You may be asking yourself, why would I need a marketing calendar? I will have no problem publishing content on time. But then, when the years ramps up and things get busy, you will understand how important an editorial calendar really is to stay on top of everything! So, what exactly is a content editorial calendar? It’s simply a useful tool that helps you to plan out your content.
How to Create a Marketing Calendar for Your Advisory Firm
It can be tough to get started, but once you have a marketing calendar that works, you will wonder how you ever went without one. Did you know that 69% of companies use an editorial calendar? It can be used for more than just blog content, but also newsletters, social media posts, videos, email marketing, or anything where you will be pushing out content on a regular basis as a part of your marketing strategy.
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Step 1: Turn Your Marketing Strategy Into Content
Start by turning your marketing strategy into tangible pieces of content that you can create and share. So, how do you know what type of content you should be creating? It’s important to think small, especially if you haven’t really created much content for your firm. If you want to do a 10-minute video that covers what your firm does, who makes up your team, etc. think about your audience and translate your content into something that will be digestible and interesting for them, such as a 1-2 minute video.
Other things to keep in mind when creating content:
Think About Your Niche
If you cater to a particular audience, then think about what they would like to read. If you focus specifically on pre-retirees and retirees, then think about the types of blogs that they would want to read or video they would want to see. It wouldn’t be the same type of content as a firm that caters to millennials.
Once it is created, then:
Share it with your audience
Get their thoughts on your content, get their feedback and if it works, continue with this type of content. If it doesn’t, then tweak what needs to be fixed for your next round of content.
Measure what’s work with analytics
Make sure you are utilizing Google Analytics and regularly auditing your content. This is so important so you can continue with content that works and tweak content that doesn’t quite do it for your website. With all the different metrics, you can see who landed on your blog, unique page views, how much time they spent, etc. If you noticed that a certain blog had the lowest bounce rate and the highest number of visitors, plan for future with other similar content.
Learn what to create and where to share
This is where social media comes into play. Once you have created your content, figure out which channel to share it on. Facebook is ranked as the most used social media platform by millennials – 88% are on Facebook. Instagram is also popular, as nearly 60 percent of Instagram users are between the ages of 18 and 29.
If you are working with a generation that has been in the workforce for quite a long time, then keep in mind that 37 percent of US adults or more than one out of every three are aged between 30 and 49 years old use LinkedIn.
If your firm targets retirees, they will probably not be on LinkedIn since they are no longer in the workforce, but rather they use Facebook, especially since they may be reconnecting with old friends, looking at pictures of their grandchildren, etc.
All of this is important to keep in mind when figuring out where to share your content, so be sure to do your research posting.
Step 2: Delegate
This is important so that everyone knows their tasks and things don’t get left undone due to miscommunication. When your team is assigned tasks then everything will move much smoother. Some roles may be:
- Team lead/strategist
- Editorial director
- Designer
- Content creator
- Analytics expert
These team members are the ones who will help you plan out your content, create it, share it appropriately and make sure everything runs smoothly. Without delegating these roles, it wouldn’t be long before assignments and deadlines were getting missed, however, once everyone knows and understands their roles, then everything will run much smoother.
Step 3: Identify Content Themes
This will start out as a brainstorm with you and your team members. Collaboration helps when it comes to figuring out topics, because just as the old saying goes, “Two heads are better than one!” When figuring out your themes, some things to keep in mind are:
- Think about what people ask about the most
- Figure out where you make the most money
- Where are the greatest opportunities in your industry?
These are some of the things you need to consider when getting started. What are the biggest challenges that your customers face? Where is an area in your industry where you can grow?
When it comes to planning, what content are you going to push out and when? It may seem very far in advance, but you should plan a month ahead, a quarter, or even plan out the entire year in advance. Figure out what is going out at a particular time, and that could be when you create relevant content focused on a particular month. Make sure that you share the marketing calendar with the team so that they know exactly what is going on.
Additionally, when you plan far in advance, you can figure out if something isn’t going to work after all. Understand that this calendar is a work in progress and can be changed based on a new trending topic or a different idea.
Step 4: Prioritize
What will get you the most “bang for your buck?” Figure out what will most benefit your company and your followers, and create content based on that.
Plan content on your marketing calendar that will help prospects make purchase decisions
While it’s great to generate traffic to your website, in this case, schedule the content that will generate income first. After this, make sure you create a balance of content that focuses on selling something and content that answers questions, inspires your clients, provides them with information, and anything else that helps them to find out more about your firm and industry.
Step 5: Map Out Your Calendar
You’ve done the work, now here comes the fun part! Plan out the content on your calendar, and even though it is used primarily for blogs, it can be used to manage all of your content, such as videos, newsletters and social posts. Some things to keep in mind are:
Plan Pieces Of Content To Target Specific Keywords
What is a keyword that your target audience uses a lot?
Twenty Over Ten client Trisuli Financial Advising specializes in financial planning for military members and veterans, and while not all of their blogs speak to this topic, some of them do as this is the type of content that their clientele will be the most interested in reading.
Plan your content for a week a month or even a year away
It’s best to be prepared rather than scramble when you realize you haven’t posted any quality content in a while. What are you working on at your firm that you want your clients and leads to be aware of? If you know that you have a webinar or something coming up in the next week or month, then get the content prepared.
Obviously, things change over the course of the year, so this editorial calendar is not static and can be edited accordingly, but if you can plan this far in advance, then it just helps for things to run more smoothly, especially if you know that at the end of the year you will have a “roundup” of sorts
Create the content
When creating the content for the calendar, you obviously don’t have to write it all out, as this calendar is just helping you to plan what you will be creating. When creating the “content” for the calendar, keep in mind you should include:
- The date the piece of content will be published
- The topic or headline of the content piece
- The author of the content
- The owner of the content – i.e., who is in charge of making sure the content makes it from ideation to publication and promotion
- The current status of the content (updated as it moves through your publishing cycle)
That’s a Wrap!
We hope that this editorial calendar is useful for you! When you plan ahead and figure out what type of content to put out and when it makes your firm’s marketing strategy so much more efficient. It may seem tedious, but once you and your team have started it and figured out how everyone can work together on this, it will ensure that your business has a very successful editorial calendar.
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Our free calendar templates are 100% editable to get you organized for the new year and include samples for blogging, social media and email marketing.
About the author
Blair Kelly
Blair is a digital marketing assistant at Twenty Over Ten and has a passion for uncovering what drives online traffic and the highest engagement. She follows more animals on Instagram than humans and her greatest achievement is her daughter, Grey.