As a health and wellness brand having a consistent and effective content strategy plan to engage and promote your product is imperative. One tool for achieving this plan is by creating a content calendar which will help in planning, organizing, and scheduling all of your content.
Let’s examine what a content calendar is, the benefits of creating one, and how to create a fool-proof content calendar to help you stay organized, consistent, and successful for years to come.
What Is a Content Calendar?
A content calendar, also called an editorial calendar, is a documented schedule of all of the content you plan to produce within a set time period. This calendar is a shareable document that will outline what content will be posted, when it will be posted, and where it will be posted. This may include blog posts, social media updates, emails, videos, and any other type of content that you produce.
Content planning entails a wide variety of moving parts along with details that can be difficult to remember. Your content calendar allows you to stay organized and consistent with your content strategy all while enabling you to keep track of the little details that go along with your plan. Additionally, by planning ahead you can ensure that the content you’re producing is relevant, engaging, and aligned with your brand’s values and goals.
As a health and wellness brand having a consistent and effective content strategy plan to engage and promote your product is imperative. One tool for achieving this plan is by creating a content calendar which will help in planning, organizing, and scheduling all of your content.
Let’s examine what a content calendar is, the benefits of creating one, and how to create a fool-proof content calendar to help you stay organized, consistent, and successful for years to come.
Need a template for a content calendar and some fresh ideas for content. Grab our ULTIMATE Content Bundle HERE!
The Benefits of Having a Content Calendar
The following are just some of the many benefits of having a content calendar in place for your health and wellness brand:
Helps with consistency
There’s no hard and fast rule about how much content you need to post, however, posting with some amount of frequency and consistency will help ensure that you’re maintaining an active presence and that your target audience is engaged.
For example, you may want one blog post per week based on your website content plan but more frequent content on your social media channels. One survey found that 74% of consumers think 1 to 2 social media posts per day are ideal for most brands. Therefore, your content calendar may map out the frequency of your content keeping in mind the different platforms you may be using.
Keeps you organized
Remembering due dates, who authored which article, and where a specific video will be posted can be challenging, stressful, and at times nearly impossible. By providing a clear overview of your content strategy, a content calendar can help you stay organized and on track to meet your goals. Moreover, by having your content mapped out in advance for your team, you can help streamline your processes and in turn, improve productivity.
Improves content quality
Scrambling for content on an as-needed basis will contribute to missed opportunities and can compromise the quality of your work. The best content planning will be intentionally crafted and strategically timed which can lead to improved engagement and in turn, higher marketing ROI.
Rushing to publish articles can lead to various errors including typos, run-on sentences, and the misuse of punctuation. Having a content calendar allows your team to thoroughly check and edit their work to ensure it is of the highest quality.
Encourages collaboration
Regardless of how small or large your team is, a content calendar ensures everyone is on the same page and is up to date on which ideas are out there, when projects are due, and when they are published.
When your team is able to collaborate with ease, new ideas and opportunities are realized which can lead to more interesting and thought-provoking content. In fact, nearly 90% of marketers wish that more people would contribute to content creation. A content calendar can help your team identify areas in which collaboration from others may provide outside-of-the-box thinking which can boost inspiration and creativity.
How to Create a Content Calendar
The following are steps you should consider when creating a content calendar for your health and wellness brand:
Outline your goals
The first step in creating a content calendar is defining what your brand is trying to achieve with its content. For example, initially, you may want to drive website traffic so focusing on building out your blog content library with specific keywords may be a good starting place for you. On the other hand, another company may be looking to increase brand awareness by focusing on building a larger social media following.
Identify your target audience
Before you begin content planning, you’ll want to have a deep awareness of who you’re creating content for. You’ll need to have a clear understanding of their priorities, interests, and pain points. Understanding your audience will help you create content that resonates with them and that also encourages engagement.
Additionally, identifying your target audience will help you select platforms that your target audience uses which will help with brand visibility and awareness.
Brainstorm content ideas
You’ll want to fill your content calendar with new, interesting, and compelling ideas. During your content planning and brainstorming sessions it’s best to involve people from all walks of life to gain new and interesting perspectives.
During this step, you will also conduct keyword research to help bolster your content. Keyword research is the process of discovering and analyzing specific words and phrases that your target audience may use when searching for online information. Your keyword research will be important in gaining knowledge about which topics are most popular and relevant so you can include them in your content strategy.
Create a content plan
After brainstorming your content ideas, now it’s time to map out your content for the upcoming weeks and months. Your content calendar can be as simple as a spreadsheet or created using specialized software. Either way, you’ll want to include the following information for each piece of content:
- Title
- Content type (e.g. blog post, video, social media update)
- Creator or author
- Deadline
- Publish date/Live date
- Platform (e.g. website, social media, email)
- Keywords or hashtags
Select the best content calendar tool
While you may have the best content strategy and content calendar, executing your plan successfully can’t happen without the necessary software to enable your strategies to come to fruition.
When selecting a content calendar tool, you’ll want to consider your budget, the size of the calendar, and what specific features you may need. The best content calendar tools are user-friendly, provide multi channel functionality, allow for customization, and enable collaboration.
While you can create a content calendar from scratch, there are a wide-variety of templates to streamline the process. Some popular content calendar templates include Monday.com, HubSpot, Trello, and Asana.
Need a template for a content calendar and some fresh ideas for content. Grab our ULTIMATE Content Bundle HERE!
The Bottom Line
Your content calendar is an invaluable resource that enables you to plan, organize, and schedule all of the content for your health and wellness brand. The benefits of having a content calendar are numerous and may include higher quality content, the ability to easily collaborate, and helping your brand post with frequency and consistency that aligns with your content strategy.
Rather than reinvent the wheel, there are many content calendar templates to choose from that offer a wide range of features that you can customize to meet your needs.
Having a content calendar allows you to take a bird’s eye view of all of your projects without getting lost in the details allowing you and your team to transform the way you do business.
Need help setting your content strategy and creating an ideal calendar for your brand? Reach out to our expert team today!
