Free Template: Social Media and Content Development Editorial Calendar

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Get Ready for Social Media and Content Marketing Growth in 2010
Participation by B2B software companies in both social media and content marketing has been predicted by many to grow significantly in 2010. In a recent BtoB Magazine interview with Mark Wilson, VP of Corporate Marketing at database technology company Sybase, he was asked what he expected some of the year’s top B2B marketing trends to be:

“…What we also see for 2010 is a more systematic approach to social media. Everyone has put their toes in the water, including us, with social media over the past two years. In 2010, people will be a lot smarter because they will know what works and what hasn't worked with social media.

Another area that will be a top trend is content marketing. Everyone will be smarter about the content they're putting out. They know that it's a lot more cost-effective to use social media and, as a result of a lot of new technologies, it is very efficient to create a message and get it out. The key will be making sure you have very high-quality content.”

After developing your overall social media and content marketing plans, one of the keys to creating very high quality content and social media interactions is having an organized tactical plan. This is particularly important in organizations with multiple team members involved in developing and publishing content and interacting with various social media venues. It makes it easier to assign social media and content development tasks to various colleagues and lets your colleagues know how much time to budget for their activities.

Get Organized, Stay Focused and Productive with an Editorial Calendar

A detailed social media and content editorial calendar is one of the best tools you can use to ensure consistent high quality content gets published on time and you continue to be a valuable asset to your social media communities.  

A simple spreadsheet works well, or you can create a Google Calendar or other similar tool to create, share, and update the editorial calendar.

Social Media Calendar

A social media calendar lists the type and frequency of all your social media activity. It acts as a dashboard of your inbound and outbound communication and lists the number of interactions scheduled per month.

Aside from its use as a planning tool, your social media calendar can also be used with your social media monitoring program. Compare your activity on the calendar to the number of mentions received via social media venues to get an idea of the impact of your social media program. You may find that you need to adjust the frequency of activity or completely eliminate under-performing activity from your program.

Content Development Editorial Calendar

Your content development editorial calendar shows all of the content projects planned for a specific time period. You can organize it by week, month, fiscal quarter, or year, whatever fits your needs. Content includes all recurring projects, such as a monthly newsletter and blog posts, as well as one-time projects such as a specific customer case study or contributed article to a publication.

Do you have any tips on managing your company’s social media interactions and content publishing activities? Please post a comment with your insights.