How Can A Content Calendar Help Your Brand?

Content is big news for brands when it comes to marketing strategy, sales and engagement. But coming up with ideas under pressure can feel stressful and lead to missed opportunities.

That’s where a content calendar comes in to help you plan and organise your content. This can help you with brand awareness, SEO, influencer opportunities, audience engagement, customer service and – most importantly – generate sales for your brand.

What is a Content Calendar?

The clue’s in the name, it’s basically a calendar where you plan out all of your content and when you’re going to publish it. There’s no rule as to how far ahead you plan ahead, but it’s best if you include all of your content channels on your content calendar.

This could be on your website, social media, PR, email events, marketing material, marketing campaigns, new product launches and exciting news for the brand.

Why Do You Need a Content Calendar?

A content calendar is really important for planning your resources, spotting opportunities and working out where you can save time, enabling you to be more reactive.

Here’s why you need a content calendar:

• Makes sure that you hit your deadlines.
• Frees up time to make reactive content as you’ve got the planned stuff nailed.
• Plan when you need to start making content.
• Makes it easier to work out resources.
• Work out where you can repurpose and chop up content for other channels.
• Stops you from missing opportunities and veering off track.
• Helps you keep track of your performance.

For example, lots of magazines start planning their Christmas features in summer (if you’ve ever been invited to a brand launch for Christmas products in July…this is why), so sending out a press release on December 1st might not give you the coverage you’re looking for.

Planning this content in for much sooner in the year can help you to generate coverage, interest and opportunities for your brand.

How To Create a Content Calendar

Here’s how I approach creating a content calendar. I usually start off with a digital template that can be shared with other members of the team. This shows months or weeks and each different type of content.

You don’t need to go digital but it’s usually easier to share, track, change and keep safe that way – check out some of these content calendar templates.

It also has space for things like awareness dates and events to be mindful of. This is where I start. These things are usually planned in advance and can be added into the calendar straight away.

Step 1

Add in events into your calendar. Whether it’s awareness days, key events (like Black Friday or Christmas) or a business milestone, get them in there and then you can plan around them or plan towards them.

Step 2

Move away from the content calendar and just jot down content ideas you have. Don’t worry about the where for now, just the what the idea is.

Step 3

Now look at your ideas and think about when and where they would work best. Also think about how you can use them across different channels. For example, a brand launch is definitely something you want on your website, as a PR item and as something on your social media and in your email newsletter.

Step 4

Work backwards and think about how much time and resource you need to create this content. Be realistic. Give yourself enough time, and a little bit of wriggle room just in case anything goes wrong. Schedule every part of the process – include things like approval times, design periods and research.

Step 5

Add who’s responsible to each item. Make sure the person you assign a responsibility to knows about it ahead of time.

Step 6

Don’t just stick your calendar in a drawer/on your desktop and forget about it. You need to refer to it regularly, track your progress on it and make sure everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to do.

Content Calendars & Marketing Plans

You content calendar should be aligned with your overall marketing plan so that they’re working in harmony and that you’re not missing anything out. Remember, content can always be repurposed across channels.

If you have plans for a YouTube video, can you also create some behind the scenes content for your Instagram Story or TikTok channel at the same time? Can you signpost to that blog post you wrote in your email newsletter or on your social media channels?

Don’t make creating content more complicated than it needs to be. The start of a new year or a new project is a great time to plan out your content and get your content calendar on the road.

Need help with your content? Get in touch and find out how I can help your brand to create great content.