One key ingredient in growing your audience is by feeding them consistently with information. This information is carried by the content you are producing. That is why the first thing you have to ask is “When will I be publishing?”
If you are thinking of publishing only when you have time or when you feel inspired, I’m telling you already that all your efforts will go into waste. Current data shows that key search engines and even social media algorithms prioritize sources with consistent content delivery when they are showing results to a person. This is basically why there can be little to no impact, if you keep on publishing content only when you are available.
However, scheduling your content ahead of time and consistently delivering it to your audience can guarantee a steady build up of traffic and authority not only on these virtual search engines but among your community as well.
Decide on when you will publish. Is it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? Or is it every Saturday at 9PM? Posting more frequently is important to the success of your strategy, however, you also need to be wary not to spam your audience or overwhelm them with your content.
One schedule that we usually recommend is starting with one of these:
Once every other week
Once a week
Twice a week
As you get familiar with your content production, you can continue and increase your frequency.
After identifying your schedule, the next thing is to make them organized by using a calendar. However, what should your calendar look like. To make it much easier for you, you are in luck! We are giving you a free 90-day strategic calendar template that you can easily use and adjust according to your preference.
First, download the file here.
This sheet can help you quickly map out your content starting with your content buckets. The first page of the sheet is where your content buckets are placed and the topics underneath it.
The next page is a sample strategic calendar to show you how your finished calendar should look like.
You will also notice that some of the holidays are already filled out on the calendar. Those are data-driven and audience-tested e-commerce holidays where you can run raffle, promos, or sales.
Explain each column and tab of the file with screenshots below .
Update our Strat/Content Calendar to include the following columns:
Day of week or month
Author
Medium (Vehicle)
Source
Category
Offer
You may also notice the “Offer” column. If you use calls to action on your blog that go to an offer, this is where those will live. You can also personalize this page to match what you want to track on your own blog (i.e. Keywords, post length, update date).
If you click on a cell, you will see a drop-down menu that has the data you will need for that column. Certain things, like writer, headline, and publish date, don’t have a drop down because they will be different for each post.
All the data that feeds into these drop-downs is in the second page of the sheet under the Data tab.
It is this handy equation built into the sheet that makes building your calendar so easy. We’ve already given you a whole list of post type ideas, and all you have to do is personalize the categories and offers (and any other factors you want to track) to fit your blog, and then get to planning
Now, you will notice the other tabs of the calendar. Those are motivational quotes or engagement questions that you can tie with your content buckets. You can use those quotes on an image or video or caption of any of your posts.
Once you are able to fill out the calendar, you are ready to go on production and schedule them to go live once done. That’s all! You now have a consistent production of content to keep your audience engaged and grow your following altogether.
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