Why you need a content calendar
Here we look at some of the reasons why it’s great to have a content calendar to give the best social media results…
There’s a great buzz at the moment about content marketing, so here we look at an essential part of this – the content calendar – and the reasons why you need one.
What is a content calendar?
In simple terms, a content calendar is a clear and precise way of presenting a schedule of content, set against key dates and themes. So, like a traditional editorial calendar, it gives you a place to identify key topics, assign tasks to your team and create a publishing schedule, so you are clear that fresh new content is being regularly uploaded. It also acts as a great ideas-generating tool for you and your team.
In today’s digital marketing age, a content calendar is essential as it allows you to ensure that you are generating a consistent stream of relevant content to be added to a blog or website, for SEO benefit. As Google’s Hummingbird and Panda Algorithm changes now mean that content is king and websites that have regular, well optimised authoritative content added will rank more highly than beautifully designed sites with less regularly updated content.
So why is it important to have a content calendar at all for your SEO activities?
1. The main reason is to ensure that your content is strategically planned, well thought out and runs along relevant, consistent themes. The content calendar should be the hub for all blogging and SEO activity and provides a great overview of the content marketing strategy.
2. One of your goals may be increasing traffic to your website or blog. A calendar allows you to plan your content in order to reach these goals. If you are operating an effective content marketing strategy you should find that website visits will increase when consistent and quality are your top priority.
3. It provides a structure to work to. You should find that when you create your content calendar, it brings your team together so they can clearly see their responsibilities and deadlines and their role in producing blogs to meet the plant. A content calendar gives the team the discipline to create content to meet the required deadlines.
4. A good content calendar can lead to better communication within the team and better idea generation. The calendar provides a single place where everyone can visualise and share their goals and ideas, expanding their creativity and reinforcing the value of content marketing.
5. If you have a content calendar this will become central to your SEO function. Search engines are getting much smarter and Google and Bing now heavily favour high quality content over old black hat SEO techniques. Having a dedicated content calendar that clearly focuses attention on the important of adding regular blogs to your website and stretches several months ahead, is now more important than ever.
If you need help with content marketing, SEO or creating a content calendar, please get in touch by calling 01709 300130 or emailing hello@dragonflypr.co.uk.