Running a small business takes a dedication for efficiency in order for you to do more with less. One under-rated tool to help manage your small business marketing is the content calendar. A content calendar is essentially what you will be publishing when and where. While creating and updating one takes a bit of time on the front end, you’ll inevitably save loads of time during the time period you plan for. If that’s not enough, here are three more reasons your small business needs a content calendar.
- Organizes Content
The best reason to invest the time into creating a content calendar for your small business is that it makes your communication elegant, professional, and on-message, with very little organizing across functions or team members. That’s because a content calendar tells your marketing to communicate the same idea across all its assets; blogs, public relations, infographics, etc. This can help promote binge consumption of your content on a specific topic making you the thought leader on the subject at hand.
Even better than what to say, a content calendar helps you know when to say it. Marketing is often about storytelling but you can’t always tell the entire story at once. Instead, you want to lead your audience to specific conclusions and ultimately to your product or service. A content calendar makes it easy to identify when to say what before you get started.
- Simplifies What to Create
When you’re telling a story across multiple channels and content-types, a content calendar helps to keep you focused. Doing so not only helps you get your graphic designers and marketing communications managers rowing in the same direction, but can help you identify gaps. With gaps identified early on, you can plan around them without scrambling or missing deadlines. Or, you can choose to bring on a freelancer to help fill gaps or to enhance the really important stories. And with your content calendar in hand, on-boarding that freelancer is that much faster.
- Doesn’t Leave Anything Out
When you plan out the stories you want to tell with a content calendar, you can rest assured that you won’t leave out important tangents or proof points that reinforce your message. Too often when we’re scrambling to feed the content monster, we either neglect an important point or simply do not have time to tell it well. And sometimes, missing these details can make your message too generalized or not compelling enough. With a content calendar, you can make sure that key messages are explored.
That isn’t to say that you plan all your content with one calendar. On the contrary. Because you plan for major marketing initiatives and messages, you have time to take advantage of serendipitous opportunities that arise. Or at least the content calendar allows you to execute last minute content without putting as much stress on your marketing resources.