Monthly Archives: September 2022

Online communities are internet groups where people with shared interests interact, have discussions, and form relationships.

According to HubSpot’s State of Consumer Trends Report, 24% of social media users have actively participated in an online community in the last three months.

This post will delve into why consumers join online communities, the benefits they get from participating in them, and what this means for marketers.

Why Consumers Participate in Online Communities

The HubSpot Blog’s Consumer Trends Report surveyed over 1000+ consumers and asked them why they join online communities. The top reasons were for fun, to share their same interests with others, and to stay connected with their communities.

Online communities are especially impactful for Gen Z, who value in-the-moment connection. In the past three months, 22% of Gen Z have joined an online community, and 36% of Gen Z actively participated in an online community (higher than any other generation).

Christina Garnett, Senior Marketing Manager, Offline Community & Advocacy, says a draw to online communities is that they remove the friction that can come from in-person communities, as people around the world can connect with others without needing to travel to different locations.

She says that with the advent of smartphones, online communities become “‘In your pocket’ or ‘turn on your laptop’ communities where the only thing you need to feel connected to others is an internet connection.” Access can be as simple as tapping an app on a phone or clicking on a bookmarked website instead of traveling elsewhere, so the appeal increases.

The HubSpot report also asked consumers the most significant benefits they get from participating in online communities, and they said learning new things, gaining new ideas and inspiration, and being able to meet and interact with others with similar interests.

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Garnett adds, “The ability to connect without travel or without a sense of forced communication means that not only can people around the world connect with others, but that those who are more introverted are able to participate in the ways where they are most comfortable instead of feeling forced to go to events and have small talk in order to feel like a member.”

Takeaways for Marketers

There are two types of communities consumers can join: user-built communities, where a consumer creates or joins a community around an interest, like a Reddit board or subreddit, or a community built by a brand or business, like a branded Discord server or Facebook Group.

Even though businesses can only own one type of community, you can leverage both to understand your audience’s likes and dislikes, what they talk about, and even how they talk about your business.

For example, you can use social listening to see how consumers are talking about a new product you’ve launched, or you can ask consumers a question and create an interactive poll in your YouTube Community tab.

Regardless, online communities allow businesses to interact with customers, have conversations, and develop engaging relationships that build a connection — a critical pillar of customer loyalty.

On TikTok, anyone can go viral. But due to its quirky nature, it’s often the most creative or silly videos that skyrocket.

Of course, it also helps that TikTok has a massive audience who are super engaged. To increase your chances of being seen, there are a few tips and tricks we recommend you try. 

From leveraging trending audio to green screen effects, read on to discover the 10 best TikTok tricks.

1. Stitch top-performing or relevant videos.

Stitch is a tool that enables you to combine another video on TikTok with one you’re creating. It’s yet another way to collaborate with other TikTokers, leverage user-generated content, and expand your reach.

Start by looking for top-performing videos in your niche. You can do this by using the search bar and typing keywords relating to your brand. Or, check if any videos directly mention your brand.

Once you find a video to stitch, tap the Share icon on the right-hand side.

Then, tap Stitch. This will open an editing tool where you can select five seconds of the video to use in yours.

Let’s look at stitching in action with an example from Puma.

Example: Puma

In case you’re out of the loop, latte art is a huge deal on TikTok — amassing over 2.4 billion views. When one user put the Puma logo on top of a steaming cup of coffee, the brand decided to join the action by “stitching” the original video and attempting to recreate it.

This is a great example of a brand collaborating with its audience and leveraging user-generated content.

2. Use the green screen effect.

TikTok has many filters and effects, but one stands out from the crowd: the green screen effect.

Like a traditional green screen, this effect lets you stay on-screen while different images appear in the background. It adds a whole new level of storytelling by incorporating visual aids.

This filter is ideal for explaining topics, providing recommendations, or whenever visuals could complement your story.

For instance, suppose you’re a fitness influencer. You could explain the proper form of an exercise by referencing photos in the background. In this case, the background visuals enhance your commentary rather than distract from it.

Example: Levi’s

Using the green screen effect, Levi’s recommends different jeans using product photos in the background. Viewers can easily follow along, and seeing pictures of the jeans may pique their interest.

