Why an Editorial Calendar is so Important

March 15, 2016 05:00 AM Published by Ashley Logan

How organizing your content with an editorial calendar will simplify your communication strategy

Doing anything without a plan can make it twice as hard, and increase the opportunity for stress—especially when it comes to content marketing. We’ve all heard of businesses who try to employ an intern to manage their entire social media messaging or those who implement a content strategy without an editorial calendar, and it’s painful for us to watch. Not only does this tactic eliminate measurable, repeatable and sustainable results, it takes away the strategic aspect of your outbound communication, which can hurt your business. Regardless of whether you are a startup or a Fortune 100 company, having an editorial calendar to keep your content strategy organized is an essential part of doing business today.

3 reasons an editorial calendar can simplify your outbound communication strategy

  1. Be Strategic. Knowing what you’re going to write about in advance makes it much easier to communicate a well-rounded message. Using an editorial calendar can ensure you address a variety of different areas of your business, so you can strategically address all of your company verticals. Planning ahead will give you space to think about how to address your content combining promotional and editorial material, so that you sell your services in a balanced fashion.
  1. Plan Ahead. With all your inspired thoughts categorized and stored in content buckets, it makes it easy to pull the ideas and organize them into dates on your calendar. Plan how you will deliver the content, and fill out the calendar for each day until you've organized the entire month to your liking. And then while you write blog posts, browse the internet, or conquer your to-do list, use your editorial calendar to map out additional content ideas as they come to you. Copy the inspirational links and blog post ideas into respective content buckets, then expand on the concept as you continue to strike genius.
  1. Stick to a Schedule. An editorial calendar creates a schedule for your outbound communication, which is half the battle. Take advantage of social media scheduling software so you can schedule your content in advance, so it doesn’t interfere with your daily tasks. By sticking to your calendar and each piece’s assigned launch date, your content and online presence will be consistent, reliable, and credible—one of the most important aspects of content marketing

Editorial calendars offer so much importance to the content marketing process, and the idea is adaptable enough to be used with any part of your business. Looking to get a content marketing strategy set up and need some assistance? Contact Yakkety Yak. We are a professional content marketing firm and will develop a customized editorial calendar for your business.

Tags: Chicago, Content, content marketing, editorial calendar, Editorial Calendars, yakkety yak

This post was written by Ashley Logan

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