Connect with us

MARKETING

7 Steps to a More Strategic Editorial Calendar

Published

on

7 Steps to a More Strategic Editorial Calendar

Updated January 6, 2022

Too many companies focus on the logistics of their editorial calendar – what days content is publishing, at what times, and at what cadence – and ignore the strategic elements. Anyone can schedule blog posts regularly, but the best content marketers create robust, strategic editorial calendars.

Instead of thinking of your editorial calendar as a schedule of content, consider it the implementation plan for your documented content marketing strategy. While the strategy most likely won’t change dramatically over a year, your editorial calendar will. Plan content in quarterly sprints so you can adapt topics to real-time changes in the industry and content based on real-time performance.

Plan #content in quarterly sprints so you can adapt topics to real-time changes in the industry, says @Kelsey_M_Meyer via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

This seven-step guide details how to build an effective editorial calendar by:

Advertisement
  • Determining who needs to be included
  • Identifying goals for the quarter
  • Deciding the content mix and publishing cadence to support those goals
  • Documenting your mix and cadence decisions on the editorial calendar
  • Brainstorming topics
  • Planning for flexibility
  • Measuring results to determine the success of your plan.

Step 1: Plan content creation capacity by determining who is involved

The best content assets should be influenced by a range of viewpoints, not just one person in the marketing department. The people involved should include subject-matter experts, writers, editors, graphic designers, distribution specialists, and potentially an outsourced content creation partner.

The best #content assets should be influenced by a range of viewpoints, not just one person in the marketing department, says @Kelsey_M_Meyer via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

While most of these roles represent the content creators and distributors, subject-matter experts are different. Their primary duties are not about creating content. Build relationships with subject-matter experts who can offer specialized insight into relevant topics for your editorial calendar. These individuals should make sense as the “faces” of your company. They also should be willing (or required) to make time to serve as a subject-matter expert.

TIP: I’ve seen great results from interviewing subject-matter experts on topics, then writing the content and getting their approval on the draft. You and your marketing team are the experts on writing engaging content. Leave the writing to your team and use the SMEs to share unique insights.

Once you decide who will be involved, you need to determine how much time each can devote to the content over the quarter. (And later, you’ll use that information to detail the quantity and type of content assets to be created and distributed over the three months.)

In practice, you’ll need to decide how many SMEs you can rely on and how many hours they can devote across the quarter.

If each of three SMEs can devote six hours over the quarter, for example, you could create nine pieces of long-form content. Figure one hour of the SME’s time per article for an interview, then one hour per article to review and approve the draft. (That’s two hours per article and three articles per expert.) You would end up with nine articles by the end of the quarter.

Advertisement

If you have 10 additional SMEs and each can devote two hours over the quarter, each SME could do a two 30-minute interviews and 30-minute draft reviews. You would end up with 20 blog posts at the end of the quarter.

Then consider how many additional content pieces your team can create without SME involvement. The total (SME-supported pieces plus the pieces your team can create on its own) is your capacity for the quarter.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Step 2: Identify your goals for the quarter

Now that you’ve determined your content marketing capacity, think through your goals this quarter and how content plays into them.

I’ve found most companies have one of these three goals for their content marketing:

  • Improving brand awareness through thought leadership
  • Increasing leads generated through content
  • Improving search rankings for targeted keywords (SEO)

Pick your primary goal for the quarter. It will give you a clearer view of the content types that should be created and the topics to focus on. Consider these examples:

  • Goal: Improving brand awareness through thought leadership

Content mix: Heavy on guest articles in relevant publications and videos; topics geared toward areas of subject-matter expertise

Content mix: A new piece of gated content; guest-contributed articles that include landing page links to your site

Advertisement

Content mix: Topics determined by a keyword research report; heavily geared toward on-site content with some guest-contributed articles with backlinks

Step 3: Determine your content mix for the quarter

Use the insights you’ve gained from identifying your team’s capacity and goal to develop your ideal content mix for the quarter. You can create dozens of content types, including guest-contributed articles, videos, case studies, and static or interactive infographics. If you’re tight on capacity, stick with written content because it’s the least expensive to produce and the easiest to create with a small team.

Create your ideal #content mix based on available resources and a single goal, says @Kelsey_M_Meyer via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Using the team capacity described above with a goal of lead generation, here’s what a well-aligned content mix would look like:

  • Six unique-topic, guest-contributed articles with backlinks targeted to publications visited by prospective customers
  • 18 blog posts on your site – three posts for each topic addressed in the six guest-contributed articles
  • Two gated pieces of content (white papers) – each long-form guide aligned with nine blog posts
  • Two drip campaigns (one for each white paper)

1641475272 246 7 Steps to a More Strategic Editorial Calendar

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Step 4: Specify details on the editorial calendar

This fourth step is where a lot of people start the editorial calendar process – plotting the calendar. But this step involves more than plotting the day each content asset publishes.

Advertisement

Work backward from the ideal publishing date and schedule the following dates on the calendar:

  • Topics confirmed
  • Author assigned
  • Questions submitted to subject-matter expert (or outline created for the writer)
  • Answers submitted from subject-matter experts
  • Content piece draft completed
  • Content piece edited
  • Content piece approved (also note who is the final approver for the piece)
  • Content piece uploaded to a platform or submitted to a publication

By including each of these dates on the calendar, you’ve taken what was once a vision – “we hope we can publish this many pieces of content in a quarter” – and turned it into a plan of what you can do based on the timeline you’ve laid out.

This calendar also serves as a one-stop shop that enables everyone involved to stay up to date on progress and due dates.