3. Leverage trending audio.

88% of TikTok users say sound is essential to the TikTok experience. It grabs people’s attention and adds flavor to your content. And for many users, it’s the starting point for creating a great video.

Welcome to Breaking the Blueprint — a blog series that dives into the unique business challenges and opportunities of underrepresented business owners and entrepreneurs. Learn how they’ve grown or scaled their businesses, explored entrepreneurial ventures within their companies, or created side hustles, and how their stories can inspire and inform your own success.

Networking is connecting with other business professionals, building relationships within and outside your field, and diving into your story to establish the “why” behind your work.

Effective networking highlights your expertise and that of your peers so that you can find a middle ground of opportunity, collaboration, and collective problem-solving. Because of the power of networking, professionals are often told to focus on building their networks.

That is easier said than done, though, because people from marginalized communities — specifically individuals who are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) — have historically been underrepresented and left out of the very spaces that are necessary to be in to make those valuable connections.

In this post, we’ll discuss why networking can be a challenge for LGBTQ+ professionals, where LGBTQ+ professionals can network, and tips for successful networking.

Why is networking a challenge for LGBTQ+ professionals?

The lack of access and representation in leadership roles at organizations can make networking a uniquely arduous task for LGBTQ+ people.

A June 2020 report from McKinsey & Company found that openly LGBTQ+ women comprise only 1.6 percent of managers and an even smaller share of more senior levels within organizations. LGBTQ+ men make up 3% of senior managers/directors, 1.9% of vice presidents, and 2.9% of senior vice presidents.  The same report found that transgender people face exceptionally sharp barriers to advancement in the workplace, and their experience is distinct from that of cisgender people who also identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer.

As a result, finding people to network with that share common values and experiences can be challenging, which is why events specifically for LGBTQ+ professionals are a valuable place to develop relationships.

Where can LGBTQ+ people network?

Professional conferences and events are an excellent opportunity to shift the narrative on representation as they provide opportunities for LGBTQ+ people to network and build connections. And, a beneficial aspect of networking at conferences is that they typically have a sense of community built in via curated programming and central themes.

For LGBTQ+ people, the built-in community environment of conferences can be particularly helpful because research shows that LGBTQ+ people are more likely to feel isolated and less supported by their peers, and management, in workplaces. In addition, conferences also give attendees access to industry leaders they otherwise might not meet to share their stories, experiences, and expertise with.

So how can LGBTQ+ people harness the power of networking at conferences? This is an especially important question to answer in 2022 as events return in full force since being largely halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  

8 Networking Tips for LGBTQ+ Professionals

Returning to in-person or hybrid networking across virtual and in-person spaces can feel awkward after being out of practice for several years. Here are eight tips to get you started to maximize your opportunities as an LGBTQ+ professional.

1. Find the conference or event’s target audience.

The first step before entering any new situation is to know who your audience is, aka who will be there. Are you attending a primarily or exclusively LGBTQ+ professional conference such as Lesbians Who Tech & Allies and The Out & Equal Workplace Summit, or is it a general industry-wide conference?

When you have this information, it becomes easier to create a plan of action for establishing goals and how you’ll approach people at the event.

2. Create a 360 plan.

Once you know your audience, you can make a 360 plan, meaning what you need to do before the conference, during, and afterward. Yes, any good networking plan involves a post-conference plan, like establishing the tools you’ll use to follow up after meeting new contacts (or reconnecting with former contacts).

A great strategy is to develop a post-conference spreadsheet of the contacts you met,  organize the spreadsheet by industry or company, and include notes about your interactions, talking points or questions you have, etc.

Here are some other questions to take into consideration as you develop your 360 conference networking plan:

Who do you want to connect with? — Are there specific individuals, people from specific organizations, companies, or industries?
What do you want to know? — Are you interested in exploring current industry trends, challenges that people in similar roles to you are having, or any new projects people are working on?

3. Establish clear expectations and goals.

Part of developing your plan is establishing clear expectations and goals. Doing this helps you manage your time better and avoid the sense of overwhelm that can be common at conferences from the pressure to connect with as many people as possible.  

Be specific and clear in these goals and expectations. Most importantly, be realistic. For example,

“I want to walk away with x number of new contacts” — If you are going to use #’s as metrics, be realistic about this. Bigger/more is NOT always better.
“I want to connect with people from x organization or company.”
“I want to share my experiences doing x with x people.”

