"The Little Voice of Vista": How to Create a Content Calendar
[
Hello everyone, I’m Vista, nice to meet you in the air.
Speaking of [content marketing](https://www.contenthacker.today/search/label/content marketing), everyone should be familiar with it, right?
According to the Content Marketing Association, content marketing is a strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and delivering valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract, retain, and ultimately drive action from a clearly defined target audience.
Compared with other marketing methods, content marketing focuses on producing content that the target audience finds useful and interesting. It makes good use of content elements such as text, videos, photos, images, or sounds, and presents it through official websites, blogs, or audio-visual platforms, and then uses social media or keyword searches to spread and disseminate it externally.
To put it simply, what content marketing sells is not the product itself, but an experience and feeling that allows people to let go of their guard and appreciate the beauty of the product or service through high-quality content.
What do you do if you want to implement content marketing, thereby implementing a content strategy and the motivation to continue producing content?
The simplest and fastest way is to learn from the practices of traditional media and master the content production process and distribution channels by establishing a content calendar. This can help your company plan and implement content marketing-related strategies in a timely and efficient manner.
So, in today’s program, let me introduce to you what is a content calendar? And, how can we plan and apply content calendars?
If you have ever attended my Writing Class or attended the “Content Hacker” lecture before, you may have heard me introduce the content calendar.
Before I start introducing the content calendar, let me first talk about the calendar! Of course, when it comes to calendars, a little helper in daily life, everyone must be familiar with them! Whether you like to use a notebook to record meetings of all sizes, or rely on Google Calendar to manage various appointments, in short, the calendar is a good tool that everyone is familiar with and must rely on in the workplace or life.
Japanese writer [Tajima Yumiko] who once served as a senior executive in Microsoft’s business department (https://www.books.com.tw/exep/assp.php/vista/products/0010768011?utm_source=vista&utm _medium=ap-books&utm_content=recommend&utm_campaign=ap-202202) once said: “What is recorded in the calendar reflects the “brain” of a manager.” She pointed out that the executive’s calendar is often a glorious record of working alone. If it is written densely and densely, the result will usually be better!
According to a survey by the American Content Marketing Institute (https://contentmarketinginstitute.com), as many as 88% of companies in the United States have incorporated content marketing into their overall marketing strategies, but only 32% of them are willing to spend time on written process planning in advance when engaging in content marketing. You know, if the industry is willing to spend some time and effort to properly plan the content policy, the efficiency of its production and communication will be increased by 60%.
If we say that the purpose of calendars is to help professionals record important work matters and meeting developments; then, the purpose of content calendars is to help marketers plan and produce content types for various marketing purposes such as blog articles, videos, or infographics.
There is no doubt that content calendar is a good helper for marketers! Not only can we use it to record various topics and ideas, but we can also assist the marketing team to grasp the direction, manage materials, schedule human and material resources, and coordinate content production priorities. Through the process of writing and editing content calendars, we can ensure that all marketing work is under control and can take into account the ultimate purpose of content marketing and the needs of the target audience.
In other words, with the help of a content calendar, you can help your team focus its firepower and maximize the efficiency of resources. It not only allows colleagues to focus on producing content, but also ensures that everyone is on the right track.
To put it simply, content calendars are quite similar to traditional calendars and can be regarded as a kind of schedule. But the content calendar can help you organize relevant content by understanding the content type and release time.
For example, we can list the content we plan to produce in advance, arrange the dates and channels for submission, and list the responsible content producers and community editors one by one. This way, you can confidently execute your company’s content strategy within a specified time frame.
Overall, there are several obvious advantages to planning your content calendar before engaging in content marketing!
The first advantage: continuous planning and production of content through scheduling
For those who are not from a professional background, what should they do if they want to be able to continuously and stably produce content like media reporters or publishing editors and other professionals? The fastest and easiest way is to follow the practices of traditional media and use content calendars to master the content generation process and distribution channels. I think it would be a very effective method to use visual scheduling to continuously plan and produce content.
The second advantage: clearly standardize the distribution of goals, tasks and responsibilities
As we all know, content production often requires a lot of effort and resources, and it also requires long-term accumulation. Through the recording and management of the content calendar, the relevant information and person in charge of each marketing activity can be clearly standardized and defined, and all team members can also understand the manpower allocation, goals, deadlines and task details related to content production. At the same time, they can also fully grasp the work responsibilities, progress and assigned workload of each team member.
