Content calendar for sustainable results

It is more important than ever for companies to be highly visible. This way you get in touch with potential customers faster, show them who you are, and increase your brand awareness and thus, at the same time, sales.
To be visible online, a content calendar is essential. With a content calendar, you make sure you can show the right content to your target audience at the right time. This brings many opportunities that you can take smart advantage of.
Yet for many people, creating a content calendar is quite a task. What do you put in there? And how do you keep the content calendar up-to-date? To give you a hand with this, we tell you everything you need to know about a content calendar and provide helpful examples.
Content calendar template
To use a content calendar, it is helpful to first know exactly what a content calendar is. A content calendar is a calendar that is full of information about your company or business’s content distribution.
For example, in the content calendar you can specify when, on what topic, through what channel and for what target audience you will distribute content.
In a content calendar, you can also indicate which person on your team is responsible for content. For example, you can put down in the calendar who needs to draft the content and what the status of it is.
So a content calendar is extremely useful if you want to have a clear overview of what content needs to be posted where and when.

Still, a fair amount of time goes into creating a content calendar. It is also difficult to figure out exactly how best to fill out your content calendar. For every organization, the content calendar looks different, making content calendars sometimes difficult to compare.
There is always a certain handhold in a content calendar, though. Thus, a content calendar always has a nice and clear layout. In the content calendar, you add goals, projects, themes, channels or other things that matter to your organization’s content.
Then you plan what content all needs to be created and posted. Placement can be indicated by day, week or month. You can view the content calendar in a calendar view or view it more like a to-do list with everything that still needs to be done.
Thanks to the content calendar, you can see every day of the week and every month exactly when certain content should be posted, so you can prepare this content in advance.
Content calendar example (2022)
An example of a content calendar is a content calendar created in a shared Google calendar. In this content calendar, you have planned for the entire year when certain content should be posted.
On each day, what content is to be shared, on which channel and for which audience.
Because the content calendar is shared, you can easily link tasks to an employee. For example, you can link taking the photos for the content to a photographer and writing the copy to a copywriter.
Each week, the content calendar looks at what work remains to be done in order to post the content at the scheduled time. Then, for each platform, content can be scheduled to be shared automatically, or content can be put on the platform manually.
Creating a content calendar: the steps
There are several steps you go through when creating a content calendar.
1. The first step is to consider when you want to post the content. Is this every week, a few times a week or just once a month?
2. Next, look at the type of content you will share. This can be a blog, a photo, an infographic, a news item you name it.
3. Next, look at who you will create the content for. Are these existing customers or are you sharing the content in a particular section of your target audience?
4. The fourth step is to look at the platform you will share the content on. This can be any social media platform, from LinkedIn to Instagram. Blogs, websites or newsletters are also platforms to consider.
5. Once everything is scheduled and lined up, it’s time to figure out who will create the content. This can be you or a colleague, or you can work on it together. Keep a close eye on the status here so that the content does get shared on time.
Content can be shared through many different platforms. Mainly social media is very useful to use. This is because there are many different users on social media, allowing you to reach a large portion of your target audience.

To make the most of your social media content calendar, here are some tips that can help you do just that. For example, it is wise to start with the content that does not take much time to be created. After all, you don’t want to spend too much time creating content that will do well when you’re just starting out.
Another tip is to choose a particular theme each month on which to base the content. See what topics are of interest to your organization and fit well with the social media platform. This is also useful if you want to gain more authority in Google because you share a lot about a particular topic.
Also, make sure that the content you share is always a good fit for the social media platform you are using. LinkedIn is better to use for business, while Facebook is more light-hearted.
The final tip is to divide large items into smaller tasks. It can sometimes take a lot of time to start creating a particular content item that you would like to share. For example, you might want to share a course, share an e-book or share a survey.
By dividing the content item into several smaller tasks, you can still schedule these content items into your content calendar. For example, you can work on the item with several people and schedule sneak peeks in the content calendar to get the target audience interested.