What's the best way to keep your content calendar and governance plan up-to-date?

1 Review your content calendar regularly

Your content calendar should not be a static document that you set and forget. You should review it regularly, at least once a month, to make sure it reflects your current priorities, resources, and opportunities. You may need to adjust your content topics, formats, channels, and deadlines based on new data, feedback, trends, or events. You should also monitor your content performance and measure it against your key performance indicators (KPIs) to see what works and what doesn't. This will help you optimize your content strategy and improve your return on investment (ROI).

2 Update your governance plan accordingly

Your governance plan defines the roles and responsibilities of your content team and stakeholders, as well as the policies and procedures for creating, approving, publishing, and maintaining your content. It helps you ensure consistency, quality, and compliance across your content ecosystem. But your governance plan should also be flexible and adaptable to changing needs and circumstances. You should update your governance plan accordingly whenever you make changes to your content calendar, your content team, your content standards, or your content tools. You should also communicate any changes to your governance plan clearly and promptly to all the relevant parties.

3 Use collaborative tools and processes

Keeping your content calendar and governance plan up-to-date can be challenging if you work with a large or distributed content team or multiple stakeholders. That's why you need to use collaborative tools and processes that allow you to share, edit, and track your content plans and documents in real time. For example, you can use cloud-based platforms like Google Docs or Trello to create and manage your content calendar and governance plan, and use tools like Slack or Zoom to communicate and coordinate with your team and stakeholders. You can also use workflows and approvals to streamline your content production and publishing process and avoid bottlenecks and errors.

4 Seek feedback and input from others

Another way to keep your content calendar and governance plan up-to-date is to seek feedback and input from others who are involved or affected by your content strategy. You can ask your team members, stakeholders, clients, or users for their opinions, suggestions, or concerns about your content plans and practices. You can also conduct surveys, interviews, focus groups, or usability tests to gather more data and insights about your content performance and user needs. By listening to and incorporating feedback and input from others, you can improve your content quality, relevance, and value.

5 Learn from best practices and examples

Finally, you can keep your content calendar and governance plan up-to-date by learning from best practices and examples of other content strategists and organizations. You can follow blogs, podcasts, newsletters, or social media accounts that share useful tips, trends, and case studies on content strategy. You can also attend webinars, workshops, or conferences that offer training, networking, or inspiration on content strategy. By learning from best practices and examples, you can discover new ideas, methods, or tools that can help you enhance your content calendar and governance plan.

6 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?