4. Set personal boundaries.

Along with setting clear goals and expectations, you should also be setting clear boundaries.  

We don’t often discuss or think about boundaries regarding networking because the old adage is “More is better.”

Still, setting boundaries can mean not accepting people misgendering you or disrespecting your identity, carefully considering offers for connection to see if they’re relevant to you, asking questions to ensure your expertise is not being taken advantage of, and honoring yourself and your needs as you meet new people.

5. Take advantage of tech tools for connecting.

An integral part of developing your networking plan should be taking advantage of tech tools for connecting.

Many conferences use apps that allow attendees to make profiles, share contact information, make virtual business cards, and more. Take advantage of these tech tools to build your profile and identify people you want to connect with beforehand.

Additionally, ensure your LinkedIn or other profiles are up to date before attending the event. LinkedIn can be a major tool to drive engagement and new connections, especially during and post-conference.

6. Connect for community, not clout (and appreciate the slow build).

Focus on making genuine connections and building community versus falling into the trap of quid pro quo networking “I can do this for you if you can do this for me.” Avoid transactional relationships, and focus on building genuine relationships.

Additionally, appreciate the slow build, especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic — people are getting used to reconnecting and networking. It takes more time than it used to to establish those connections, especially if you are trying to break into a new industry or field.

7. Share your unique story.

Your story is the heart of who you are and, in many cases, the “why” behind your work. Come up with 3-4 core talking points of who you are and your why that you will be able to share with folks in conversation as you meet them.

You can even take the next step by having materials ready to showcase who you are, examples of your work, and how to get in touch with you.

8. Take breaks.

Take breaks throughout the conference day. Build them into your schedule, even if they aren’t built into the event schedule itself. You do not have to attend every session, plenary, or talk to maximize your networking capabilities at conferences and events.

When prospects first come to your business page, they probably won’t just click and buy your offering immediately. They’ll most likely be searching through your site to learn more about it, gauge the level of trust people have in your company, and be on the lookout for resources to help them achieve their goals. You can create this experience by content mapping.

Content mapping allows you to create highly targeted, personalized content at every stage of the buyer’s journey, helping to nurture leads and prospects toward a purchase decision. In this post, we’ll go over what a content map is and how you can start content mapping for your brand.

Let’s get started.

For example, if your business is building a brand new website, you’ll have to begin creating a content map based on why the customer is going to your page. If customers are coming to your website looking for a credible solution worth paying for, they’ll want to trust the company.

The marketing team can then align the goal to build trust, and apply it to their marketing portfolio.

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Why is content mapping important?

Content mapping helps you plan for content creation that supports the customer journey and creates a more cohesive, personalized customer experience.

When it comes to content, one size rarely fits all. They have to serve different purposes as prospects are looking for varying information as they progress in the buyer’s journey. To ensure that your company’s content is effective at generating leads, you need to deliver diversified content that covers different topics that they’re searching for each step of the way. Content mapping is the process of doing just that.

But coming up with the actual topics that make for a highly targeted content strategy isn’t that easy. However, content mapping with the audience in mind can help you put together a strategy in a more manageable way.

How to Create a Content Map

1. Download a content map template.

To help you brainstorm and map out content ideas for targeting specific segments of your audience, we’ve created a new free template resource: The Content Marketing Planning Template.

Download Your Free Template Now

The template includes an introduction to content mapping, a crash course on buyer personas and lifecycle stages, a content mapping template (plus examples), a website content map template, and bonus buyer persona templates.

With the template, you’ll:

Learn how to understand buyer personas and lifecycle stages.
Identify problems and opportunities that your audience needs help with.
Brainstorm highly targeted content ideas that incorporate personas and lifecycle stages.

2. Identify the buyer persona you want to target.

Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your customers (and prospective customers) better, and make it easier for you to tailor content to the specific needs, behaviors, and concerns of different groups.

The strongest buyer personas are based on market research as well as on insights you gather from your actual customer base (through surveys, interviews, etc.). Depending on your business, you could have as few as one or two personas or dozens. If you’re just getting started with personas, don’t go crazy! You can always develop more personas later if needed.

