A content calendar is a powerful tool that marketing and branding teams use to great effect. In the modern world, consumers are constantly on the move, and there are a great many things that brands can do to grab their attention. Typically, digital media is employed as the tip of the spear for any new marketing campaign, and for good reason. The average global consumer today spends just under two and a half hours engaged with social media content (145 minutes, to be exact) every day. That offers brands a golden opportunity to meet consumers where they live and spend time relaxing and consuming media by choice.
But with so much content online already (estimates place the number of blogs at around 600 million, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 million being reported just a few short years ago in 2019) tailoring your brand message is more important than ever.
This is where the content calendar shines. Continue reading to discover how you can leverage this versatile content management and creation tool to great effect within your offices.
Great content requires extensive planning.
In order to produce consistently great content, it’s essential to make planning and research key tenants in your philosophy. Businesses that prioritize planning and foresight are better equipped to handle the inevitable bumps in the road that will come along the way. With a content calendar, making necessary adjustments to the crucial changes that can’t be seen ahead of time is incredibly easy. From blog posts and templates for social media campaigns to workflows and spreadsheets that bring in various data points, a content calendar is a powerful plugin that allows your content team to generate a solid marketing plan and then execute it to its full potential.
A content calendar is essentially a planning tool that forces your team to develop a strategy and then constantly test it against the real world as the rollout develops through the march of time. Building a template of prospective blog posts is one great asset that a content calendar provides, but the most powerful solutions within this realm can also schedule posts to be sent out, create notifications or generate reports, and help maintain motivation and communication throughout the team at all times.
In order to achieve the excellent content that you and your team are devoted to building, bringing in a tool that will help you develop a strategy for success and then give you a front-row seat as it comes to fruition is a must for any brand.
Content calendars are great for busy production managers.
Another thing that a content calendar can facilitate is the storage of all the information that a brand campaign manager needs to share with his or her team. These professionals are often overloaded with dates, content ideas, client specifications and requests, and much more. Placing all these details in the calendar can help alleviate the pressure that team leaders find themselves under. By engaging with a content calendar to help organize these thoughts, teams are able to share data and details more effectively in order to meet deadlines and nail targets with ease.
Content marketers require heaps of information and technical specifications in order to get their products to come out just right. If your team is bogged down by all this information, though, utilizing a content calendar can help you make sense of all the noise.
These tools help teams of all shapes and sizes get down to business on a daily basis. Consider adding a content calendar to your content creation team’s toolbox for excellent results every day.
