You’re a blogging beast, a posting pro, a media magician. Everybody loves it when you post something on the interwebs! You get likes, shares, comments. Oh, yes — you’ve got this digital content business in the bag.
Except for one thing: your content has absolutely no consistency.
So what? Why is consistency important? Well, pull up a chair (oh, wait — you’re probably already in a chair) and allow us to explain. After all, as your favorite digital marketing agency in Birmingham, we know a thing or two about online content. And we’ve got three reasons you should consider making a content calendar. Ready to hear them? Giddyup.
Reason #1: Hidden Opportunities
Which holidays are coming up next month? What illnesses, people, or activities are being officially observed next month? Are there exciting things happening next month that relate to your business? Maybe you can name a few of these things off the top of your head, but chances are, you’re missing some — and those are missed opportunities.
For example, say you work in the paper business, but you have no idea that next month is Papercut Awareness Month. You (and your business) will miss a chance to connect with everyone who’s ever suffered this particular paper-related hazard. You could have planned a blog post ahead of time that would have really spoken to paper cut sufferers around the globe, but because you didn’t do your research for content possibilities, you had no idea Papercut Awareness Month was even a thing.
(For the record: it’s not.)
(I don’t think.)
Reason #2: Consistency Is More Awesome Than You Think
Even though the word “consistency” isn’t exactly vocabularically thrilling (nope, that is not a word, I’ll save you the trouble of Googling it because I one-hundred-percent made it up), there’s a lot to be said for being consistent with your content.
When you offer quality content on a consistent basis, you slowly but surely work your way into the hearts and minds of your customers. They start to look for your content on the expected days, whether they consciously realize it or not, and their respect for your thoughts and opinions grows because you can be counted on. You are consistent. And people like consistent.
Conversely, if you’re blogging and posting things off-the-cuff, there’s a good chance you’ll end up writing about the same thing twice, or people will miss your posts because they don’t know when to look for them.
Do you want that to happen? Of course not.
Reason #3: Your Team Will Retain More of Their Sanity
Remember all those group projects you worked on in school? Remember how, most of the time, everybody was on a different page and nobody wanted to do the same thing and none of you were completely sure who was responsible for what?
When you take that kind of disorganization into a business, you can pretty much go ahead and prepare yourself for the inevitable train wreck that is headed your way. People are going to argue about what kind of content to produce. They’re going to forget what they’ve already written about. They’ll be stressed out because they’re trying to produce something in the next 20 minutes because somebody just realized it’s been two weeks since the last post.
A train wreck, indeed.
When you have all your content planned out in a calendar, whether it’s for the coming month or the coming year, your team knows what is expected, when it is expected, and who is expected to do it. There are no arguments (well, not about content, anyway). There are no conversations about whether or not a certain topic has already been covered. There is no frantic scrambling to make up for lost time.
And y’all, when your team is feeling sane, it’s a beautiful thing.
We Are a Calendar-Loving Digital Marketing Agency
Here at Uptick, we have calendars for pretty much everything we do. And they’re color-coded, which means they’re fun to look at! But our business runs much deeper than content calendars. We’re pros at all facets of digital marketing, from analytics to PPC advertising and much more. Contact us today for all your marketing needs!