3. Consider that persona’s path to purchase (lifecycle stages).

The buyer persona you target with your content is only half of the content mapping equation. In addition to knowing who someone is, you need to know where they are in the buying cycle (i.e. how close they are to making a purchase). This location in the buying cycle is known as a lifecycle stage.

For our Content Mapping Template, we’re divvying up the buying cycle into three lifecycle stages: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

Awareness: In the awareness stage, a person has realized and expressed symptoms of a potential problem or opportunity.
Consideration: In the consideration stage, a person has clearly defined and given a name to their problem or opportunity and is looking for a solution.
Decision: In the decision stage, a person has defined their solution strategy, method, or approach and is looking for a provider.

By combining buyer personas with lifecycle stages, you can hone in on specific segments of your audience and tailor content to resonate with each of those segments.

4. Brainstorm questions the personas have in the awareness stage.

Your awareness stage content should target early in the buying cycle. People in this segment are just becoming aware that they have a problem. At this stage, think of how your content can help people become more informed about the problem in general, and you’ll (hopefully) find that they continue moving closer to a purchasing decision.

Important questions to start thinking about:

What problem are they likely trying to solve, and what are the symptoms that are causing this problem?
What information will help them to identify their problem(s) and that our product or service is designed to solve them?
How can we build trust and provide more value than our competitors from this early stage in the journey?

5. Identify awareness stage content.

Taking your buyer personas’ questions into account, you can turn them into topics for awareness stage content.

The content you want to provide them should speak to their current needs, not jump straight into product-focused content. This can take the form of insightful blog posts, webinars, ebooks, or social media posts that give information to solve initial concerns and slowly familiarize prospects with how your product can help them.

6. Brainstorm ways to position your solution as your persona enters the consideration stage.

At this point, you’ve provided your prospect with enough information to become fully aware of their problem, and they know it can be remedied.

This is when you should begin trying to move them closer to a purchasing decision and become more interested in your product offering, using consideration stage content.

7. Identify consideration stage content.

Your consideration stage content can more explicitly mention how your product or service could potentially solve a problem. At this point in the buying cycle, people are still evaluating their options. Your purpose now is to help them narrow down the solution that works the best and provides them the most value.

The types of content used for the consideration stage can look like this:

Videos comparing and contrasting offerings
Whitepapers

8. Brainstorm objections that would stop them from buying in the decision stage.

Now that you’ve identified the “why”s behind your prospect choosing your solution, it’s time to consider the “why not”s.

Some competitors may have a more affordable solution, different methods of remedying issues, or more authority (popularity) in the market. While some of these aspects cannot be changed, you can still appeal to the prospect and move them closer to purchase if your offering is a real value add, regardless of the rest.

9. Identify decision stage content.

At the decision stage of the buyer journey, you can primarily lean into marketing your products or services. If someone has reached this stage, they’ve already identified a problem and a solution, and are now getting ready to pull the proverbial trigger toward a purchase decision.

This is where you can directly present the prospect with examples of positive experiences or success derived from your product or service offering, with decision stage content like:

Case studies (social proof)
Customer testimonials
Product demos

10. Determine how these content pieces work together.

Now that you’ve identified all the different types of content that buyers of each stage are looking for, it’s time to map the ideas.

Content Mapping Template

This content mapping visualization keeps the marketing strategy focused on the goal specified with all the steps necessary to gradually reel in buyers. Our template can also help you to schedule when you want content published on a monthly or quarterly basis if you want to manage it in one place.

You can approach content mapping to serve more specific strategies this way, too, as we’ll discuss content mapping for your website in more detail.

Website Content Mapping

Website content mapping is the process of planning the pages, blog posts, and offers you’ll publish on your site and identifying which buyer personas those pages and posts will serve. Website content mapping also identifies which pages and posts address different lifecycle stages.

Website content mapping is a key element of website personalization. In essence, you’ll create different pages, posts, and offers to address different buyers at different points in the buyer’s journey.

To give you a better idea of website content mapping, let’s run through a simple example of one.

Content Map Example

The buyer persona (and a key problem or opportunity that persona is struggling with) is at the start of the grid. Jenny is a gym owner and her problem is that she needs gym equipment, but has a limited budget and has taken to the internet for a solution.

