My Editorial Planning & Promotional Calendar Saves 24 Hours A Week

Using Two Calendars To Manage Marketing

I’ve had a lot of different careers from being a banker to a member of the national guard. My last job before online marketing was as a financial advisor so I’m very data driven when it comes to my marketing.

Everything we put out into the market needs to return results otherwise we’re doing something wrong and likely, wasting money.  
I’ve found hiring outside help has been crucial to keeping my systems going and working on my business instead of in my business. It’s saved me not only money but time as well.  
As my business has scaled up it’s been increasingly vital to plan ahead. This means calendars.

I actually have several calendars I use together.

A lot of people are confused between what the difference is from a Marketing Calendar and an Editorial/Content Calendar.

You can’t get by with just having one of these, you need both.

Your marketing calendar is where you decide what events you should participate in and in what way.

This is for conferences and other events where you have marketing based around it before and after.

When I’m running an event as the host I know I’m responsible for putting butts in the seats so I better be out there marketing it at least 6 weeks in advance.

The content I run during those 6 weeks is planned on the editorial calendar. This is where the nuts and bolts of your marketing get filled in like blogs, drip sequences, etc.

This strategy allows you to entirely plan out your marketing before you start.

 

Having these dual calendars working in tandem maps out exactly what’s going on in your business. This is great because it prevents you from overcommitting yourself as well as under committing.  
This allows you to spread out your events as evenly as you can, of course, life doesn’t always work out that way.

Now at least you have a shot at remaining organized and on top of everything as your business grows.

I used to use spreadsheets to run my calendars which were fairly lo-fi, but it did the job.

Then I switched over to CoSchedule. I love working with them. It’s become one of my favorite tools.

You can set up your calendar within their scheduling tool and it plugs directly into WordPress as well.

I find that it has a lot more functionality and it’s allowed me to streamline all my systems by using their handy templates.

I have multiple social accounts that I’m managing and it can take up tons of time just to get posts out.

Combined with Buffer, your entire month of social content can be automated and ready to go.

If I’m publishing a blog post I’ll usually post it to social the following day.

On the third day, I send it to my less active social channels like LinkedIn and Twitter. Then a week later I resend it out to my core audience via email.

All of these actions can be turned into a CoSchedule Template and used again and again.

For time-sensitive pieces, I use a different template than I do for evergreen posts. For events, I have a 6-week sequence and set of tasks that’s been automated, as well as a template for my guest posts.

Using these templates I’ve been able to save about 24 hours a week!
 

Action Steps

1. Create two calendars, one for marketing and events, the other for social content / blogs.
2. Use CoSchedule to manage your calendars so you can see everything laid out together.
3. Plug CoSchedule into your WordPress and attach your social accounts.
4. Create templates and cues using CoSchedule to streamline your social media.

 

Result You Will Achieve

Save time on social media posts and calendar management by using Event and Content Calendars along with CoSchedule Templates.

 
This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.