An editorial calendar is a valuable PR and social media tool that can help businesses to produce effective, timely and targeted content for their target audience.
Businesses use multiple channels including blogs, websites and social media channels that all require fresh and exciting content; sourcing and organising this content can be a challenging task.
Implementing an editorial calendar as part of your PR strategy can act as a road map for your content and help your business manage the production, publication and distribution of content across multiple mediums.
A good format for an editorial calendar is a table or calendar in an excel spreadsheet or Google Calendar. This format allows you to organise your information clearly and make changes and update the content as needed.
A typical editorial calendar should include the following information:
- Title of the content: Decide on a catchy and interesting title for your content.
- Author: It is important to assign who will be drafting particular pieces of content. This can help your team to be more productive and creative.
- Deadline: Assigning a publication date will ensure that your content is always ready to be published on time.
- Medium: Determine what kind of content you are producing and where it will be published. This is important so that you can assign where particular pieces of content will go and ensure that you are not posting the same content on the same medium.
- Category: Identify your primary topics to ensure that you are producing lots of different content that is still relevant to your target audience. This can also ensure you don’t double up on content topics.
Here are some ideas about how to effectively draft an editorial calendar.
Decide on your business goals
Before starting to draft an editorial calendar, take the time to think about what outcomes you are hoping to achieve. For example is your business looking to increase brand awareness among a target audience or establish its authority and credibility in a particular field?
Deciding this from the beginning will help to act as a foundation for the editorial calendar and influence the future content that will be produced.
Map out evergreen opportunities
Start filling out your editorial calendar by mapping out ‘easy’ content ideas which can be created from evergreen stories. Evergreen stories are the special events and holidays that come around every year, and are always interesting and newsworthy. Think about special anniversaries for your business or annual events such as Christmas, Mothers Day, Valentine’s Day or New Years Eve.
Diversity your content
After filling in evergreen opportunities, you will need to fill in your editorial calendar with fresh ideas that keep your audience interested and engaged. Items such as whitepapers, eBooks and infographics can help engage your audience.
It is important you allow some flexibility in your editorial calendar. One of the best ways to get media coverage and engage your audience is to respond to what is currently happening in the media. Always allow some time in the calendar to reactively pitch to these stories.
Spread your content
It is also important to spread your content across a variety of different platforms that will encourage your audience to move from one platform to the next.
For example, if you draft and upload an article for your business’ blog, post about this new article on your business’ social media platforms to increase web traffic back to the blog.
Decide on posting frequency
One of the first steps in creating an editorial calendar should be to decide how frequently you can realistically post new content. Content creation takes time and it is important that you choose a frequency that is sustainable.
If you have a business blog for example, aim to post at least one new post a week to keep your audience interested.
Maintain the calendar
It is important to keep on top of the calendar to make the process successful. After a month, perform a content audit to determine if the quantity and quality of content being produced suits your target audience. Look at how your audience is engaging with the content, particularly on your social media channels in order to make changes that can benefit your online audience.
Ensure you display your information in an easy-to read way and share this with your team. Enforce accountability by specifying who does what and when each task should be completed.
An editorial calendar is an efficient tool to use to help you deliver quality and consistent content.
Want more PR tips? Download this free ebook
Sydney Public Relations Agency, CP Communications provides specialist media, traditional and online PR strategies that get amazing results. Contact us today. For more great tips visit our website www.cpcommunications.com.au.
