If you own a business or run a website, you probably know how important a blog can be. With a strong blog, you can consistently bring a steady stream of traffic to your website. The more attention you can attract through your blog, the more likely you are to convert those visitors into paying customers.
However, your blog is much more than just a place to upload your thoughts and ideas. While you want your blog to portray your brand’s personality and expertise, you also need to consider how your blogging efforts will bring you closer to achieving your overall business goals. If you’re not thinking through a complete blogging strategy, you’re going to struggle to grow.
Creating an editorial calendar is one of the best tools for ensuring your blog stays on track. When you develop a strategy, map out a plan, and schedule your thoughts, posts, and time, you can keep your business moving in the right direction. However, there are many other benefits to creating an editorial calendar.
If you’re still on the fence about whether or not an editorial calendar is truly necessary for you and your business, here are five of the biggest reasons you don’t want to post another blog without one.
1. An Editorial Calendar Creates Consistency
When a visitor comes to your blog, they want to know what to expect. Whether they’re reaching your page through a search engine recommendation or from a social media post, they want to land on your site and know who you are, what you can provide, and what tips, advice, or help you may offer through your blog.
Unfortunately, if you’re just posting content whenever you feel like it, your visitors will struggle to identify what you’re all about. Instead of knowing exactly what they’re going to get, they’ll come to your page and feel lost and confused. If they can’t find the information they’re looking for, they’ll quickly leave and head off to a competitor.
An editorial calendar allows you to create some consistency. When creating an editorial calendar, you’re going to want to map out which posts you’re going to upload and when you’re going to add them to your website. This means that you’ll want to think ahead at least a few weeks to determine the topics you’re going to cover.
When you force yourself to consider your future posts, you’re able to see how each blog post can connect to one another. Developing your editorial calendar gives you the opportunity to link your posts together, giving your visitors a better idea of the topics you cover, what they can expect from you, and what help you can provide.
To fill in your editorial calendar and ensure consistency, think of your blog topics at once. Brainstorm a few different ideas that may connect and then include them into your schedule. When you frame your blog posts like a series, you can encourage readers to check out a few different posts when they visit your page.
2. An Editorial Calendar Improves Efficiency
Many companies believe simply having a date to post their blogs is enough to plan. While you may know that you want to upload new content every Wednesday or the second Thursday of every month, you may sit down in front of your computer that day and draw a blank on what you should talk about.
Waiting until the last moment to think about your blog topics is a waste of time. If you’re unsure of what you’re going to cover, it can take you twice as long to write a high-quality blog post because you need to outline not only the post idea, but also the points you’d like to discuss. Coming up with this information on the spot can cause you to forget important items, miss main talking points, or just spend an entire day on something that only should have taken a few hours.
Creating an editorial calendar allows you to work more efficiently. When you spend a chunk of time brainstorming ideas early on, you can begin writing your post immediately after you sit down to start the task. Rather than coming up with topics on the spot, you can think about the points you’d like to address before you even begin.
An editorial calendar also allows you to do research slowly. If you know you’d like to post a topic on a certain topic in the next few days, you can be on the lookout for relevant examples or ideas before you begin writing. When you sit down to write, you can get right into the good stuff.
You can improve your efficiency even more by creating outlines within your editorial calendar. While it may take a bit more time at the planning stages, you can work much faster and get more done in less time.
3. An Editorial Calendar Gives You Fresh Insights to Analytics
When you’re creating a blogging strategy, your main goal is probably to bring more traffic to your website. As one of the best tools for improving the number of visitors you have to your page, blogging is an awesome way to gain new attention. However, when you get a spike in traffic, you may be at a loss for what to do.
Traffic spikes can be caused by a number of things. From getting a post shared by an influencer to having your name featured somewhere in the news, not all visitor boosts will be the result of your blogging. However, you still want to understand as much about these traffic boosts as possible. If your blogging is bringing in a high number of website visitors, your editorial calendar can help you discover how to keep this movement up.
When checking your analytics, you can compare it to the content you posted that day. While your website analytics can tell you the specific pages that people visited and how they got to your site, you can use your editorial calendar to start identifying patterns in your content and how it relates to your visitors.
Each time you have a large traffic boost, you should identify this on your editorial calendar. Just making a quick note about what days were busier than others or what topics were popular can help you improve your editorial calendar for maximum views. Constantly improving your calendar can ensure you’re properly reaching your audience and growing efficiently.
If you’re going to use your editorial calendar to gather new insights about your audience, you want to keep past records in a place you can easily reach. Consistently go back to check how your old posts are doing, if they’re still getting attention, and how they’re spreading across the internet. Always try to hone your blog topics in to more appropriately target your audience and readers.
4. An Editorial Calendar Helps Manage Teams
Depending on the size of your company, you probably have a few people working on your content. Whether you’re a large brand with writers all over the nation or you’re a startup with a small team operating in an office, one content mistake could throw your entire marketing plan off. If you’re not properly outlining what should be shared and when, your team may struggle to stay on top of their work.
An editorial calendar gives everyone on your team a bird’s eye view of what you should be creating. When your content team can see how their pieces are fitting into a strategy as a whole, they can better understand how they can work together for maximum efficiency and collaboration.
Your calendar can also encourage your team to work together on topic ideas, research, and content creation. If a writer can see that someone else is covering a similar topic, they can either change their ideal or collaborate with the other writer to create better pieces. When everyone is working together to improve the content you create, you can attract better quality clients and customers.
Keep in mind that your editorial calendar should include other forms of content as well, not just your blog posts. As part of your content strategy, you also want to include things like email blasts, social media posts, and other pieces that can help push a multi-channel digital marketing strategy. Allowing your team to see each of these campaigns can improve their understanding of the content they’re trying to create.
Using editorial calendar software can allow you to keep various versions of your calendar in one place. Through creating a master calendar, calendars related to different campaigns, or calendars related to different writers and marketers can ensure everyone understands how they fit into the greater picture.
If you’re trying to manage a blog without an editorial calendar, you’re probably finding that it isn’t as easy as you thought. Whether you’re wasting time trying to come up with new ideas or you’re missing key points you thought you’d like to cover, an editorial calendar allows you to stay on track with all your content needs.
Start developing an editorial calendar that fits your unique situation, company, and content development processes. When you create a plan you’re happy with, you can stay on top of your blogging and bring high-quality visitors to your website.
