If you’re serious about content marketing, start thinking like a publisher and develop a strategy.
And then, to make sure you stay engaging, relevant and on track, create an editorial calendar.
Writing, editing and publishing all take time, energy, attention to detail and commitment. Just like building relationships.
You need to be patient, adaptable and consistent.
Here are five ways to do that with your content calendar:
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Everybody’s got an angle. After your internal audit, research/analysis and brainstorm high, look at your ideas from a critical perspective. Figure out which are truly original and contribute something new, which are curatorial, which are just OK and which suck. They say there are no bad ideas in a brainstorm. But there sure are afterward. Weed out the garbage and cultivate the gems.
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Thing big, but know your place. Are you an industry leader? A start-up or upstart? A laggard perhaps? Be honest about your position in the marketplace, what you want to achieve, which relationships you can call on for help and whether or not you’re adding something of value.
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It takes different talents to write, publish and edit. Assign responsibility to the people you can count on to bring your stories to life. Ideally, you should have more than a team of one. Otherwise you risk building a culture of the lone poster, who can sometimes overshadow your brand and then leave, taking your fans with them.
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Be ambitious and realistic. Make a commitment to yourself and your readers about how much content you can actually produce. And then deliver it. Don’t say you’re a daily and turn out content every week.
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Look in the mirror. Review your efforts every quarter. Are things working or are you experiencing a Google Analytics flatline? If that’s the case, you may not have tapped into the right stories, found your voice or perhaps your stuff is just plain crap. Get back to the drawing board. Test, learn, adapt.
Now go out there and captivate in words and pictures.
Do you have any tips to add?
