Creating the Content Calendar

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A marketing calendar is a document that highlights the dates when marketing tasks will be performed. The marketing calendar helps you organize and highlight a series of activities and events in the effort of promoting your business. There are 3 types of marketing activities your calendar should cover:  seasonal/short-term activities, a content calendar, and ongoing marketing activities calendar. Therefore
there’s a need to have 2 marketing calendars in place. Your seasonal or short-term marketing calendar should display activities like Easter day or Christmas promotions. Ongoing activities can be weekly events, E.g. a happy hour, customer appreciation day, wine
tasting, Facebook Mondays.

Tasks should be added to the daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal schedule. The calendar helps focus your attention on your business goals. Having a marketing calendar in place is a great way to keep everyone on the same page. It also is a tool for you and your staff to collaborate and contribute to.

Calendar Types

  • Marketing calendar – outlines your marketing activities.
  • Editorial calendar – a daily, weekly and monthly schedule outlining the content and themes
    associated with your marketing campaigns and website. Content like blogs, press releases, articles, social network postings, PowerPoint presentations, and the dates on which that content will be published.
  • One free and easy option is to use Google Calendar, an application that is available for email users in the “Home & Office” Google section. You can also choose Microsoft Outlook, an Excel document on a shared server, or another calendar program. It is a good idea to choose a calendar application that is integrated with email. These programs send out reminders days or
    weeks in advance of upcoming marketing initiatives.
  • The WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin (FREE) is one of the most popular plugins, for good reason. Your posts can be easily viewed at a glance and placed in draft mode, scheduled, or published.

 

Who’s Responsible for the Calendar?

Make someone responsible for tasks. Determine who is responsible for each marketing task. For this position, the person responsible plans, proofs, implements, and checks the results of each marketing effort. Make someone responsible for the calendar. This person is responsible for alerting staff of campaigns; adding, editing, and removing tasks from the calendar.