly.
STEP SEVEN: Create your Content Calendar
Once you’ve picked your content pillars, chosen your channels, and mapped out your publishing scheduling, you’ll need to put it all together in a centralized calendar. You can use something as simple as a spreadsheet, or find a free or paid tool online (our favorite free tool right now is Asana) to help you visualize all of your upcoming content. Map out your ideas for the next month on a high level. Don’t work about the details, that you will do in your weekly planning.
The most important part is that you create a system that works for you. That is the hack - keep it simple, and let it work for YOU!
Once you have this set up, your regular content planning will require minimal time.
MONTHLY: Schedule an hour each month where you input your ideas into your calendar. Again, just high-level, in sync with your pillars.
WEEKLY: Schedule an hour each week to go in and check in on the upcoming content schedule so you always have a sense of what’s in your pipeline.
CREATE & PUBLISH CONTENT: From there, it’s just about creating the content and getting things posted on a daily or weekly basis to engage your audience and work towards your goals.
To learn more about creating a content calendar or for more start-up marketing hacks,