Editorial Calendars: Continuously Producing Content
It’s easy to imagine how a single piece of content–an article, a video, or a tweet thread–could go viral and bring all the eyeballs with fists full of cash to you. But this is rarely how this happens. Yes viral moments happen, but not always for reasons you might like. Furthermore they’re not as predictable as you might think.
Rather, it is intentional, thoughtful, well planned marketing activities that tend to garner the results that align well with business objectives. And it is a consistent brand voice supported by well maintained narratives that will build trust with your audiences.
We’ve explored the kinds of media and activities that marketers use to drive results. We’ve reviewed how those activities map to the customer journey so you can understand how to influence their progression from awareness to education to becoming a customer. And we’ve looked at how to construct a marketing campaign to more effectively put this all into motion.
By this point you might be wondering, how does one keep all these things straight? It can take weeks or months to prepare for a campaign. There are critical parts of the customer journey that must be covered. How does a team keep up with the many different campaigns and programs that require support? The editorial calendar is the tool that many teams use to address content needs and manage on-going production.
What is an editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar is a schedule that outlines the content and publishing schedule for a blog, website, social media channels, or any other content-driven space. It helps content creators plan, organize, and manage their content production process.
Editorial calendars typically include details such as the title of the content, the author or creator, the publishing date, and any relevant information about the content, such as keywords, target audience, and intended format (e.g. video, article, infographic, etc.).
Using an editorial calendar can help content creators ensure that their content is well-planned, consistent, and aligned with their overall content strategy. It also allows them to plan their workload and prioritize tasks, ensuring that they can deliver high-quality content on a regular basis.
Getting started
As you think about your own editorial calendar, you’ll want to start with a clear understanding of what falls within your scope. What types of content will you be responsible for publishing and at what cadence. Do you have a blog that needs 1-2 articles published each week? Are there webinar recordings or a podcast each month to publish? What about ebooks or reports? Are you responsible for supporting new pages on the website, such as new feature pages? Get a clear understanding of what content you are responsible for, and the rate at which you will need to publish.
When prioritizing content, campaigns or events tied to higher business objectives come first. After that, as you look for inspiration to fill the space and time in between, you can look to the customer journey you mapped. You have already identified critical needs for your target audience. Based on the kinds of information your audience wants, you can audit your existing content and find the gaps. Use this as inspiration as you begin to build a content wish list.
Build a strong foundation
So what does this mean in practice? Here’s a short list of how you can get started with building your own editorial calendar:
Start with known campaigns, events, and projects on the calendar. When building your editorial calendar you’ll want to meet with all teams across your organization. Learn what campaigns they have planned, what projects they will be focused on, what the product roadmap looks like, and what events the team will be sponsoring. Take all this into account as you begin to draft your calendar.
Fill in the gaps strategically. After you’ve placed all planned campaigns, projects, and events on the calendar, you’ll see where the open spaces are. You can use your customer journey, the product roadmap, and any other timely events as inspiration. When filling those gaps, pick pieces that serve a purpose—are you creating something that makes your marketing funnel more robust? Can this piece also act as a sales enablement tool? Make sure you are not just creating content for the sake of content, but creating pieces that have a clearly defined goal.
Make sure all segments of your audience are represented. There is a possibility that your users may not be the same as your buyers. When this is true, you may want to reach both audiences with a different approach. An individual contributor who uses your product every day will have a different perspective than the CTO who is concerned with meeting their department’s quarter goals. One topic can be covered in multiple pieces when speaking to different audiences.
Be flexible. Timelines can shift and campaigns can be delayed. It’s good to have a few pieces in your backlog ready to fill those gaps as needed.
Make more from less. One idea is rarely just a single piece of content. Consider a webinar that features a customer case study. It’s no small feat to get a guest to participate, let alone a customer advocate who is gushing about how much you’ve changed their workflow with your latest amazing feature. After the live webinar, get a transcription of the video and publish that. Consider publishing an article that dives into the Q&A session with the audience. Perhaps viewers were especially interested in one aspect of the story, dive into that deeper. Get every last drop from each idea!
Build a team of writers. Managing a robust editorial calendar requires a lot of writing support. You can hire external experts to help draft pieces. You can also create a writing program within your organization or community that encourages experts to write about what they do or topics you need help covering. Provide your writers with editorial support so they feel confident this is something they can be proud of.
Promote your content! If you publish something and fail to promote it, then why did you bother creating it at all? As you can see it takes a lot of energy to produce and publish pieces. Make sure your content is getting shared and promoted in the appropriate circles. Whether this is your social team sharing it across channels, your demand generation team promoting in relevant ad campaigns, your sales team being made aware of how they can leverage these pieces–make sure your organization knows the content exists, why it is important, and promotes it accordingly.
Measure, rinse, repeat. And of course track engagement around the pieces you create. Using the tools at your disposal, see how your content is being received, consumed, and engaged with. If you write an article about a feature and promote the free trial, are people clicking through and signing up? If it's a general awareness piece (tofu), are readers clicking through to explore more material on your blog or site? Be sure you understand the appropriate metrics to track the success of the piece and pay attention to them. And use that feedback to inform how you build and promote the next piece.
Run with it
Once you’ve built your calendar, you’ll need to manage it. You’ll want to review it at least once a week to make sure that all items are progressing as scheduled. You’ll also want to check your engagement metrics, what is resonating well with audiences?
When checking metrics, make a point to review higher level metrics across all pieces. Is an ebook or article you published a year ago still showing high levels of engagement? Keep track of important feedback like this and share it with everyone involved. Your writers will be happy to hear their work is appreciated, and the team will have a stronger understanding of what content is making an impact.
On a quarterly basis check back in with your organization. What campaigns or projects do they have scheduled? What does the product roadmap look like? What special events are coming up? Go back to step one and make sure your calendar is still aligned with key initiatives. Then proceed to step two to fill in the gaps, don’t forget to promote your content, and measure, rinse, repeat.
It can seem daunting when the pressure to produce content is constantly weighing on you. Taking a strategic approach and making sure your content is aligned with key objectives will help you stay focused on what matters most. And whether you’re a large team that can publish content daily, or a lean team operating on a looser cadence, you can at least be sure you’re making an impact with each piece.
This is one post in a series focused on marketing to developers. Check back soon for more posts that will dive deeper into understanding your ideal customer profile and constructing messaging that resonates, among other things.
