How can you align your content creation process with a distribution calendar?

1 Define your content goals

Before you start creating content, you need to define your content goals and how they support your overall marketing strategy. Your content goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, you might want to increase your website traffic by 20% in the next quarter, or generate 50 new leads per month from your blog. Your content goals will guide your content creation process and help you measure your results.

2 Identify your target audience

To create content that resonates with your audience, you need to know who they are, what they need, and how they consume content. You can use tools like buyer personas, customer journey maps, and audience surveys to understand your target audience and segment them into different groups based on their demographics, behaviors, interests, and challenges. You can also use analytics and feedback to monitor their engagement and satisfaction with your content.

3 Choose your content types and channels

Once you know your content goals and audience, you can decide what types of content and channels you want to use to reach them. You can choose from a variety of content formats, such as blog posts, videos, podcasts, ebooks, infographics, webinars, and more. You can also distribute your content across different channels, such as your website, email, social media, search engines, and third-party platforms. You should consider the strengths and limitations of each content type and channel, as well as the preferences and behaviors of your audience.

4 Create a content calendar

A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan, schedule, and manage your content creation process. It can include information such as the title, topic, format, channel, deadline, and status of each piece of content. You can use a spreadsheet, a calendar app, or a content management system to create your content calendar. You should also assign roles and responsibilities to your content team and communicate clearly with them throughout the process.

5 Produce and optimize your content

Producing and optimizing your content involves researching, writing, editing, designing, and formatting your content according to your content goals, audience, and channels. You should also ensure that your content is high-quality, original, relevant, and engaging. You should also optimize your content for SEO, readability, accessibility, and conversion. You can use tools like keywords, headlines, meta tags, images, CTAs, and links to improve your content performance.

6 Publish and promote your content

Publishing and promoting your content involves uploading, scheduling, and sharing your content on your chosen channels. You should also monitor and analyze your content performance using metrics like views, clicks, shares, comments, leads, and sales. You should also adjust your content strategy based on your results and feedback. You can also repurpose, update, and amplify your content to extend its reach and lifespan.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?