How To Create a Content Marketing Calendar for Your Painting Business

Published On: July 2, 2021

Categories: Design & Marketing

Creating a content calendar for your painting business is an effective social media strategy. It allows you the chance to provide a steady stream of content like promotions, blog posts, articles, social media posts,  and more to customers. Individually posting content is time-consuming, and it’s easy for the content team to become overwhelmed, so it’s beneficial to have a social media calendar.

Your company’s content calendar can be complex or straightforward, depending on the needs of your business and its quantity of social media platform pages. Your marketing team members could use a social media calendar template to simplify the process. However, unless you know how to use the calendar effectively, your digital marketing efforts may not be as successful.

Use the guide below to develop a robust content marketing strategy that uses a content calendar.

What Is a Social Media Content Calendar and Why Is It Important?

A content calendar is a planning tool that helps you organize online blog posts and social media updates for your company. It’s a valuable tool that you or your team can use to plan future publications.

Otherwise known as an editorial calendar, content calendars can help your business plan ahead of time by weeks, months, or biannually. Your editorial calendar can include everything from status updates to upcoming articles to promotional events.

Content calendars save time and prevent businesses from inconsistent publishing. Without a blog or social media publishing schedule, your target audience may lose interest. They also provide a bird’s eye view of what you have coming up.

What Are the Best Practices for Content Calendars?

Understanding the Content Calendar’s Elements

Though you can make a simple and effective calendar, it’s still necessary to include vital components. Google Sheets isn’t necessarily an editorial calendar template, but it does provide a simple foundation for businesses to use when creating a content calendar for the first time.

Your calendar should include four components. The first is editorial, which are content pieces you will publish online via your company’s blog, podcast, or across social networks.

The second component is the platform where you host your calendar. The tool can range from handwritten calendars for sole proprietors to an Excel spreadsheet. However, working with content creators requires collaborative platforms like Trello or Basecamp.

Next is promotional, or how you plan to promote your published content. You can include promotions on editorial calendars, but color-coding will differentiate them from editorial content.

The last component is future ideas or a list of possible projects you have yet to start. Jotting down notes can help with content planning down the road.

Using Social Media Content Calendar Tools

The starting point for many people using a content calendar is finding tools or resources to help with creating and managing the calendar.

For instance, Coschedule is a resource that can create fully featured marketing suites for large businesses. Loomly is a calendar tool with interactive guides to create blog content or aid in social media marketing and automatic updates. Both Loomly and Coschedule make it easier to develop and manage an efficient social media editorial calendar.

Adding To the Calendar

Once you choose from the best templates for your business and pick your resources and tools, it’s time to fill the calendar with content. Begin by listing ideas and categorizing them by subject.

Next, you need to decide how often you want to publish. A social media manager may need to post multiple times a day, but someone running a blog calendar may set the publication frequency to three or four times a month.

Once you know your posting frequency, add your content topics to the desired publication dates.

Avoiding Repeated Content

Having a library or content repository for content assets like blogs, interviews, case studies, new research, and more make it easy not to repeat the same message. And remember, not all platforms have the same audience. To maximize the benefits of your calendar, tailor your content creation to reach different groups.

What Are the Steps of Creating a Content Calendar?

Decide on the Content-Type

Select the type of content you wish to publish. It could be painting tips, video, newsletter, or landing page, to name a few. You cannot develop an effective calendar without knowing the type of content you intend to create.

Brainstorm With Social Media Team

If you’re working with social media marketers or an internal team, brainstorm ideas with them. You should also consult with sales and customer service teams to learn about the needs of your customer base. Bring the information to the meeting to develop strategies.

Use Research Ideas To Create Content Ideas

Use various research tools to learn how to create content that produces high results. For instance, keyword research for a blog post will help it rank higher on search engine results pages.

Competitive research is also necessary, mainly if you’re covering familiar topics. Your content should always stand out from others. By learning what other painting companies are publishing, you can find a niche to fill.

Choose Social Media Networks

Social media networks have different levels of success with different content. For instance, Facebook posts with videos gain more traction than those with written updates.  Choose the best platform for where you should post.

Monitor Trends and Competition

Before you complete your content calendar entry, it would be best to perform a content audit. The audit will give you an idea of how well audiences receive and engage with a post.

Consider using a content audit tool like Semrush and view your social media analytics for insights into audience engagements.

The audit will help you uncover publishing trends. Perhaps posts published on weekday mornings don’t perform as well as those you publish on weekend afternoons. Use the information to craft the best time and place to publish content.

 

Create a Publishing Schedule

The audit and trend monitoring will let you know the ideal parameters for posting content. By being selective with your publishing times and dates, you can fill your content calendar meaningfully.

 

Boost Online Presence With Quality Content Calendars

Now that you have a better understanding of content calendars and their benefits, it’s time for your business to develop a quality calendar. You can find many content calendar templates online to help you get started. If you’re still in need of assistance, contact us!

As certified digital marketers, our team provides customer-focused services to improve lead generation. Visit our contact us page today to reach out about your business needs.

Brandon Pierpont

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