How to Create a Strategic Content Calendar

Creating and maintaining a content calendar is a great way to organize which content should go out, when it should go out and on which platforms. Strategic content calendars can include: Blog posts, news articles and social media. Although they’re designed for organization, calendars can also start off as overwhelming without the right guidance. Here is how to create a strategic content calendar:

Choose Your Calendar

There are tons of online calendars to choose from. From freehand documents to excel sheets to calendars from third party companies, the options for organization are endless. Some companies even use two or more calendars to break off their content into bite sized pieces to mentally digest and edit easier.

Create Your Campaigns

The best part about a strategic content calendar is planning ahead of time about what you want to say and how to say it. You can prepare for months ahead and include holidays, national days and promote and tease upcoming releases and campaigns. On the day of, you can focus on planning further ahead for other campaigns while your current posts are on “set it and forget it.”

Your social media campaigns don’t have to necessarily be about what you’re currently selling. They can also be educational, like sharing fun facts with your followers. Or promoting your other content, such as blog posts. 

Curate Evergreen Content

Your evergreen content is designed to be timeless for your brand. This is also a great opportunity to create a repository in case your content is going through a dry spell or your campaigns are slowing down. You can use your evergreen content to educate or inform your followers, create throwbacks and memories to past accomplishments, create behind the scene content or showcase your company’s work culture. 

Collaborate with Co-Workers

Regardless of who’s the boss, getting a second opinion is crucial when curating content. A second opinion can help with proofreading, maintaining brand tone and voice, and can help prevent any potential mishaps. Having another person to brainstorm with can help create new ideas and concepts for future content. 

Continue to Keep Up to Date

In addition to your content calendar, keep an eye out for your social media report that’s available in each social media platform and third party scheduling softwares. Having access to the numbers can help you connect the dots on how you can adjust your strategy to optimize your success. 

Be careful to not scrutinize your statistics. A decrease in numbers over a short amount of time won’t be the end of the world. Generally, checking on the numbers once every month and seeing what posts did best that month can help determine future strategies.