Third advantage: Helps publish consistent and diverse content to communicate
Through the content calendar, you can quickly grasp the content themes and stories that will be produced in the future. From bloggers to brands to corporate accounts, we can all use content calendars to organize content and simplify communication within the team. Clever use of content calendars can not only reduce the stress faced in content production, but also enable close interaction with target audiences by creating and publishing consistent and diverse content.
Now that we know the advantages of a content calendar, next I want to talk about how to start planning?
Thinking back to when I was working in the media, whenever there was an editorial meeting, the colleague responsible for hosting the meeting would prepare an editorial outline and schedule in advance. Through the internal content calendar, you can clearly understand the pre-arranged themes for each month or week. All reporters and editors will make detailed writing plans and manuscripts based on the content calendar arrangement. This not only helps supervisors arrange interviews and writing for different colleagues in advance, but also facilitates tracking of work progress to ensure on-time publication.
Even if we are not in the media industry, we can integrate the concept of calendar into content marketing plans, and this is also the first step in planning a content calendar. In other words, we must list the content we plan to produce in advance, arrange the publishing dates and related information for blogs, Facebook, LINE, and Instagram, and list the content producers responsible for rotation.
Having said that, you can think of a content calendar as a way to help you plan and manage your social media posting schedule.
We all know that the key to content marketing is to produce high-quality content. With the help of the content calendar, the originally fluid or chaotic content production process can be clarified, and the latest progress and person in charge can be easily learned from the calendar and task list. Once clear tasks, dates and responsible persons are set on the content calendar, content producers will know their tasks and deadlines and must complete the task within the deadline.
In other words, the role of the content calendar is to turn passivity into initiative. It can not only plan and arrange the content submission schedule in advance, but also remind us to produce backup content. If a sudden emergency or major change occurs, we can respond in time and put the emergency production content first, and then readjust the structure and sequence of the content.
For example, if your company’s main business is selling various 3C products. Then, the important fixed schedules and festivals every year include: Lunar New Year, spring information exhibition, spring school season, air-conditioning season, autumn school season, winter information exhibition and the end of the year. In addition, there are also new product launches by well-known brands such as Apple, Samsung or Google every year.
After mastering these important annual fixed dates and activities, you can incorporate this information into your company’s content calendar in advance, so that you can arrange content production according to the products you want to promote and market.
After hearing this, you should already know the wonderful use of [content hacker](https://www.contenthacker.today/search?q=content calendar)! Next, I will share with you how to create an effective content calendar! In fact, there is no fixed format for content calendars. You can use Google Forms or Microsoft Office series Excel, PowerPoint and other software to create a suitable content calendar.
In addition, Notion, which I introduced in the program before, also provides content calendar templates, which I recommend you to use. Of course, you can also refer to the practices of foreign media or content marketing companies and choose a [template] (https://bit.ly/3GT2pos) that is easier to update and adjust projects to ensure that the content calendar you plan can meet the needs of your team. If you like “Vista’s Little Voice”, please subscribe to my YouTube channel, or go to Apple Podcast Give me a five-star review and share this show with friends who are interested.
Your support is what keeps me making the show. Thank you, see you next time, Bye bye.
★ Welcome to sponsor a cup of coffee and cheer for Vista! You can also express your support by sponsoring multiple times, thank you.
★ Want to learn content marketing techniques? Welcome to register for the online course “[Content Power: The Super Power of Building Brands] (https://hahow.in/cr/content-power)”.
If you want to hear me share about [Personal Brand](https://www.vistacheng.com/search?q=Personal Brand), [Content Marketing](https://www.contenthacker.today/2019/07/content-marketing-from-zero-t o-hero.html), Copywriting or Reading Experience and other information, welcome to subscribe to “Vista Newsletter” for free! Thanks.
Further reading
- Use the content calendar (with template) to find direction for your content strategy
- “The Little Voice of Vista”: How to do SEO from scratch
- Experience from participating in the 2nd Content Hacking Lecture (CHL2)─Deconstructing previous experience and becoming your own editor-in-chief
📖 深入探索相關主題
