There’s no argument about it—content is currency in social media and in media in general. Companies have a wide variety of platforms through which they’re able to disperse content and create a “voice”—various social media platforms, bylined articles, contributed content and corporate blogs are a few examples. In order to be effective with this content, it’s important to be strategic from the start. This is why we often design editorial calendars (similar to those that publications create) for client content. PR Daily recently shared a piece on “13 tips for creating a killer editorial calendar” that is chock-full of helpful advice. Below are my favorite tips from PR Daily, with a few additions from my experience at Communiqué PR.
Tips from PR Daily:
Assign deadlines to key players. Even if you’re building out an editorial calendar a year in advance, develop a schedule with deadlines for each person involved. Figure out who is responsible for action items like writing, revising, posting and communicating with editors, and assign due dates for action items for each month. This will help hold the team accountable, and can be adjusted later on. It will also allow authors to integrate and prioritize creating content into their work schedule.
Determine targets. Think through what your target audiences are, and make sure that your content is being dispersed across different verticals you might be targeting. It can be easy to get caught up in one category or genre when building an editorial calendar, but ideally, you’ll have content that will resonate with each of your target audiences.
Share with stakeholders. Allow anyone that needs to agree on or contribute to an editorial calendar visibility into it. This creates shared expectations on timing, content and authorship, which is important to clarify at the beginning. To do this, consider an online collaboration tool like Smartsheet, which we use to manage all of our client work and highly recommend. A cloud-based tool allows you to update and access information in real time, which is especially helpful for an editorial calendar.
A few tips from Communiqué PR:
Consider timing. One of the main purposes of an editorial calendar is to be strategic about content. To do this, you’ll need to think about the timing of each post. Consider the events you have coming up, or events that happen year after year. For example, plan posts related to certain holidays, industry events, or trends that you know will happen on a yearly basis.
Switch between evergreen subject matter and newsier items. With a blog or column, you’ll want to leave some room for posts that tap into trend or news items—this content is often unpredictable. However, you’ll also want to schedule evergreen content that is relevant at any time of year. This will maintain equilibrium—it’s time consuming to constantly monitor the news for content ideas, but also important to maintaining quality content. You can strike a balance from the start by planning this into your editorial calendar.
If you haven’t considered an editorial calendar for your business’ blog, guest columns or other content creation, we highly recommend it. Planning not only takes some of the stress out of creating content, but also makes sure that you get the best results from the material you produce. And, if you need assistance with this planning, get in touch—we’d be happy to be a resource.