Planning Your Content Calendar

Creating successful content is not easy. Filling your social media or blog with juicy content that answers questions and brings lots of value to the reader is much easier said than done.

So, you want to establish your platform as the best place to go for high-quality content in your industry? Here’s how to turn your content pillars into a thoughtful calendar for your brand:

Who is your audience?

Before you go about creating and publishing any content, you need to understand who your audience is. Although much of your content will be your own knowledge and expertise shared with the world, be sure you’re familiar with how your audience will best receive it.

Use analytics or engagement tools to understand the demographics of those seeing your content.

✨Are they mostly male or female?

✨ From a specific age group?

✨ Where are they geographically located?

✨ Are they from a specific ethnic group?

Understanding these fundamentals about your audience will help you to know how to best address them, and which platforms and content pillars will be the most successful.

How are your content pillars relevant to them?

Now that you’re familiar with your audience members, it’s time to find out what they need. Your business has a niche that attracts a certain type of client, but you must go beyond that.

You’ve probably heard it many times before, but put yourself in your audiences’ shoes.

What is your target audience complaining about (or hyping up) on social media? Use the power of social media sites to get a sneak peek into the lives of your audience.

If one of your pillars is “educational content,” seeing what your audience shares, likes and engages with is a great way to get inspiration for an area where they need your content to fill a gap in their lives.

Cater any content pillars you’ve established to your audience by seeing where their current sources of information fall short and how you can add new, professional and innovative value to them.

Constructing your content calendar:

And finally, it’s time to actually start planning how and when your content will be published on the web. Keep in mind that your content calendar can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be for your business and your message.

First, establish your workflow. Decide how often you want to post on each platform, and what it will take to make sure it runs smoothly. Who will be in charge of creating graphics, taking photos or writing copy? Be sure to communicate this workflow plan with your team.

Once you’ve figured out who will be in charge during each step of the process, allow your team members enough time to draft these posts. As you work, take notice of how all of your content is working together and be sure that it can always connect back to your main mission. A good practice is to spread out content related to each pillar based on how often you want to post. This way, your audience won't be seeing one type of content all at the same time.

Once drafted, it’s always good to have another set of eyes on your content before you publish on the internet. Send your content to the team members in charge of your content calendar to get some constructive feedback and a varying perspective. Ask yourselves: is this really optimized for your audience? Is there any way we can improve this moving forward?

And now, you can schedule your posts to go online! As you get in your groove of posting consistently, it might be helpful to use a content scheduling platform. Our team recommends Buffer, Later, or Planoly!

To successfully plan your content calendar, decide how much time you need to get through drafting, feedback, and scheduling. This way, you can see how far ahead you need to plan on your content calendar.

Loving these content workflow blogs? Check back next week for creative insight on how to create eye-catching, scroll-stopping content!