Editorial calendars are very important. Today’s editorial calendars not only plan off line content but they have to take into account web content (landing page and blog), press releases, news, and of course social media comments and updates across (for example) Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and YouTube, to name a few. If that isn’t complex enough these social media calendars have to connect with your PPC and digital media activities.
What are the benefits of social media editorial calendars:
- Roles and responsibilities: Writing it down and sharing ownership help everyone know what they need to do – and helps get it done.
- Commitment: Stamp a date on it, chances are, you will get it done.
- Achievement: Lists are great when you’ve completed them! Also its good for checking up on others as defined with roles and responsibilities.
- Strategic approach: Big picture first, start at the year, month, week and day and planning key delivery times.
- Creativity: Mapping out the topics first will help free up space for creativity and inspiration.
- Trends and forward thinking: Tie in the topics with keyword research and boost the SEO strategy and mediate against potential crisis.
- Measurement: Watching the results in growth and also what is popular in content via tools such as Google Analytics will give you valuable information for future editorial ideas.
Tools that will help:
Blogs:
- Using Google Analytics’s for for advanced content tracking from Cutroni.
- 26 tips for writing great blog posts – some great tips and actionable points here.
- Brainstorming blog posts – taking Copyblogger as their inspiration contently go through some key blog brainstorming insight.
Online resources:
- Understanding Google’s algo changes for better content creation – nice interactive timeline for the history of Google’s search engine algorithms.
- Google Webmaster, Matt Cutts videos and Quora.
- Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz on content strategies.
Tools and software:
- Editorial Calendar plugin for WordPress from Stresslimit. Free to download and use with any WordPress install.
- Excel/Google Docs/Zoho – Spreadsheet software for creating your editorial calendar. Google is particularly good for editorial calendars because of the group editing function.
- Using 21habit to make (or break) any habit in 21 days.
