The goal of good content is to draw readers – and shoppers – to your website or blog. Creating great content that drives traffic to you instead of making you chase after it is so much easier to do with a content calendar. It keeps your content fresh, helps you plan holiday content at ideal times, and ensures you’re never stuck for a content idea.
Make sure your content lines up with your business goals, communicates your company’s message and culture, and successfully promotes your brand. Create your small business content calendar quickly and easily with these eight tips. For the purpose of this article, let’s assume you’re creating a content calendar for an entire quarter.
- Choose the day and date your content will get published. For instance, if you publish a new blog every Monday, write down the date for every Monday of the upcoming quarter.
- Next to each date, write a blog topic.
- Once you have the topics nailed down, go back and turn each topic into a title.
- Go back to each title and make sure each one is SEO-optimized.
- Write each blog.
- Make sure each blog includes a call to action.
- Source a picture for each topic. Listen, be sure to choose a picture from a paid source or from a free source with a usage license spelled out in plain English. I highly recommend Pexels. Don’t risk getting sued because of an image you found online, but didn’t get proper, written permission to use.
- Follow the 80/20 rule by making 20% of your blogs purely self-promotional and making the other 80% informational.
Skip the fancy spreadsheets and calendar apps and build your content calendar with a simple list that’s easy to follow. No matter how good your calendar is, if you don’t actually use it, it won’t do you – or your business – a bit of good. Set aside a single day each quarter to go ahead and write and schedule those blogs. I do this. It typically takes an entire eight-hour day, but then it’s done for the entire quarter.
Here comes the shameless plug: An effective content calendar saves time, energy, money, and frustration. Of course, if you really want to save time, energy and frustration, outsource your blog. Find out how easy and affordable outsourcing your blog can be by visiting my services page. I’ll create a calendar of content topics and ideas designed to speak right to your target market, drive traffic to your website or blog, and draw a map to your purchase portals.