Feeding the Beast has become a dreaded term in many organizations. Having to regularly supply a website, blog, social media, email newsletters and other marketing vehicles with fresh, engaging content can put a lot of stress on limited resources.
Creating an editorial calendar is one way to tame the beast. A well thought out editorial calendar is your plan for the year, allowing your team to be proactive with content development.
An effective editorial calendar will contain the following elements:
Publishing Schedule: How often do you plan to release new information? Do you have specific events throughout the year that you can build content around?
Content Topics: Identify relevant topics that are interesting, engaging or entertaining to your various target audiences.
Channel: Decide which topics will be published via your website, blog, etc. based on the target audience of those channels.
Media Format: Determine which media formats best fit the topics, channels and audience you have chosen – a feature length article, a video, a series of blog posts a photo essay or something else.
Author: What person or team within your organization is responsible for planning, creating and publishing this content to the appropriate channel?