Creating a content calendar can be so overwhelming! Honestly, it used to be the bane of my existence because I struggled with trying to figure out what to write and when. But, I’ve recently found that it doesn’t have to be that big of a struggle! So in this post let’s go behind the scenes on how I created my yearly content calendar in a week, tops!
What Is A Content Calendar?
Let’s just start with the most important part! What the heck is a content calendar anyway? I’m sure many of you think (thanks to that horrible, yet necessary, thing called social media) that a content calendar is just what you’re going to post on social media for the month. This is only partially true.
A real content calendar (one that will actually allow you to be strategic in your business) includes: Editorial (i.e. Blog Posts, YouTube, Podcast), Social Media, and Email Marketing.
These aren’t fractured parts of your marketing strategy. They are meant to all work together with the common goal of moving your audience closer to working with you.
If you’re still stuck in the phase where you don’t know what to write on social media vs. what to say on your podcast, it’s probably because you still don’t view your marketing as one holistic entity.
Great! So now that you know you have a s*** ton more work to do, what’s the easiest way of doing it? Well, let’s go behind-the-scenes of how I create my content calendar lickety-split.
Topic Clustering
I’m not going to go into all the marketing theory behind SEO (maybe in a later post), basically all you need to know is that topic clustering is the new-ish SEO strategy.
- Start with your primary topic categories for your blog, youtube, or podcast.
- Next, brainstorm potential sub-topic categories of each these. For example, if Marketing is a primary topic, then Social Media could be a sub-topics.
- Then I consider the potential questions my target audience may type into a search engine (i.e. Google, Pinterest, or YouTube).
- These questions now become the titles of my blog posts i.e. How To Create A Content Calendar.
One of the biggest advantages of this process is that you can create as many sub-topics and even sub-sub topics that you feel is appropriate. For me it’s like a mind-mapping processes, and something I can do in a day!
Related: HubSpot Topic Clustering
Congratulations, we’ve done the heavy lifting of this process, I promise! Now we’re on to filling the blanks of our strategy with Social Media and Email Marketing. I do this using a concept I call: The Weekly Theme.
The Weekly Theme
People who produce new content (i.e. new images) daily are usually full-time social media creators (aka influencers) this means that the majority of their income comes from sponsorships etc. and therefore it’s their literal job to create new content almost daily.
If this is not you, then give yourself a break and embrace the age of content re-purposing. Re-purposing means taking one giant piece of content and splitting it into several other smaller pieces of content that you use across your social media.
I suggest using the topic of your Blog (or Podcast etc.) as ‘The Weekly Theme’ for the rest of your content. For example, you’ve probably noticed that this week I’ve been talking a lot about content creation, whether it’s in Captions, IG Reels, IGTV, or IG Stories.
In some way, my theme for the week ‘content creation’ has been at the center.
Finally, my weekly email newsletter will also contain motivating content about this weeks theme, a strong call to action to read the post and follow me on IG for more tips throughout the week!
The benefit of this approach?:
- Your sanity (‘nough said there)!
- It’s the perfect way to reinforce topics.
- Building trust with your audience.
Organizing Content Strategically
To really be strategic with your content calendar you need to align it with your product availability schedule A.K.A. your Launch Timelines. Some people may not have launches that they do throughout the year, in which case, you can skip this step.
But, if your business is structured around your programs or products only being available certain times of the year. Our goal is to make sure your content is organized so it prepares and naturally leads to your offer.
- Take a look at your calendar for the year and be sure to mark off the weeks that you will be launching.
- Organize your best content that aligns with your offer and showcases you as an expert in your niche.
- Be sure your calendar has case studies and testimonials that will help your audience with overcoming objections.
- Schedule your content in a Project Management/Task Management Tool like ClickUp!
