Running a small business is a tough job. Not only do you need to keep your eye on every aspect of your business, you also need to develop a wide breadth of knowledge in areas covered by multiple specialists in larger organizations. Is it any wonder entrepreneurs struggle to maintain their small business blog with regular insightful content?
One of the best tools to keep you on top of your blogging game is an editorial calendar. It helps grow your small business blog, improve the effectiveness of your articles, maintain a consistent schedule of new material, and—most importantly—attracts and retains clients.
What is an editorial calendar?
We’re so glad you asked. Simply put, an editorial calendar is a bird’s eye view of your plan for blogging.
An editorial calendar isn’t just a list of blog ideas, however. An effective editorial calendar contains the following:
- Submission date
- Blog title/topic
- Target keywords or keyphrases
- Key points to cover in your blog article
- Offer or call to action (CTA)
- Links to additional blogs or information
- Image/Video URLs
- Post URL
- Details for external blog submissions
- Responsible individual
In fact, the more information your editorial calendar contains, the more valuable it is as a lead generation tool.
How does an editorial calendar expand my small business?
Good question! For entrepreneurs, an editorial calendar seems like a huge amount of extra work (aka headache). Don’t let that stop you. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy. Plus, you don’t want to miss the many benefits an editorial calendar provides to all aspects of your business, such as:
- Providing a place to store article ideas
- Ensuring a plan is in place when you’re ready to hit “start”
- Holding you accountable to a consistent schedule of updates (We already know regular blogging drives traffic to your website.)
- Helping you visualize your blogging strategy
- Keeping focused on content that meets the needs of your buyer persona
- Building trust and credibility with your reader
- Generating leads
- Acquiring new clients without having to endure excruciatingly painful networking events
As if that’s not enough to convince you to use an editorial calendar, as your small business blogging efforts grow, it provides another benefit—it makes sharing your blog articles and driving even more traffic to your website, incredible easy. You have everything another writer needs to post your blog content to their website.
Not only is the editorial calendar a great tool that improves your blogging efforts, it’s the tool every small business owner wants in their arsenal to grow their business.
Ready to get your blog on? Gather your free copy of an editorial calendar today.
