Want to do a little content marketing for your business? Start with an editorial calendar…

Creating content takes work. Blogs, videos, eBooks, white papers, infographics, even the snippet of text you send with an article you’re sharing, that’s all content that you can use to brand yourself and your business in the minds of your existing and potential customers. When one engages in content marketing, you’re making a deliberate effort, not to sell, but to inform and educate your targeted audience about how much you know in hopes that when a need arises, you’re the first person they think of because you’ve continuously fed them solutions in the form of content.

But the process of creating good content can be grueling. You have to figure out who your audience is, create content they’ll want to read, determine the best way to deliver it to them, and cross your fingers in hopes that they’ll share it with friends. But, with a little planning and the help of an editorial calendar, you may find that creating content on a regular basis is manageable.

So, what is an editorial calendar? It’s simply a place to map out what content you want to write, when you want to write it, and where and when you’re going to share it when it’s ready. Some editorial calendars go a step further and track ‘performance data,’ the responses to each piece of content. For example, you may want to include the number of tweets, Facebook likes, pins, or unique views to that page on your business website.

Benefits? Editorial calendars help you plan content in advance, which is especially helpful when creating it to support business initiatives. It also provides insight into which types of content work best for your readers, what posting days produce the best response to your content, and when to abandon a campaign that’s not working.

To get you started, here are a few fields to consider adding to your calendar:

• Content Title – something catchy that includes a keyword or two
• Author – may not be you if you’re outsourcing your content development
• Publish Date – when you’re going live
• Media Source – blog post, e-newsletter, eBook, video
• Delivery – website, email, social media, press release
• Results – website analytics/vanity metrics

Editorial calendars can be simple or complex, but unless you’re cranking out tons of it, my vote is for simple. Things we tend to make too hard, we tend to stop doing. Come up with a format that works for you, be it in Excel, Google Calendar, or an old school desk calendar. Before posting content, determine a frequency you can handle and stick with it. Then start writing…or ask someone to do it for you.