One of the most essential steps in creating a successful digital marketing plan is creating a content calendar and distribution plan.
Content is the king of digital marketing. Content is what attracts, engages, and converts your customers online. Content builds trust and loyalty with your customers and makes them return for more.
But more than creating content is required. You must plan, complete, and distribute your content effectively and efficiently.
That’s why you need a content calendar and a content distribution plan.
A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan and organize your content creation process. It lets you define your content goals, topics, formats, deadlines, and responsibilities.
A content distribution plan is a tool that helps you distribute your content to the proper channels, platforms, and audiences. It lets you define your content distribution goals, channels, tactics, schedules, and metrics.
By creating a content calendar and a content distribution plan, you can:
Align your content with your buyer personas, goals, and KPIs
Create consistent and relevant content for your customers
Manage your time and resources efficiently and effectively
Reach and engage your target audience on the best channels and platforms
Measure and optimize your content performance and outcomes
But how do you create a content calendar and a content distribution plan?
There are many ways to create a content calendar and a content distribution plan, but here are some of the most common steps:
Start with your buyer personas. Based on your buyer personas, identify what kind of content your ideal customers need, want, and consume at each buyer journey stage. Please choose the best content topics, formats, and styles that match their needs, wants, and preferences.
Start with your goals and KPIs. Based on your goals and KPIs, identify what kind of content you want to create to achieve them. Choose the best content types, categories, and themes that align with your goals and KPIs.
Start with your budget and resources. Based on your budget and resources, identify how much money, time, and people you can invest in your content creation process. Choose the best content tools, platforms, and services that fit your budget and resources.
Create a content calendar. Create a content calendar that outlines your content creation process using a template or a tool such as CoSchedule’s Content Calendar or HubSpot’s Content Calendar Template. Include your content goals, topics, formats, deadlines, responsibilities, etc.
Create a content distribution plan. Using a template or a tool such as Buffer’s Content Distribution Plan or Hootsuite’s Content Distribution Plan Template, create a content distribution plan that outlines your content distribution process. Include details such as your content distribution goals, channels, tactics, schedules, metrics, etc.
Execute and monitor. Once you have created your content calendar and distribution plan, execute it according to your schedule. Use data and analytics tools like Google Analytics or Facebook Insights to monitor your progress and results.
Review and adjust. Based on your execution and monitoring, review and change your content calendar and distribution plan as needed. You can use feedback tools such as Hotjar or SurveyMonkey to ask your customers or stakeholders for their opinions or suggestions. You can also use testing tools like Google Optimize or Facebook Ads Manager to experiment with variations or options.
These are some of the steps you can take to create a content calendar and a content distribution plan that will help you plan,