Make sure to assess other priorities and activities – those which you control and those which you can’t, such as product launches, big company events, holidays, guest publication dates, etc. Figure those into your planning process too.

By thinking through all of this on the front end, you’re less likely to end up with an editorial calendar that needs to keep changing. Though some things will change, plotting the deadlines you do control will help you and your team stay sane.

Step 5: Brainstorm to finalize the topics for each content piece

Now that you’ve scheduled the content for the quarter, it’s time to determine what you’ll be writing about. This step comes late in the process because brainstorming is more focused when you’ve accounted for your available resources, overall goal, and quantity of content pieces.

Brainstorming is better as a later step. After you know resources, goal, & content mix, says @Kelsey_M_Meyer via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

Advertisement

Using our example, we now know:

  • The content campaign needs two overarching themes to create the two cornerstone pieces — the white papers.
  • Those two broad themes must be broken down into nine naturally aligned blog posts.
  • Those themes and blog posts also must relate to six relevant and engaging guest-contributed articles.

You also know who is going to author each piece of content as well as which subject-matter experts are involved. You can vet a brainstormed topic by asking “Can this person speak to this?” or “Is this person an expert on the topic?” This procedure will ensure that you end up with the best content.

A free-for-all brainstorming session can be fun, but it doesn’t result in the most productive meeting. Create a structure for your brainstorming sessions to ensure that they stay on track. Here’s an agenda for my company’s 60-minute brainstorming meetings:

  • 10 minutes – update on what’s in progress
  • 20 minutes – brainstorming relevant blog ideas
  • 20 minutes – brainstorming guest-contributed article ideas
  • 10 minutes – confirming deadlines and responsibilities and updating the editorial calendar

The important thing is to brainstorm a group of topics at once to ensure that they align. This is the difference between a plan to produce a bunch of content and a strategic content marketing plan.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Step 6: Practice consistency and build flexibility into the plan

Companies make their biggest mistakes with their editorial calendars by putting in a ton of work on the front end and not following through. This happens for a lot of reasons. A boss pops in at the last minute with random content requests. Another executive needs a blog post to cover a conference where he or she is speaking, or news in the industry demands a fresh guest-contributed article commenting on the impact.

Companies make their biggest mistakes with their #editorial calendars by putting in a ton of work on the front end and not following through, says @Kelsey_M_Meyer via @CMIContent. Click To Tweet

You can handle this two ways:

Advertisement
  • Throw the editorial calendar out the window and change focus every week based on the whims of the team. (I don’t recommend this.)
  • Build flexibility into the editorial calendar. (I recommend this.)

You might have noticed that our example content mix doesn’t use the team’s capacity for the quarter. This is intentional.

Based on the resources available, the team could produce up to 17 more pieces of content. But by not building out the plan to capacity, I built in flexibility to work on other pieces of content as they arise.

TIP: If one person in your company is known for coming up with a different, must-do random thing every week, build that into the plan. Simply schedule a spot for “Joe’s Crazy Content Idea” each week.

The important thing is to let your content plan set up your brand for success. When an unexpected request pops up, it doesn’t distract the team from the planned content mix because you built in a capacity for flexibility.

Step 7: Measure your content success

The metrics to gauge the success of your editorial calendar are based on your content marketing goals. However, I recommend tracking these bare minimum metrics to see how well your content is performing against your goal:

  • Metrics for brand awareness – social shares on published guest-contributed articles, clicks back to your website, new connections on LinkedIn, and people reaching out to your subject-matter experts
  • Metrics for lead generation – clicks back to your website from published guest-contributed content, the conversion rate for blog posts, new leads generated from gated content
  • Metrics for SEO – links earned through published guest-contributed content, traffic from organic search, rankings for your target keywords

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Be strategic from the first step

Following a strategic approach to your editorial calendar is a never-ending process. But that ongoing work should be affected by your evaluation process. Review your key metrics toward the end of the quarter as you begin to plan for your next three months.

It gets easier each time you plan the editorial calendar for the next quarter because you’re simply tweaking your previous plan rather than starting from scratch. Let me know in the comments how this seven-step guide to creating your next editorial calendar works for you.

Advertisement

Want more content marketing tips, insights, and examples? Subscribe to workday or weekly emails from CMI.

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute




Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

MARKETING

How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals

Published

on

A figure pulls open a dress shirt to reveal the term PR on a Superman-like costume, reflecting the superpower resulting from combining content and PR.

A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.

The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.

The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).

Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.

Advertisement

Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.

So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.

1. See journalists as your audience

Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.

Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.

“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”

Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.” 

Advertisement

Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”

Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.” 

2. Learn the media outlet’s audience

Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).

PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.

WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’” 

3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)

Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.

Advertisement

“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”   

At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”  

While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”

BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”

4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency

Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.

At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.

Advertisement

Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.

“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”

5. Measure what matters

Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.

“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”

To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:

  • Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
  • Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
  • Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
  • On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.

But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.

“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”

Advertisement

Don’t fear the merger

Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”

But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.

Register to attend Content Marketing World in San Diego. Use the code BLOG100 to save $100. Can’t attend in person this year? Check out the Digital Pass for access to on-demand session recordings from the live event through the end of the year.

HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:

Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

Trends in Content Localization – Moz

Published

on

Trends in Content Localization - Moz

Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.

Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.

Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.

Source link

Advertisement
Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

MARKETING

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

Published

on

How AI Is Redefining Startup GTM Strategy

AI and startups? It just makes sense.

(more…)

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending

Follow by Email
RSS