In the awareness life cycle stage, she’ll be looking for introductory content to gain knowledge about the types of equipment necessary to bring customers into her gym.

In the consideration life cycle stage, she’ll have a better understanding of her need for equipment and price expectations and will be looking to create a more clear budget for different items and consider how long this investment will last — seeking templates that outline that information.

Finally, in the decision stage, Jenny has identified her needs and is looking for a provider to fill them. She will feel inclined to request demos, consults, or quotes from a company that has guided her through her journey to their solution of cost-effective gym equipment.

This type of content map works because of how it segments personas as they progress through the buyer lifecycle, and if you have more than one persona to cater to, then you can expand your map into a segmentation grid.

Content Segmentation Grid

A content segmentation grid is a tool to help businesses plan the content they will produce based on the different types of audiences they want to reach.

A common mistake marketers make when it comes to content planning is that they’ll understand the need to make personalized content for customers as they navigate the buyer stages — but ignore the need for individualized messaging.

A content segmentation grid solves that problem as marketers will be able to better serve every customer segment at each stage they reach. So instead of writing messaging for one buyer persona, you can potentially increase engagement and conversions across different audiences.

So you now know what content mapping is, and you’ve seen how you can get started. What type of tools can you use to start content mapping?

Content Mapping Tools

Content mapping may seem like a difficult task that requires highly specialized software. It’s not true — it requires simple business tools you may already be using in your day-to-day.

We’ll start with the most basic tools you need to start content mapping, such as word processors and visualization tools.

1. Google Docs

Pricing: Free

First up in your content mapping tech stack is your preferred word processor, Google Docs. It has the feature to draw and insert different types of diagrams into documents, which can be translated into a content map to align your marketing mix with your goals. We highly recommend this tool because it makes it easier to share work across your team, and you never have to worry about backing up your content map once you’ve created it.

2. Lucidchart

Pricing: Free Basic Plan; Individual Plan;$7.95/month, Team Plan; $9/month, Enterprise Plan available upon request

If you’re more of a visual person, then a flowchart tool is a must. Also, if you’d prefer to create a content map with lines and diagrams, then you need a more sophisticated tool than Google Docs. Lucidchart’s flowchart maker is a top-of-the-line tool that also allows you to connect different apps and services. Like Google Docs, it allows you to work collaboratively, but Lucidchart takes it a step further and provides users with more visually appealing formatting.

3. Buyer Persona Tool

Pricing: Free

Before you can even begin to create a content map, you need to identify the buyer persona(s) you’re creating content for. HubSpot has a buyer persona tool made to build and save professional buyer persona documents with its intuitive generator.

And if you want to take it a step further, HubSpot has a list containing even more buyer persona resources to build out your customer profiles for your business, too.

4. Marketing Hub

Pricing: Free Basic Plan, Starter Plan; $45/month, Professional Plan; $800/month, Enterprise Plan; $3,200/month

In the Marketing Hub, there is an SEO Topics tool that provides content mapping capabilities to help users organize their ideas for organic-focused awareness stage content. With this capability, your team will be able to collaborate and execute your content map once it’s ready for deployment.

Tools to Help Implement Your Content Map

1. HubSpot CRM

Pricing: Free

HubSpot’s CRM is the one tool you need to compile all of your data from current and prospective customers. The CRM will allow you to discern different lifecycle stages and pinpoint commonalities between customers who are ready to purchase based on lead scoring. Your content map can help someone build a lead scoring system to identify high-value leads who have consumed the content close to a purchasing decision.

3. CMS Hub

Pricing: Starter Plan; $23/month, Professional Plan; $360/month, Enterprise Plan; $1,200/month

A content management system is probably the most important tool for your content mapping efforts. A CMS will allow you to publish personalized content that targets different site visitors at — you guessed it — different stages of the buyer’s journey.

CMS Hub is fully integrated with HubSpot’s CRM platform and Marketing Hub, allowing you to create a seamless experience for your customers as they receive the content you’ve designed for them. It will help you execute your content map flawlessly. Even more importantly, with CMS Hub, you can continue testing and retesting your content for better results.

So are you ready to begin creating your own content map? Before you start, let’s hear some tips from marketers who attribute part of their success to this strategy.

