Folajomi Ballo
Do you have a content management strategy?
Do you need one?
Perhaps you publish at random times.
Perhaps you publish at will.
Perhaps you publish whenever the mood strikes.
On the other hand, maybe you publish consistently.
Do you always write about the same topic?
Do you bore your readers?
Do you confuse your readers?
Guest author Folajomi Ballo is here to explain why both scenarios contain blogging mistakes you don’t want to make.
Let’s hear why you vitally need a content management strategy.
Why You Need A Content Calendar For Your Blog
It’s Tuesday morning again; you want to publish a new post as you always do. Now your head is filled up, and you don’t know what to write about.
Or, worse, you are caught in the middle of writers’ block. This use to be me before I discovered a content calendar.
Writing a blog post is a tedious task without a proper content strategy.
To ease your stress, I will show you why you need a content calendar for your blog and how to set up one.
What is a Content Calendar?
A content calendar (also Editorial Calendar) is a tool used to pre-plan and schedule your content. It’s a complete content plan, from publishing, updating, promoting, and writing of content. Having a plan in place is an effective content management strategy.
Why Do You Need a Content Calendar?
While preparing content for your blog, the biggest obstacles are distractions. We are not always productive with too many distractions. You need a content management strategy to help fill in space, and this is where your editorial calendar comes into play.
But why do you need one for your blog?
1. It Helps You Become More Organized
As I speak, I have more than 50 content ideas scattered in my head; I have some on my Notepad, Google Doc, and Evernote. These ideas will evaporate into thin air after a few days of no documentation.
If you have ideas loose in your head, they will be of no use if you don’t plan them adequately. Imagine organizing 50 content ideas properly; it means you are anticipating 50 blog posts.
You need an effective content management strategy to organize all this content.
The one calendar you use for planning your day-to-day activities won’t be of help here. You shouldn’t overwork a single calendar. An editorial calendar is more specific, only for your content.
2. It Helps You Prepare For Your Next Blog Post
How does it feel to have two months of content pre-planned? Great achievement, right? A content calendar helps you identify what’s next to write about.
If you already know what topic you will be covering next, you have saved some valuable time you could have wasted roaming around Quora, Reddit, or Pinterest to find blog post ideas.
The content calendar also helps you identify a hole in your content; maybe you are over-focusing on a particular topic while you left a few topics uncovered.
Once you know your next topic, you have enough time to research and come up with a masterpiece. One of those reasons you weren’t able to write an astonishing blog post is because you have a poor relationship with time (i.e finding post ideas, doing research, and writing blog posts at the same time).
3. It Helps You Stay at the Top of Your Consistency Game
How consistent are you in producing content for your blog? Do you publish daily? Weekly? Or monthly?
What’s worth doing is worth doing well. Consistency will always win against all odds. Maybe you publish new content whenever you feel like publishing. Then, you are not consistent.
Distractions are a productivity killer. Even when you decide to be consistent, you must avoid distractions by all costs. Do you see why you need a content management strategy? It helps you stay focused, and it enables you to achieve your plans before time elapses.
Let’s say you publish new content every week, you can decide to skip a week without posting for a not-so-tangible reason. You won’t do that if you have a content calendar in place, because you know it will disrupt your plans.
Even if you choose a perfect niche for blogging, you need consistency to stay long in the game; blogging is a long-term goal.
4. It Improves Productivity and Keeps Your Audience Engaged
Since you have enough time to brainstorm and research your next content, it’s obvious the end-product will be of top-notch value. The case is not the same If you write and publish your content in a hurry.
The key to productivity is adequate preparation. So what happens when you publish a valuable piece of content? Surely, you get your audience engaged, and you gain more authority.
To be factual: How do you compare a piece you put together in 30 minutes without adequate research, with the one you spent quality time doing research? The result? It can never be the same. Audience-engaging content defines quality content.
5. It Allows You to Plan Your Social Media Marketing
The connection between content and social media is real. A content calendar helps you identify your most successful piece so you can leverage them for running social media ads.
Since you’re already promoting your e-books, infographics, whitepapers, and other valuable content organically on social media channels, it’s a good idea to pick your best performing organic content, put your money where your mouth is, and use Facebook Ads, Instagram ads, or Linkedin Sponsored Content to get your message across to your audience.
The organic reach on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is pathetic; only a portion of your followers will see your post. You can’t help but run ads to reach your audience.
Brand awareness is essential in digital marketing. Your social media organic reach won’t help here, you need to support it with social media ads too.
Conclusion: Why You Need A Content Management Strategy for Your Blog
Content creation is the most challenging part of blogging, and you can’t excel without quality content. I just revealed the reasons why you need a content calendar for your blog. You really need it.
WordPress doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled. The editorial calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published.
If your blog is built on WordPress (which I assumed), you can download the Editorial Calendar Plugin; it’s free and easy to use. There are other plugins too, make sure it serves the purpose you need.
Author’s Bio
I am Folajomi Ballo. Founder of Hugestepup. I am a blogger and Digital Marketer. I help new bloggers with actionable tips to grow their blog fast.
Host Blogger’s Comments:
Takeaways:
This post explained the importance of having a content management strategy.
Update: July 2020: John Doe came by and offered to sponsor content about controversial topics. Should I take it? Would you? You need to have these policies in place when you start. That way you’re ready if you ever need to make these decisions.
Falojami offered five reasons you need an editorial calendar to manage the content on.
Which blog organizer should you choose?
Best Planner for Bloggers
In his article, Folajomi recommends the WordPress Editorial Calendar.
I have used not only the WordPress Editorial Calendar but also the Publish Press Editorial Calendar. I found both to be helpful tools.
CoSchedule also has a strong reputation for having an editorial calendar, but the CoSchedule calendar is a premium tool.
Readers, please share so other bloggers and content marketers learn the importance of having a content management strategy.
Can you suggest any other reasons a content management strategy is vital or do you believe it is important to be free of the restraint of a content management editorial calendar?
I look forward to your views.
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