[Webinar] Kapost on Kapost: Creating and Optimizing a Content Calendar
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
0 likes•371 views
Deck for another edition of our ever-popular Kapost on Kapost webinar series! We at Kapost get a lot of questions about how we manage our content calendar. What assets do we track? How far in advance do we plan (and how often do those plans change)? How does it relate to our strategic initiatives? So, we're yanking open the proverbial hood and giving you, our network of marketing friends, a look inside. We'll share our philosophy of what role a great content calendar should play in your marketing strategy and show you what ours looks like in real time. We cover: - How a content calendar enables you to execute your marketing strategy - Key characteristics and benefits of a successful content calendar - A live tour of our team's content calendar (watch our recording so see this bit!)
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
Similar to [Webinar] Kapost on Kapost: Creating and Optimizing a Content Calendar
Similar to [Webinar] Kapost on Kapost: Creating and Optimizing a Content Calendar (20)
More from Kapost
More from Kapost (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
[Webinar] Kapost on Kapost: Creating and Optimizing a Content Calendar
- 1. Kapost on Kapost: Creating & Optimizing a Content Calendar A webinar with Aubrey Harper and Zoë Randolph, Marketing Managers @ Kapost #KapostWebinar
- 2. Meet Your Presenters Zoë Randolph Marketing Manager Kapost Aubrey Harper Marketing Manager Kapost linkedin.com/in/zoerandolph @Aubrey__Harper :linkedin.com/in/aubrey- harper-b54358b7/
- 3. → Housekeeping - Recording and slides will be emailed - How to ask questions → What is a content calendar (and what isn’t it?) → Q&A 1 → Behind-the-scenes look at Kapost’s marketing calendar → Q&A 2 Agenda
- 4. What is a Content Calendar? The Basics
- 5. A Calendar Is Not a Strategy High-Level Planning - Campaigns - Quarterly/annual - Major assets/events Tactical Application - Campaign components - Monthly/weekly - Major assets + derivative/supporting content A Calendar Is Not a Strategy Content Strategy Content Calendar
- 6. Key Features of a Content Calendar The Setup
- 7. What Makes a Good Calendar? ✓ Living Document ✓ Visible and Accessible ✓ Comprehensive ✓ Workflow-Backed ✓ Strategic
- 8. Key Benefits of a Content Calendar The Outcomes
- 9. What Should Your Calendar Do? ✓ Execute Strategy ✓ Improve Alignment ✓ Improve CX ✓ Protect Against Ad Hoc Requests
- 11. Kapost’s Content Calendar The Real Thing
- 12. Questions?
- 13. Thank You!
Editor's Notes
- Zoë: Hi everyone, and welcome to another Kapost on Kapost webinar! Today we’re talking all things content calendars: what they are, what they aren’t, and how to optimize yours. We’ll also be giving you a special peek into our very own content calendar so you can get a real-life example of everything we’re discussing today. But first: who are we?
- Zoë: I’m Zoë Randolph, marketing manager here at Kapost. I run our webinar program, write long and short-form content, and tag-team with my colleague Aubrey, here, on developing strategic initiatives. I’ll let Aubrey go ahead and introduce herself. Aubrey? Aubrey: [introduction]
- Zoë: Great! So before we get started I’m going to quickly review our agenda. Up first, the ever-exciting housekeeping. We’re recording this webinar as we speak, and we’ll send you all the link to the recording as well as a link to the slide deck by tomorrow, so don’t worry if you miss anything! If you want to tweet at us, go ahead and use the hashtag, #kapostwebinar Finally, the agenda for today looks a little something like this: Aubrey and I will discuss where a content calendar fits into your marketing strategy, what a good calendar looks like, and what benefits you should get from managing it well. After that, we’ll have some fun and show you the behind the scenes of our operation by taking you inside our own content calendar so you can see what all these high-level ideas look like in action. Just an FYI that we won’t be making you sit on your questions until the end! In our last webinar we had a great experience letting people as questions throughout, so we’ll be pausing between our discussion and our open house to clear up any early confusion. To submit a question, go ahead and click on the Q&A tab on your dashboard and we’ll make sure your questions get answered. So let’s get started.
- So one thing we get a lot of questions about is: how does an editorial calendar compare to a strategy. So I want to start by breaking this down so we’re all on the same page.
- Here’s the big takeaway I want you to get from this: a content calendar is not a strategy. Now this in no way means that a content calendar isn’t strategic. It just means that it doesn’t take the place of your high-level planning. That said, strategic planning and your content calendar work very closely together. Without a well-managed calendar, there’s little hope that you’ll ever see your big strategic plans through to fruition. When we do our big strategic planning, we’re normally thinking about major initiatives and campaigns. We’re asking “what eBooks will we publish in Q4?” We’re also thinking on a longer timeline, answering questions like “what’s our major strategic messaging this year?” And of course, we’re only really giving thoughts to our major assets and events. We’ll plan the general timeline for an eBook or pick a date for an event we’re hosting, for example, but we won’t go into all the minute detail of planning derivative blogs, launch emails, etc. That’s where our calendar comes in. Our calendar is where we start breaking down all the details of these big strategic priorities. This is where we start slating out our email and blog schedules, for example, and making sure that our audience will have a positive, logical experience with our content. Here, we’re planning on a much more granular level, using our big strategic planning as the guiding light.