Content Mapping Tips From the Pros

1. Educate your audience.

“We all have to create compelling content to attract our ideal clients, build an active and engaged audience, and get daily sales. Spend time building your audience by educating them and engaging with them. No one has built a business by posting the same image or type of image every day on socials and not having convoys with their audience. It is not just about showing up, but doing so with intention so you can attract your ideal clients who will buy from you.”

– Adanna Austin (Business Coach and Consultant, Marketing Dynamics Business Solutions)

2. Give your prospects the information they need before they ask for it.

“With content mapping, you can give your prospects the information they are asking for before they even ask for it. Buyer personas and lifecycle stages allow you to be one step ahead of the game by mapping out what your prospect’s next steps are and delivering them the content from numerous different avenues.

We create buyer personas as part of our onboarding process and everything we do from content offer to daily tweets is centered around that document. We also always ask ourselves, ‘Would business owner Bob open this email, click this tweet, or download this offer?'”

– Laura Hogan (Founder, Digital Atlas Marketing)

3. Provide different conversion paths for different personas.

“When mapping out content for your site’s visitors, it’s important to remember that when it comes to purchasing decisions (BOFU conversions, especially for B2B and high-priced items), there are some personas out there who would rather speak to someone on their terms rather than fill out a form for a consultation. Understanding how they are most comfortable when it comes to making decisions can help you understand what points of conversion will be the most relevant and successful for that persona.

Optimizing your site pages (landing and thank you pages, as well), TOFU & MOFU offers, and workflows with direct contact information (phone #, email, etc.) is a great way to ensure that visitors, prospects, and leads who may shy away from form submissions still have readily available, alternate means of converting.”

– Marc Herschberger (Director of Operations, Revenue River Marketing)

4. Create specific content that appeals to specific personas.

“Mapping out buyer personas and lifecycle stages is extremely important when creating content. In terms of buyer personas, it’s easy to see that a Marketing Director will have different questions, information needs, and interests compared to a CEO. Both of these personas may be searching for your product or service, but they’ll be looking for different topics. By creating content that appeals to each audience, you can be more effective in attracting that specific audience.

By the same token, each persona of yours may be in a different stage of the buying process, so it’s important to think through and create content that appeals to someone looking for basic, high-level information such as an ebook, as well as specific information like a pricing guide or case study.

One tip I’d suggest for anyone with pretty different personas would be to dedicate an entire section of your site to each audience. That way, when you pull in your audience, all the content is directed toward them.

We actually took this concept and went a step further by creating unique brands for each one of our vertical markets. Each brand has its own section of the website, its own blog content, and its own premium content (downloadable offers). It’s really helped us attract and convert visitors at a higher rate because all the content is more relevant to that persona.”

– Spencer Powell (Chief Executive Officer, Builder Funnel)

4. Pull content topics from your sales process.

“By taking the buyer and buying stage into account when creating content, you can be sure that you’re designing content to help move them through the buying process.

In addition to mapping content to the buyer profile and buying stage, we regularly pull topics from the sales process. Then we offer the content in later sales calls. This helps us not only evaluate the relevancy of the content but also the interest of the buyer. We encourage clients to do the same.”

– Diona Kidd (Managing Partner, Knowmad)

Content Mapping is Key to Your Company’s Growth

Delivering the right content at the right time can do wonders for your company’s growth. By meeting prospects’ needs based on their persona and lifecycle stage, you’re delighting them at every turn, boosting your chances of winning a loyal customer and turning them into a brand evangelist.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2014 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.

If you’re anything like me, you’re consistently working out of at least 20 browser tabs, four journals, a yellow legal pad or two, and a myriad of Post-it notes stuck around your computer monitor.

To the average overseer, it’s nothing short of chaos. To the blogger, it’s evidence of a (desperate) need for an editorial calendar.

Without a mutually agreed-upon system for planning, writing, and scheduling content every week, you can find yourself in a pile of missed deadlines, unedited blog posts, and a fair amount of team tension.

