Since there is a lot of media channels to use in publishing your marketing content, a media calendar would be very essential in order to keep a well-structured schedule in monitoring your content. Aside from keeping track of content marketing products, you are also determining how much to be produced the following days or months. Not to mention creating a media calendar would also be a little complicated. Hence, it's a must that we take advantage of a monthly calendar template, weekly calendar template, or an excel calendar template in order to free us from stress.
Whether you call it a media calendar of events, social media calendar, editorial calendar, or content calendar, your aim is to create a well-structured media calendar. Here are essential tips and inclusions in making your media calendar.
1. Determine The Type Of Your Content
Before you create your media calendar, identify the type of content you will produce; it can be blog posts, eBooks, articles, etc. In addition, you should also consider the quantity of content that will be produced. Then, determine how many blog posts or articles should be produced monthly or quarterly. In which case, identify how frequent will you deliver the contents to your audience.
2. Organize Your Content
The next thing you'll do is to organize your media calendar by using Google Spreadsheet or MS Excel. The inclusions that you will have in your media calendar would talk about the content's tentative title, broad description, target keywords, meta tags, meta description, call-to-action, the status of the content, and the promotion methods. Then, fill the spreadsheet with all these in your spreadsheet. You may also add more considerations to cover in your next media calendar.
3. Determine Your Publishing Schedule
When choosing a schedule to publish your content, it would be best to make sure that it's relevant to that specific day. For example, your publishing schedule falls on a holiday in commemoration of a national hero; then, you will look for an article or blog post that incorporates details about his life, contributions, and death while marketing your business.
4. Check Each Content
In addition to determining the quantity and publishing schedule, make sure you meticulously check on your content marketers' article(s). Check out some grammatical errors, plagiarised ideas, or misinformation. Doing so will make sure you are able to give high-quality content to your readers (or clients) aside from checking on the volume of the contents to be produced. In addition, you are also ensuring that you will not be sued by any party because of plagiarism and/or misinformation.
5. Create A Calendar
Upon doing so, you may use Google Spreadsheet, customize excel calendar templates, or use google sheets. Any software you may use with worksheets you can easily customize. When creating your media calendar, make sure you provide enough space for every note you wish to put on that date. Unlike an accounting calendar, the media calendar is more specific to date and time. Thus, it's best to increase the size of each cell accordingly.