An editorial calendar, otherwise known as a content calendar, is a programmed schedule of when and where you intend to publish the created content. It is an integral schedule involving status updates, premeditated promotional activity, and future articles and updating an existing one. If you are a blogger who posts occasionally, then this calendar is not required. But if you are creating content for the digital marketing of your enterprise, then an organized schedule is indispensable. The calendar enables you to create and publish relevant blogs on a customary basis for effective promotion to the target audience.
Smooth operation
There are three major benefits of a content calendar in an online business. It ensures all content-related activities take place at the designated time. If you are disordered, you tend to forget about content creating and publishing. You overlook updating uploaded blogs or publish less often. It facilitates the smooth operation of content related jobs. It is an excellent platform to work with team members or partners outside. If you are solo in the blog business, you may not require this calendar.
Everyone is on the same page
But if other members of the organization or hired content writers contribute, you need a platform, so everyone is on the same page. A contemporary content calendar acts more like a project management instrument than a calendar. Moreover, it provides a bird`s eye view of existing and upcoming content. For instance, you can separately upload a set of case studies; simultaneous publication may not attract the desired attention from the viewers. Case studies associated with the same topic are uploaded for better comprehension. You can supervise the marketing strategy for the forthcoming months on a single screen. Most businesses (63%) do not document their strategy, implying a random approach and development of topics.
Outstanding instrument
When you encourage your audience to blog, you need a topic to discuss and write to express their overview. It is an outstanding instrument for brainstorming ideas to manifest a blog post that echoes the target audiences` views and reviews. Without a consistent plan, people and organizations tend to blog haphazardly. After a few months, they tend to stop publishing due to a lack of audience and subject or drift from the original idea. The editorial calendar ensures uniformity in creating and publishing content.
Engaged audience
If your audience knows when the next content is coming, they wait eagerly for the scheduled date. The subscribers would be aware of the date, time and day of the week of the intended blog. It keeps them engaged. The next important aspect of the editorial calendar is promotional; you can chalk a strategy to promote your content. The content calendar will schedule promotional activities such as podcast telecasts and uploading on social media. It synchronizes the editorial and campaign tasks. You can use different colour shades to differentiate between two assignments.
You can document future ideas so that you do not ignore or forget to work on them. You can have a flash of a unique idea while driving or something crops up during brainstorming sessions. These ideas are not displayed in the calendar, but you need to script them so that you do not lose track of it or divert from the present content.