A content calendar is a plan which aids you in organizing your upcoming content by specifying what and when you will post onto your various digital platforms.

When you have the content calendar in place, you will spare yourself the fretfulness of coming up with a topic just before it’s time to execute it and write your next blog post, with an imminent deadline.

Building and maintaining of a content calendar is crucial for all involved in content production whether as a one-man operation or part of a larger team.

A content calendar helps you to:

1.Plan and Stay Organized
For how long are you going to scribble your content topics on crumpled pieces of paper or in random notebooks? Is it a reliable method? The fact is that you are likely to drift away from that which is central when you get many ideas and different things to think about.

Your content calendar will enable you to incorporate your marketing strategy – you will be able to align your blog post topics with your social media and email marketing content. It will enable you to notice content gaps such as repetitions, excessive concentration on a particular topic, or neglect of certain topics.

Content calendars help you plan content ahead of time, designate what resources are needed for execution, and determine the timing of when that content will go live. This saves a great deal of time as everything is pre-scheduled, thus allowing you space to be much more efficient and productive.

A content calendar saves you the agony of making last-minute decisions about topics and types of campaigns. It allows for proper preparation, as well as, plenty of time for research, creation, and execution. This means that the deadlines will be met, and in most instances work within the respective set budgets for there will be no emergencies.
Another practical reason to have a content calendar is that it also allows you to foresee and account for upcoming content. For instance, if your company is about to launch a new product, you can organize work ahead of time.

2. Align team players
Content creation has a lot of stirring parts, and a content calendar helps in having everyone on the same page. You might need to work with an illustrator for a blog post or tell your social media team to promote new content. A content calendar helps you divide and break down each piece into its respective components and assign them to specific people with clear timelines.

In addition, when content topics are clearly outlined in the content calendar jointly with your team players, those with a surge of creativity will most likely bring in numerous inspiring ideas.
A calendar works as a benchmark for your team members and consequently saves time for all, in that, you can direct your teammates to the calendar and avoid unnecessary emails or status update meetings. The calendar ensures that information is accessible at all times and not just in a few people’s heads.

Valuable insights from engagement with your audience and their preferences can help you in content creation and necessary adjustment.

3. Stay Consistent
The content calendar enables you to ensure that you always remain in the minds of your audience through a consistent offer of educational, entertainment, and any other relevant content, day after day. The 3 Cs of content marketing might as well be consistency, consistency, and consistency. Irregular postings lead to an out-of-sight-out-of-mind kind of scenario, irrespective of how large your following may be, or how much they like your writing efforts.

A good content calendar is not just about dates on a page; it is a system for creating a repeatable process. After you have planned out the stages required to publish a specific piece of content, you can simply repeat these stages with every new piece, instead of having to start from scratch. This not only saves you time, but also makes it easier to assess how long each task may take, and make sure that no step is missed.

Content calendars provide a means of tracking. They enable you to notice patterns, know which content does well on which days, as well as when people engage most with your content. This will help you fine-tune your strategy through determining optimal post times, further defining the target audience, and confirming what type of content is more engaging. The bigger picture is that this will determine what is working and what is not; so that you can focus effort on duplicating those campaigns that are producing better results.

To sum it up, a content calendar is a must-have, in a company’s marketing strategy. It offers an exceptional tool and resource for planning your goals. Selecting the right tool and process for you and your team can significantly help with efficiency and analytics tracking while generating content that is aligned with your business goals.

Do you use a content calendar? How is it helping you? Leave us a comment below; we love hearing from you.