A Webinar By

• Focuses Efforts on Goals & Prevents Haphazard Execution

• Ensures You Actually End Up With Content• Can Help You Align Other Areas of Your Business• Leads to Consistency

Why This Matters

Underlying Assumptions

• Your Time is at a Premium (This is Not the Only Item You Own)

• You Need a Plan That Lets You Get Started Quickly

• You Want a Progression Path from Basic to Advanced Strategies

• Content May Come from Internal or External Sources

If you don’t know where you are going,

any road will take you there.

- Lewis Carroll

Define Your Strategic Objectives

Step 1: What Are Our Strategic Objectives

• If we have multiple customer segments, build the plan for only 1 segment first…reduces complexity and speeds execution

• Make sure activities align with objectives

• At 30 days into execution of your plan build the plan for an additional customer segment (if you have one)

Pro Tip:

Keep Your Goals Physically in Front of You, While You Plan

This Means a Typed Copy Available for Quick Reference

Make Sure to Focus on your Customers when Planning

Step 2: Focus on Our Customer

• What are our customer personas?• What types of information do they want? (Q&A,

How To, Product Descriptions, Trend Analysis…)• How do they consume information? • If you can’t answer these questions, talk to 5

customers in your target segment.

Pro Tip: Content Planning Hack

Look at the top 10 sales and service questions you receive.

That will help you begin to understand what types of information your customer values.

Make sure your content plan includes answers to the top 10 questions.

Let’s Get Tactical

Identify Anchors in your Editorial Calendar

Step 3: Identify Anchors

Put All of the Following on the Calendar Immediately:

• Product Launch Dates • Start/End of Buying Seasons• Major Industry/Company Events

Seriously…do it now!

Begin Developing a Publishing Schedule

Step 4: Beginning Publishing Schedule

Start with….• 1-2 Blog Posts/Articles a Week• 1 Whitepaper, Guide, or Trend Report Every Quarter• 1 eBook a Year• 1 email Newsletter a month (composed of posts/articles)

The Whitepaper, Guide, or Trend Report (like the eBook) can be made up of repurposed blog posts/articles.

Step 4: Publishing Schedule

For example…

We can take 10 blog posts or articles about Calls-To-Action (CTA’s) and use them to create the “Getting Started Guide to CTA’s” A series of posts on traveling with your pet can become the eBook “Travel with Your Pet Like a Pro”

Pro Tip: Publishing Schedule

Put the first three months of content on the calendar now.

Do only the first three months and reassess the schedule as you enter month three.

We need to plan long enough that we create a habit, but not so far out that you feel overwhelmed.

Step 4: Intermediate Publishing Schedule

When we are ready….

• 3-5 Blog Posts/Articles a Week• 1 Whitepaper, Guide, or Trend Report Every Quarter• 1 Case Study or “Behind the Scenes” Piece Every Quarter• 1 Short Video Per Quarter• 1 Infographic Every 6 Months• 1 eBook a Year• 1 email Newsletter a month (composed of posts/articles)

Pro Tip: Intermediate Publishing Schedule

Aside from television programs or movies, video on the internetperforms best when the clips are short.

Try to keep videos under 2 minutes in length.

Video is a great way to introduce potential customers to thepeople at your company. Do a short interview with a designer, buyer, engineer, or customer service person. Have them talk about how they do their job and what they like about it.

Step 4: Advanced Publishing Schedule

When we are ready….• 5-7 Blog Posts/Articles a Week• 1 Whitepaper, Guide, or Trend Report Every Quarter• 1 Case Study or “Behind the Scenes” Piece Every Quarter• 1 Short Video Per Month• 1 Interactive Piece of Content a Month• 1 Infographic Every 6 Months• 2 eBooks a Year• 1 email Newsletter a Month (composed of posts/articles)• 1 Topic Specific email Newsletter a Month

Pro Tip: Advanced Publishing Schedule

Every two-out-of-three videos at this point should solve customer problems.

Cover topics that are important for sales, service, and product enablement.

Map out your Content Sources

Step 5: Content Source Mapping

Internal Sources Include: sales people, account management, product buyers, designers, engineers, customer service people, and marketing

External Sources: agencies, freelance authors, partners, and suppliers

Customers…the most credible story you can tell

Repurposed marketing material

Pro Tip: Content Mapping

The best story tellers in your organization will rarely be your executives.

Try to work with “front-line” employees whenever you can as they will be most knowledgeable about the customer, product, and service.

Front-line employees will be a better source of tactical knowledge and executives tend to be better for trends or conceptual information.

Manage Your Editorial Calendar

Step 6: Manage the Calendar

Use basic labels to track content through the life-cycle from planning to execution:

• “Assigned”• “WIP” = Work-in-Process• “Complete”

Develop a “reminder” plan to keep content sources on-track

Keep estimates up-front of time to completion and costs

Pro Tip: Calendar ManagementProvide a “content brief” to any internal/external content creators

Background - a quick paragraph to bring the writer "up to speed”

Who is this post for? - Let your writers know the types of people and their knowledge level for this particular post. Try to keep it to one personality.

The One Big Idea - If the reader remembers only one thing about the blog post, what does that need to be?

What should the reader do next? - Every post should inspire some kind of action. 

For Quick Inspiration, Check Out: - Give your writers some extra ideas / resources to refer and link to in their posts.

Perfect-world Deadline: - Let your writers know when drafts are due. We give two-four weeks from the day of the brief the publish deadline.

Step 6: Intermediate Calendar Management

Process optimization:

• Record an estimate of how a piece of content will perform prior to publication for a given time-frame

• Identify variances in performance and iterate

Sell your Editorial Calendar to your Executive Team

Step 7: How to Sell This to Your Exec Team

Selling is built-into our plan, because this process:

• Aligns with strategic objectives

• Activity plan is clearly linked with the strategy

• Tracking & performance feedback is built-in from day 1

Download our Related Guide:

go.compendium.com/editorial-calendar-guide