- So what does a content calendar look like?
- There are 5 key components of a top notch content calendar. So follow along and keep track of how many of these boxes your calendar checks off. It needs to be a living document. We are big champions of planning ahead, but no matter how carefully you plan, things inevitably change. People get sick, approvals get held up, the CEO demands an emergency communications priority that moves everything else around. Life happens, and your calendar should always reflect reality, not your ideal world. At Kapost, that’s pretty easy because our calendar will automatically adjust if we change dates in our workflow, but even if you keep your calendar in a spreadsheet, it needs to be up-to-date or people won’t trust it and it will go unused. (What a waste of time!) 2. It needs to be visible and accessible This goes hand in hand with number one on our list, because an editorial calendar is more or less useless if you’re the only one who can see it. At a minimum, it should be available to all content stakeholders (your web folks, your marketing automation team, and of course, content creators.) But ideally, this calendar is also accessible to other folks in your organization who may not be personally involved. For example, when we get questions from our sales or CS teams about what content is coming down the pipe, we like to send them to our publishing calendar view, where they can see not only when, for example, this webinar happens, but also when their customers and prospects will be getting invites, in case they want to follow up personally. 3. It needs to be comprehensive Now, what I mean by this is that a content calendar is much less valuable if it only includes major assets. A good content calendar should include anything you’re publishing, including new webpages, emails, etc. That way, you can ensure that you aren’t spamming people with multiple emails in a day, for example. 4. It should be rooted in workflows It’s all well and good to plan a bunch of launch dates, but it’s essential that those dates you’ve picked reflect the real world. We have that pretty easy at Kapost, because we have pre-built workflows based on timelines we know work for our team, so it’s immediately obvious whether our scheduling will work or not. For example, we know it takes about 10 days to complete an email between drafting copy, editing, building it in Marketo, testing, and final approval, so if we try to schedule an ad hoc email for two days from now, we’ll immediately see that the timeline isn’t going to work. I won’t get too deep into workflows today, but let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in going deeper on in a future webinar. 5. Finally, your content calendar should be strategic As we already discussed, your big strategic muscle will go into your high-level planning, but the dates on your calendar should be strategic as well. For example, we’ve found that the best day to launch an eBook is on a Tuesday, so we’ll make sure our emails and scheduled there. We also make sure to take a look at what types of content we’re distributing every week or month and who that content is going to. That way, we make sure that we’re delivering a logical content experience that’s consistent without being heavy handed. For example, we recently launched a benchmark eBook about the state of marketing and sales alignment. It had a lot of great derivative content that we wanted to push out, but we made sure that we were still addressing other topics as well. We didn’t want to hit people over the head with the alignment message and miss out on the other aspects of our message that were important as well.
- So we’ve talked a bit about what a content calendar should look like, but to what end?
- 1. The obvious, and primary, benefit of a content calendar is that it allows you to tactically execute the strategic plans you worked so hard on. I’m sure there’s more than one of you in the audience today who has experience slaving over an amazing strategic plan, only to see it saved to a random folder and never opened again. Strategic plans are essential, but they won’t come to fruition without a well-planned calendar. 2. The next key benefit you’re going to see is improved alignment between your internal teams--both on marketing and within your organization more broadly. We mentioned this a bit earlier when we talked about making sure your calendar is accessible. This is where that comes into play. Within the marketing department, an editorial calendar allows creators and strategists to coordinate with one another. For example, one of my colleagues, Leia, runs webinars for our customers focused on the functionalities of our product. Because we often get a lot of customers who attend my webinars (shoutout to you all!), we each make sure to consult the calendar when scheduling our webinars to make sure they don’t overlap. But it can also ensure better alignment between departments. For example, we host a meeting every Tuesday where we go over our content calendar and check in on every single piece of content going out in the next two weeks. We invite some members of our sales team to join us so that they’re up-to-date on everything that’s coming down the pipeline. They also know they can check in any time using our saved calendar view. Trust me, we get a lot fewer questions about what we’re launching than the average marketing team does. 3. If we quickly return to that webinar scheduling example: it isn’t just Leia and I who benefit from having visibility into each other’s webinar plans. Our customers benefit, too. Since we’re better scheduled, they won’t have the unpleasant experience of getting multiple invite emails to multiple events that overlap. By being aware of what you’re distributing (and who you’re distributing to!), you’ll create a much better customer experience for your audience. 4. Finally, and this is one I think is often overlooked, a good content calendar means a much better life for the people actually producing the deliverables. Not only does it ensure your marketing automation person isn’t being asked to send eight emails in a day, it also allows you to protect against ad hoc requests. Instead of just asking someone to believe that you simply can’t fit their requests into your schedule, a content calendar allows you to show your requester your plans and help them find a place where their idea might fit. Having a fleshed-out calendar builds credibility and allows you to show the level of planning that needs to go into a thoughtful launch.
- Now before we move on to showing you our content calendar, we’re going to pause quickly to see whether there are any questions.
- Saved views You can see everything but also zoom-in on just what you care about (ex. blogs) Publishing calendar This is what we talk about in our meetings My tasks Show how easy it is to move things This will automatically adjust workflow Share view for partners Clicking into previews to check on workflow, etc. What we do during our content review meeting
- Questions: Are there any content types that aren’t helpful to have on a calendar? What is your default view?