Being successful doesn’t just happen. Success requires an enormous amount of planning, strategy, and action. To be successful with content marketing you have to know in advance what you’re going to do, why you’re doing it, how you’re going to do it, where you’re going to do it, and when you’re going to do it. This is where an editorial calendar comes in. An editorial calendar will revolutionize your content marketing, positioning you for success.

To create an editorial calendar you need to look ahead to the products and services you wish to support, as well as your list of keywords that should already be developed. Around the products and services that you’ll be marketing you also want to include standard keyword-rich content focused on the topics related to your niche such as guest posts, roundups of interesting blog posts and news in your industry, and infographics.

Your editorial calendar will also help you set realistic goals about how often you will publish content as well as determine deadlines for the content. Providing fresh content on a regular basis is imperative to your overall marketing success, but it’s also important to be realistic about your resources in terms of both time and money. It is recommended that you post a blog post at least two to three times a week to keep your website and / or blog at the top of the search engine results.

Social media should be something that happens every single day from three to 12 times per day depending on the type of social media. For instance, you will post less on LinkedIn.com, and more on Twitter.com. These interactions will include not only posting your own content but your interaction with others on the social media. All of this needs to be planned out so that you ensure that you block out the time to do it, and all should be included in your content calendar.

Include all the types of content you plan to distribute into your calendar such as:

• Blog Posts
• Infographics
• Guest Posts
• Round Ups
• Social Media Content
• Article Marketing
• Social Interaction

You can create a content calendar inside Google Docs by creating it in an excel spreadsheet or a Word Document then uploading it to Google Drive to share with others on your team. Alternatively, if you use a project management system like Basecamp you can share it there.

Everyone on your team should have easy access to the content calendar which should be kept accurate and updated at all times. Remember, just because a calendar is created doesn’t mean it can’t be tweaked and corrected as necessary. The deadlines on the calendar should be sacrosanct and whomever is in charge of the publishing calendar should also be in charge of ensuring everyone sticks to their deadlines.

By creating and maintaining an editorial calendar for your content marketing you will ensure that you have regular content to be published across all your blogs, social media and more. Creating a content calendar will also help you develop a strategy and establish goals while developing a way to make those goals become reality.