Whether you plan your content calendar quarterly, monthly, or weekly, you’ve gotta actually plan. I love the quote “Failing to plan, is planning to fail.” (That’s Benjamin Franklin, not a Heidi Schmidt original quote.) But it’s true in so many things - from training for a race to planning your marketing. If you don’t plan it, you won’t post it. I know this first hand. I am the first to admit that taking care of my own content has always come last on my priorities but I am changing that this year! #Goals

What is a Content Calendar?

Essentially, your content calendar serves as a strategic roadmap for planning and organizing your marketing efforts. It acts as a centralized hub where you can schedule and manage their blog posts, social media updates, newsletters, and other content initiatives. By meticulously outlining when and what type of content will be published, a content calendar not only ensures a steady flow of engaging material but also helps entrepreneurs align their content with key business objectives. This proactive approach not only saves time and minimizes stress but also contributes to building a cohesive and compelling brand narrative. For entrepreneurs navigating the complex world of marketing, a well-structured content calendar becomes an invaluable ally in the pursuit of sustained visibility and audience engagement.

How do you plan a content calendar?

Know Your Content Pillars

Your content pillars - also known as content topics/buckets - are the overarching themes of what you post about. Within each content pillar, you have the actual post idea (whether a blog post/social post/video idea/etc…). Having ideas under each of these content pillars is a great way to make sure your blog content stays consistent.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Listen, as you analyze your content, here comes the power of repurposing. You don’t have to keep reinventing your content wheelhouse. Repurpose, rewrite, reshare. Repurposing - IMO - is self-care. Creating content is WORK y’all. So as you look at your top performing content, look at how you can repurpose what you already have. ESPECIALLY on social media.

Determine How Frequently You Want to Post

Listen, I shoot for 3 times per week. Some weeks I do better than others. This year, I’m shooting for at least 2 pieces of longer-form content per month (let’s make those 13 posts to like… 52). But the real key to your posting consistency both with social media and with longer-form content is consistency. So your posting frequency should be tied to how consistent you can remain with it. Don’t post 5x per week for a month or two weeks and then post 1x per week for a week… platforms LOVE to know you’re going to show up.

Look at Your Analytics to See What’s Performing Well

How do you know what’s performing if you never check your analytics? Be sure to look at your Google Analytics to see which content on your website is performing, and then look at your social media post analytics to see what your audience is engaging with so you know what formats are performing (on social) and what content, well, isn’t performing. If you’re looking at Google Analytics you can even deep dive to see which pages or posts have high bounce rates so you can work on optimizing those for conversions - maybe adding a form or a link to another blog post if people are just bouncing off your site.

Looking at your best-performing content helps you determine what your audience wants so you can create more of it. Do they love your educational content? Or do they want to be inspired?

Use Tools

Do you have a planner that you use to organize and schedule your ideas? Personally, I use:

• Notion to plan my content,

• Loomly to publish social,

• Canva for design,

• Convertkit for email

• my website is on Squarespace.

Planning it in notion allows me to put ideas in there before I create the blog or the social post, and tap into them later. I do have a place to schedule them (especially my blog posts and emails!) through.

Download my Content Planning Guide that comes with my go-to excel template (I may update this to a Notion Template soon! Stay tuned) that helps you create topics, and posts and know when they’re ripe for publishing.