There’s no such thing as a perfect editorial calendar — it all depends on the needs of your team. Nonetheless, there are several questions you should ask yourself to determine what your editorial calendar should look like. These include:

How frequently are you publishing content? Do you have stuff going live every day? Once a week? Perhaps multiple times a day? Finding out how often you publish can tell you how best to visualize your editorial calendar regularly.
Do you create more than one type of content? If you upload as many videos to YouTube as you publish articles to your company blog, your editorial calendar will need to distinguish between the two.
How many people will use this editorial calendar? The best editorial calendars allow multiple people to brainstorm, collaborate, and provide feedback on assignments in real-time — directly on the calendar.
What are the various stages content goes through before it’s published? How complex is your content pipeline? Is there a substantial review or approval process that each piece of content goes through? Make sure your calendar can distinguish between two similar assignments that are in different stages of creation.
What format will you use to organize this calendar? You’ll want to choose the system that best aligns with your goals and your team’s workflows. The next section discusses the most common formats.

Let’s take these points and put them into practice to create your perfect editorial calendar.

How to Create an Editorial Calendar

A successful editorial calendar is a living project that your business will change as you grow and scale your social media strategy. To start the process of creating your own, we have some resources to simplify the process.

With all the different types of calendars you can create, we’ll discuss the types you can choose, and how to plan the rollout of your content.

1. Choose a format for organizing your editorial calendar.

There’s no such thing as a perfect editorial calendar, but some formats will be better than others at helping you solve your team’s goals.

Once you choose a format, decide on how you will implement it — picking a tool or platform that offers the features or interface your company needs most.

Here are some of the different ways to format your editorial calendar:

Spreadsheet

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Pros

Easy data aggregation and organization
Short learning curve and accessible, making collaboration easy
Integration with calendar apps and content management tools

Cons

Hard to visualize your calendar
Difficult to get a clear breakdown at a glance.

Content Calendar

Pros

Most straightforward ways to know what’s going out and when
Color coding, tags, and assignments to organize by channel, content type, and more

Cons

There’s more to project and content management than publishing dates, and a calendar may not always be effective enough on its own.

Project Management Tool

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Pros

Easily represent an editorial workflow no matter what your quality assurance process is or how many hands touch a piece before it’s published.
Designed for content management and more
Better collaboration and visualization like a Kanban board

Cons

Can be overwhelming if you only need it a content calendar. 

2. Designate your main marketing channels.

Editorial calendars are highly visual tools. Differentiating your calendar using color coordination for the different channels you post on can eliminate confusion among your marketing team members.

Make your editorial calendar easier to interpret by dividing the types of posts or subject matter using different visual cues to ensure you schedule the right content at the right time.

3. Plan your posts consistently.

Content planning in an incredibly important component of any strong marketing strategy.

As Carsyn LeClere, Strategist at Blue Frog, told me, “Content planning helps provide a better view of all your marketing initiatives and how they play into each other. It’s important to have because it ensures you don’t duplicate content efforts, cannibalize a topic, miss any initiatives or neglect any part of the buyer’s journey.”

She adds, “Being able to plan content at a high-level allows you to focus on content that matters and makes it easier to produce content that’s consistent with your brand story.”

Organizing your editorial calendar to be posted on the same weekly schedule can drive your pages to have more exposure via social media algorithms and potentially raise your engagement as a result.

You see, when you post on a frequent basis and use a social media platform often, you’re in turn keeping your followers coming back to the platform as well. Platforms reward profiles that drive this engagement with more visibility, and after all, these platforms are after capturing and maintaining people’s attention.

Social media channels favor profiles that use their website often, and when you add a patterned or consistent posting cycle to it, you’re using the platform in an optimized manner.

4. Study your competition’s posting frequency.

Look to other businesses posting in the same industry or niche as yours, study which are successful in capturing that attention and how they got to that level of success.

By no means should you copy others’ content subject matter or the exact dates or times they post, but instead pull inspiration and make your own editorial calendar that could possibly garner attention on the days or times competitors aren’t posting.

5. Audit and adapt your editorial calendar as necessary.

It’s all a matter of trial and error when making your calendar.

If you begin with low engagement in the first couple of months, run a company content audit and adapt your content calendar to better engage your followers.

Above all, creating an editorial calendar will make your marketing team work more streamlined and organized.

Editorial Calendar Examples

To help you implement an editorial calendar, we’ve also included real examples from a few of the most successful content teams out there. Check them out below and find out what makes their calendar so useful.

