Marketers with a plan are 60 percent more likely to be effective with their content marketing than those without.

1.Plan out your content resources

Every content marketer has experienced that sinking feeling of a deadline approaching with no apparent content available to fill the gap. A content calendar will enable your internal team and potentially your external team of content producers – writers, designers, illustrators, photographers, videographers – be prepared to produce engaging content without fear of missing a deadline.

2.Generate creative and engaging content ideas

The simple act of creating a calendar can double as a brainstorming session. Having your team look forward to build a calendar can spur creative content ideas. In creating a calendar, marketers can align engaging content with holidays (even minor ones, such as #EarthDay), with upcoming industry events, and pending product launches.

3.Provide visibility for all departments

With a documented content calendar, departments throughout your company can view upcoming content and plan accordingly. Executives can see that the content is supporting the company’s overall strategy. Marketing team members can have a single-source window to understand their responsibilities. And the sales team can plan communications with prospects based on upcoming content.

4.Maintain no lapses in conversation with your audience

Creating a content calendar ensures that your message stays in front of your prospects, whether you’re trying reach them with a branding message or whether those prospects are further along in the funnel and you want to drive them to take a specific action, such as downloading a piece of your content or filling out a “contact us” form.

5.Use successful organic content to drive your budget for paid social advertising

Marketers can benefit by planning out their paid social media advertising based on the content that’s been successful on the organic platform. After creating videos, ebooks, white-papers, or any other kind of content, marketers promote this content organically in a variety of social channels, And increasingly marketers are seeing the value of spending on social media advertising.

6.Measure and optimize

Building a content calendar and planning your content marketing enables you to more easily create benchmarks to measure your content marketing effectiveness, compare performance over time, and optimize your program.

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There are a number of Content Editorial Calendar programs to help you if you don’t want to use an excel spreadsheet.  All of these are super easy to edit, share and collaborate.

Google Docs  These are free and  easy to share with co-workers and other collaborators.

HubSpot Is a great tool to help you get warmed-up on how to use and learn the benefits from using a content calendar. They offer different templates for free.

C0-Schedule  CoSchedule is more robust and is a favorite of WordPress users. It is a comprehensive approach to inbound marketing and automated social publishing. Costs begin at $45 a month

Kapost  One of the largest and best-known editorial calendar tools, Kapost is the software behind the content strategy at companies like Content Marketing Institute, CBS and Cisco.  It can be expensive for a robust platform such as this one.  Prices start at $3500 monthly.

There is something for everyone.  If you need help deciding on the best one for you,please feel free to contact me by emailing hello@nicolebrashear.com