What factors make or break a content marketing campaign? Timely delivery and relevant information.

Sure, a significant number of social media followers and the right influencers can positively affect the reception of your campaign. However, nothing ranks higher than saying the right thing at the right time.

Here are some effective ways to achieve this:

1. Create a content calendar

A content calendar helps you take a structured approach towards strategising, writing, and delivering your content. This, in turn, helps you roll out your campaign at the right time.

It helps you chalk out all the performance-driven details. The number of pieces your brand needs to ideally push out in a week, when that content will perform best, the right budget to allocate for each, and so on.

Creating a content calendar can also help you predict the churn rate of your content. Churn rate is conventionally understood as ‘the percentage of subscribers to a service who discontinue their subscriptions to the service within a given time period’.

Content churn rate can, therefore, be explained as the frequency with which content needs to be shared on a given platform to retain consumers. For instance, a brand may decide to post on Facebook five times a week, tweet 4-5 times a day, and make at least one post on Instagram every three days.

Figuring out all these factors in advance means you won’t make a mess of your brand’s online presence and will simultaneously meet your marketing timelines.

2. Map your content 

Different from a content calendar, a content map is driven by content details such as:

• What is your theme and topic for a given content piece?
• Who is your target audience?
• Should your content be long-form or short-form?
• What design elements will make up the content?

These elements make up the foundation of your work and need to be in place much before the creation process begins.

3. Collaborate with the customer support team

Content marketing timelines will be effective if you can create a collaborative system that allows you to listen to your customer support or sales team, understand customer queries, and address them through content.

Moreover, in-house teams that are not directly responsible for content creation can offer insightful content recommendations for every stage of the consumer’s buying cycle. This will help touch base with the customer at every level, and ensure their movement through a comprehensive brand experience.

4. Set realistic timelines with the content delivery team

Everyone in the team should know what has been done and what needs to be done. For instance, social media unfolds on a real-time basis, and it is vital that professionals involved in the process are ready to publish the materials at the right time.

You may also need to schedule content before the actual publishing date. This helps you meet marketing timelines even with the unplanned absence of team members. Hence, it is critical to understand the team’s availability and set up deadlines that are achievable.

5. Focus on keyword and seasonal research

In this digital age of algorithms and formulas, content success is largely driven by the keywords used – and, therefore, relevance. So, editorial planning should start with the process of keyword research. One can focus better on a piece once they are aware of the keywords to be used.

Another key requirement is seasonality research. What are the upcoming holidays, events, and trending topics you would like to capitalise on? Depending on your brand persona, there will be some events or days that will be more relevant to you.

6. Update your publishing schedule regularly

Once you have the editorial roadmap ready, continue to update your publishing schedule on a monthly (or at least a quarterly) basis.

There will be changes along the way, and it shouldn’t make your calendar look chaotic. So, revisit your schedule every time a post that was not previously planned is published, or a new topic is introduced.

Final thoughts

All of this may look like a lot of work. But a well-planned and well-organised content marketing strategy can make a huge difference in your digital marketing traction. Utilise these tips to implement a robust content distribution approach, and you will gradually see positive results for your brand.