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Last Updated on January 4, 2017 by NandiNN

The New Year is here and it means we need to get ourselves, our content and our marketing into gear! As business owners and entrepreneurs, we need to know what we are going to be saying and doing within our own businesses. Every entrepreneur needs a great content marketing calendar. 

If we don’t have a plan of action, then how are we supposed to succeed? If you don’t know what you’re doing next month, how can you plan for it properly?

I have noticed within my own group of people I know, there are tons of entrepreneurs that will throw together an event within a short period, thinking they are going to promote and get the class filled within a short period. That’s not a good plan.

Then there are entrepreneurs who have no idea what they are going to write about inside their content so they are scattered, unfocused and off topic.

In order to be successful, we must become like the true CEOs of our companies, which means creating a marketing calendar and then tying it in your content calendar, ensuring they are warming up their audience before even presenting the new marketing piece.

What am I talking about? Let’s get into the steps for developing, creating and executing your content marketing calendar for 2017.

3 Easy Steps to a Successful Content Marketing Calendar

Step One: Plan Your Marketing Calendar.

Before you can even think about creating your content calendar, you must first know what you are going to be doing in the New Year. What sort of classes or events are you going to do? Are you hosting a webinar? Selling an online course? Whatever it is, you know you need to have a marketing plan behind it.

You can create this plan of action by month, quarter, bi-annually or yearly. There’s no right or wrong to your marketing plans. I know for myself, I like working within 90 day periods.

Create your marketing strategy for your event which lists out how many Facebook Live videos you need to be doing, how many guest posts you need to be writing, email sequences you need to be creating for your freebie, and so forth.

For example, say you’re hosting a webinar in March 2017. You will need to begin working backward from the date set for the webinar. You need to figure out how you’re going to promote it and how much money you are willing to spend to promote your webinar. This could be Facebook ads, guest blog posting, getting on a podcast, being interviewed by peers, getting involved in a link party for your lead magnet, or calling prospective clients about it.

Once your marketing calendar is completed with appropriate actions, then it’s time to begin creating your content calendar.

You might also like: A guide to Planning the perfect Blogging Strategy for Success

Step Two: Plan Your Content Calendar using Your Marketing Calendar as the Foundation

Once you know what you’re going to be doing with your marketing piece, now it’s time to look towards your content calendar because your marketing calendar and your content calendar will become one.

Yes, I said it. Your marketing calendar and your content calendar are married. Whatever you’re doing with your marketing piece, you should be creating a series of content to promote, educate and warm up your audience for your promotion period.

Content has a strategy and this is part of that strategy: promoting your marketing calendar by warming up your audience with your content that is based on your marketing plans.

Let’s go back to the marketing example I gave you in Step One. Let’s say you’re hosting a webinar in March, so your content for the next several weeks (or months) should reflect this webinar topic. This is your warming up piece.

Your content should reflect topics for your webinar; your content should be based on topics you’re planning on diving deeper into within your webinar.

I hosted a webinar in December 2016 and I warmed up my audience for about six weeks before I even mentioned I was hosting a webinar about the topics I’ve been discussing inside of my blog.

Remember that content consists of your blogs, social media, newsletters, and videos. That means your content strategy should be including all of these different content forms.

Step Three: Execute and then Review

One of the most important facts to remember as you’re creating your marketing and content calendars is that after you execute your plan of action and follow through with it, you must make a time to review the process.

Big corporations set up a campaign that consists of marketing and content and has a certain time frame to execute the work. Then they will take the time to review the process to see what worked and what did not work.

You need to be practicing what the big corporations are doing. When I realized that big corporations marketing departments do review and revise, it’s when I began to see how it will benefit me and my own marketing and content strategies in 2017.

After you host your webinar, take the time to review your content and marketing strategies. You can note what you did and if it was successful or not. This will not only show you what you did right but what could you improve on.

Remember, when it comes time to reviewing, there’s no such thing as “failures”. It’s all a learning process and if you see where you could have improved upon, you know you can do it better next time around.

Then after you’re done reviewing, then revise your goals for next time you perform the webinar.

In conclusion, one of the quotes that come to mind is by Benjamin Franklin who said, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” Let’s make a strategic plan by marrying our marketing and content calendars, executing them, reviewing the strategy, learning lessons, and repeating the process until it becomes perfect.

Let’s make 2017 the year to perfect our plans, move our businesses, and increase our incomes. It can begin with two easy calendars merging into one.

BIO: Coaches and Speakers hire Monica to articulate their message into profitable and convertible content so they can stand in their authentic message and increase their income with the use of powerful content creation. You can learn more about Monica and her work at http://www.monicawrites.com

To increase your reach, download the 10 Easy Ways to Plan Your Social Media Marketing Post guides to accelerate your promotions via social media and blogs! This guide will show you optimal times to post on your favorite social media platforms for maximum exposure and visibility for your own marketing strategies. Gain clarity and easy ideas with this free guide. You can download your free guide here: http://bit.ly/2h1QjhR

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