You analyzed the content from your own brand, five media outlets, and five competitors. You looked over all that research and brainstormed three monthly themes and 100 content topic ideas. You ran some of those ideas through filters to make them perfect, and then spun those topics off into even more assets to fill up your calendar with compelling content.

And now, the moment of your triumph: you will add all of this to your content calendar!

But before you get started, watch this Calendar video:

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THE WHY

Scheduling the content will ensure that you use it as efficiently as possible; for example, the order in which you schedule blog posts will impact how you cross-link them. You'll also be able to onboard SMEs and writers in a timely manner instead of scrambling at the last minute to line up interviews and get contracts signed.

Knowing what content you're running when will also help you promote it well. If you know that you'll be publishing an infographic on September 3, for example, you can be prepared with a list of media outlets to send it to and a quick cover email.

THE HOW

I boiled it the process down to a couple of steps, but there are many more options depending on the format you choose for your calendar. Feel free to explore different apps and templates to see what works best for you.

DECIDE ON A FORMAT

The format of your content calendar is up to you. If you're a very small business or a solopreneur, a simple list can suffice. My company consists of two people, and our content calendar is a list in Google Drive. We tried using a Google Spreadsheet, but I don't like to deal with information in that format so I reverted back to ye olde list.

The next step up would be a free downloadable template from a company like HubSpot or CoSchedule. A quick Google search will yield tons of options.

Then there's the Excel template we created for you (the 14. CONTENT CALENDAR TEMPLATE), which covers the basics and includes instructions. This template can also be opened and used in Google Spreadsheets, which would make it easier to share with a team. You'll find fields to record the content topic, content format, channel, and publish date, plus optional fields like a drop-down menu to help track your content workflow.

And finally, if you're juggling multiple writers and many content assets, you might want to try a dedicated app or a marketing platform that includes a content calendar feature. The project management platform we use, Airtable, has this feature. Other options include HubSpot, CoSchedule, Monday.com, and Trello. Note that some of these products will only help you keep track of what you're publishing, while others (the more expensive ones) also enable you to publish your content right from the platform.

GET YOUR RESOURCES IN ORDER

In the Get Prepped section of the Playbook, you used the worksheet 1. CONTENT RESOURCES to figure out who might be available to help you create all this content, from SMEs to freelance writers to an outside marketing agency.

If you'd like to streamline your content production even more than you already have, open this worksheet up, quickly decide who might help you with each piece of content, and reach out to them to check their availability. This will help you schedule your content in the most efficient way...which is the next step.

If not, you might either reoptimize the content to address the top questions and republish it as new or create new content to fill this need. (Use the list of customer/prospect questions you created in the worksheet 3. CUSTOMER FAQ EMAIL SCRIPT for this.)

GET YOUR RESOURCES IN ORDER

In the Get Prepped section of the Playbook, you used the worksheet 1. CONTENT RESOURCES to figure out who might be available to help you create all this content, from SMEs to freelance writers to an outside marketing agency.

If you'd like to streamline your content production even more than you already have, open this worksheet up, quickly decide who might help you with each piece of content, and reach out to them to check their availability. This will help you schedule your content in the most efficient way...which is the next step.

SCHEDULE THE CONTENT

You'll need the worksheets 8. CONTENT THEMES, 11. IDEA FILTER, and 12. REPURPOSING MIND MAP, where you wrote down your themes and all your content topics; that way you can copy/paste them directly to your calendar.

Here are some considerations that may impact your content schedule:

• • When your SMEs are most likely to be available for calls. Kayla is on vacation in early March? Don't schedule content you'll need her input for during that window.
  • When your favorite writers are available for projects. If Dan is booked up for the next month and Sierra is clamoring for work, arrange your calendar so that the content Sierra would be best at comes first.
  • Your writers' and SMEs' schedules. Try not to overload these people by scheduling multiple pieces you'll need them for all in a short period of time.
  • The monthly theme. That Valentine's content will need to run in February, of course!
  • The news. Current events can impact how relevant your content is. We had some great content ideas that we planned to publish in 2020, and events like the COVID pandemic and the contentious election required us to shuffle the publish dates around so we didn't come off as clueless...or worse, insensitive.
  • When your customers and prospects are most active in the channels you use. The internet is overflowing with expert advice on the ideal times for sending emails, posting in various social channels, etc. Tech tools help here, too; for example, the free app Tweriod will help you determine when your audience is most likely to be on the Twitter.

Some of this you may not know right off, but don't let that stop you in your tracks. If you know a particular SME is always busy, schedule the piece that requires their input further out so you have more buffer time to nail down the interview. If you don't know the best times to post on LinkedIn in your industry, make some guesses and see what works best. And you never know what circumstances might come up that will require you to rethink your calendar, so just do your best to avoid competing with major holidays and events.

My M.O. is this: do what you have to do. Don't get bogged down in the expert opinions on when to post on Pinterest or when not to send emails. If you have the resources to dig into the research and make an informed decision, great. If not, don't worry about it. You may be pleasantly surprised; we recently sent out our monthly email newsletter at 6am on a Sunday and I watched in real-time as the opens flowed in!

ADD THE DETAILS INTO YOUR CALENDAR

Different calendar formats will let you include different details. Just fill in the information that's relevant to your company and don't overthink it. The whole point of the Content Calendar Playbook is to make the benefits of a content calendar accessible to you no matter your budget, time, buy-in, or resources.

So if you don't have SME support, leave that out. If you're not sure if Tyler will be available to execute on the content, send him an email to ask and make a note of it in your calendar.

As you slot the topic ideas into your calendar, you may decide to adjust the monthly themes. Or you may want to further tweak ideas as you're adding them in. This is all OK!

After all this hard (but smart) work, you deserve some kudos. That's why the final (optional) step is to show off your beautiful new calendar to your content team and other key stakeholders.