1. HubSpot Editorial Calendar [Template]

Platform: Excel

Free Download

The interactive HubSpot Editorial Calendar Template was built for writers and content strategists to outline their posting strategy.

Included are prompts for the content’s title, meta description, URL, CTA, and more. This template is completely free and can be used on both Google Sheets and Excel.

2. Buffer’s Editorial Calendar

Platform: Trello

This is the actual editorial calendar of Buffer, a social media content scheduling platform.

Naturally, the company’s content is supported by an editorial calendar that describes an assignment’s author, title, publish date, and where it is in the company’s editorial workflow. Content can be in the “Ideas” stage, in the “Pipeline,” “In Progress,” or “Editing”.

Each rectangular tile shown above represents an individual piece of content — whether it’s a blog post, video, or even a podcast episode.

As you might be able to tell, Buffer’s editorial calendar is built on Trello, a popular project management tool.

And although you can use Trello more than one way, Buffer uses most of its available features so everyone has the information they need within a few clicks — regardless of what they do for the company and how the calendar affects their work.

3. Unbounce’s Editorial Calendar

Platform: Google Sheets

This is the editorial calendar of Unbounce, a creator of landing pages and related conversion tools for marketers as well as a HubSpot integration partner.

Unlike Buffer, this company uses Google Sheets to manage their entire content production, and the way they’ve customized the spreadsheet above would be pleasing to the eyes of any content creator.

In addition to organizing their projects by month, what you might notice from the screenshot above is that Unbounce also sorts their content by the campaign they’re serving — as per the first two columns on the left-hand side.

This allows the business to see what multiple assignments — listed vertically down the third column — have in common, and track content that extends beyond the Unbounce blog.

Shown below, the Unbounce blog has a separate editorial calendar in Google Sheets that allows the blog to work alongside the larger company initiatives. Nonetheless, using spreadsheets for both content workflows has proven to be the best choice for the company’s growing operation.

“We’re a small content team, so other platforms would likely overcomplicate things,” says Colin Loughran, editor in chief at Unbounce.

Ultimately, this editorial calendar keeps Colin’s team in sync.

“While we try to lock dates a few weeks in advance,” he explains, “the reality is that sometimes we need to make changes very quickly. A product launch might move into a slot we’d planned for something else, for instance, or a guest contributor will be delayed in delivering a revised draft. When that’s the case, having a centralized resource that everyone can check is a necessary safety blanket.”

4. Digital Authority’s Content Calendar

Platform: CoSchedule

Digital Authority, a marketing agency that specializes in content and social media, distinguishes between its big-picture content goals vs. smaller content-related tasks.

Image Source

Digital Authority uses CoSchedule to plan out timelines for pieces such as blogs and social media posts. The advantage of this is the color categorization, calendar and task views, and the ability to create social posts across platforms from within one portal.

There are also features to keep the team actionable, on the same page, and agile with drag-and-drop features.

5. Hootsuite’s Content Calendar

Platform: Google Sheets and Hootsuite Planner

Hootsuite, another social media scheduling platform, has a ton of content to publish both daily and far out in advance. That makes their content calendar a major component of their production strategy.

Image Source

Due to the volume, the Hootsuite team creates content far in advance using Google Sheets to plan and organize across channels. Once the strategy is created and executed, posts that are ready to be published are represented on Hootsuite Planner.

Content Calendar Sample

Ready to make your own editorial calendar?

No matter which platform you ultimately want to work out of, a spreadsheet can help you take inventory of what content you have and how quickly it moves from start to finish.

Try our free Blog Editorial Calendar Templates.

Using the templates linked above, you’ll be able to organize, categorize, and color code to your heart’s content. Use these templates to target the right readers, optimize posts with the best keywords, and pair each topic with a killer call-to-action.

In this download, we’ve included three different templates for you to choose from.

Why three? We recognize that not all content teams are the same. While some feel most efficient with a centralized editorial calendar solution, others may need the gentle push of an upcoming deadline right on their calendar.

Therefore, you’ll have access to all three templates in Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and Google Calendar.

Plan Out Your Editorial Calendar with Ease

With a little customization, your blog calendar will be running smoothly, leaving you time to be the content-writing, lead-generating machine you strive to be.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.