THE LUMIERE BLOG
Lumiere’s Guide to Editorial Calendars
Editorial calendars are used by bloggers, publishers, and small businesses to schedule content across different media, such as newspaper, blogs, social media, and email or print newsletters. An effective editorial calendar is much more than just a platform for publishing dates. An effective editorial calendar maps content and schedules resources, offers, and channels.
Editorial Calendar Basics
Now that you have decided to create an editorial calendar, these tips will ensure you are the most successful.
1) Create a list of Content
List all the content you intend to publish. If you are unsure of blog titles but know you want to post 4 blogs per month, you can simply write “Original Blog 1” or “Curated Blog 2” to serve as placeholders. Utilize a blend of both original and curated content (HootSuite recommends a 60/40 split), both of which are very different and require disparate efforts to complete:
Original Content
Original content is content you have created from scratch and publish for potential leads, subscribers, and customers. You can hire a professional writer or marketing team to create this content for you, or perhaps you or someone in your company has a knack for writing and wants to give it a shot. Just make sure that the content you create is true to your brand and showcases your business properly.
Curated Content
Curating content is the process of sorting through existing online content such as articles, publications, blogs, or social media posts and choosing the pieces relevant to your industry or company and sharing them with your subscribers.
2) Establish Creation and Publishing Dates
Gather the team, get the whiteboard out and strategize. What is feasible for your team? How many pieces can you write per month? How up to date and in demand is your content? Are you outsourcing the creation of your content? If so, what does your budget allow? 2, 4, 8 pieces per month? Great, schedule it! Having creation and publication dates allows for a common goal and transparency across your team and outsourced providers.
Each piece of content will need to be broken out into several steps and assigned to the appropriate party. Here are some editorial steps to help you get started:
3) Identify Resources
Make sure to assign or list responsible parties associated with the creation of each piece. For example “Original Blog 1” may not only require a writer, but also an editor, designer, or publisher. Editorial calendars make it easy to divide work but also can illustrate gaps in your resources. If your existing capacity (or skills) are not sufficient to meet the schedule you establish, consider using freelance or outside help. Although they do come with the extra layer of managing, services like Scripted or inbound marketing agencies can provide the writing expertise or bandwidth you lack.
4) Don’t Forget these Important Editorial Steps
It is not as simple as just writing and publishing. An effective editorial calendar should include all of the steps required from inception through measuring the effectiveness.
Additional key steps for each piece of content are:
Outline - Start with an outline of the content piece with the important points, steps, and keywords.
Write - Assign a date and resource for creating the piece.
Edit - Review the content for tone and adherence to your style guide and provide feedback to the writer of any changes.
Publish - Schedule the content to be published See Social Report’s Best Practices for Scheduling Content.
Promote - Most Blogging platforms will automatically promote to your awareness channel. Consider adding content to a newsletter or customer communications as well.
Measure - It is important to know how your content is performing. Track views, shares, time on page, leads and customers for a true ROI calculation.
Update - Content can become stale very quickly. Schedule a task for reviewing and updating the content in the future to keep it fresh.
5) Determine the Best Awareness Channels
An effective calendar will not only display the title of a piece, the parties responsible, and the due dates but will also list which vehicle you would like to use to share your content with your subscribers. Some pieces may be suitable as blog posts, some as direct emails, while others may be more effective as a simple social media post. Use your calendar to decide and share with your team.
6) Publishing Schedule
Now that you are familiar with the basics of what to publish, let’s discuss when to publish. As the old saying goes, “Timing is everything!”
When it comes to creating your publishing schedule, you will want to consider your audience and any upcoming events that may affect or influence their actions, your business, or your content choices.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
Are there any upcoming events to focus your content on?
Do seasons or holidays impact your product offering?
Is there an industry-specific season coming up? For example, if you are a sporting goods store, you will want to tailor your content to each sport’s particular season.
7) Utilize Productivity Tools
Now that you have learned what an Editorial Calendar is and what to put on it, you might be asking yourself what is the best tool to use to display your calendar. The answer is whatever works best for you and your team. If you want to start with something fairly simple a Google Calendar or Shared Google Document may suffice. If you want to create something a little more robust, you may want to try a tool designed specifically for project management such as Asana which allows you to assign collaborators, create dependent tasks, calendar, and more. Whatever tool you choose, the goal is to get creative, get organized, and get going on your fabulous new Editorial Calendar.
If you follow these steps, what could be a daunting task, can be managed efficiently. A well-thought-out calendar truly helps marketing departments and professionals stay organized and focused--thus increasing traffic and generating customers.
6 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL LEAD NURTURING
6 KEYS TO SUCCESSFUL LEAD NURTURING
Lead nurturing is the process of building relationships with buyers throughout the buyer’s journey by providing high-quality content that is relevant and engaging at each stage of their journey. The goal, of course, is to move prospects through the funnel quickly and to convert into paying customers. Marketing and communication efforts focused on listening to the needs of prospects and providing the information and answers they are looking for is essential to this process. Workflow automation tools such as HubSpot are also a great way to assist you in this process by automatically closing stale leads or convincing your prospects that you have the right solution for them. Wondering what else your company can do to convert your leads into buyers?
Here are the 6 key steps to successful lead nurturing we have identified:
1) Identify Your Ideal Client Profile/Buyer Persona
An Ideal Client is someone that can use your service or product to solve their problems or needs. For example, let's say you have a dog walking service. Anyone with a dog could use your service of course, but over time you have found that your most regular and repeat customers are busy single professionals that are at work all day and do not have time to walk their furry friend themselves. You might then run a dog walking special from the hours of 9-5. By identifying the demographic most likely to use your service you can cater your marketing to appeal to that group.
2) Learn the 3 Stages of the Buyer’s Journey
Prospects move through three stages of the buyer’s journey: Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. During Awareness, the buyer is determining possible solutions to their problem, issue, or product need. During Consideration, the buyer begins to investigate different options. Finally, during the Decision phase, the buyer has decided to purchase and is looking to support their decision. Sending an offer to set up a meeting to discuss your services with a prospect in the Awareness phase will most likely go unanswered, but during the Decision phase could prove fruitful. To be successful, present different content throughout these different stages to help ease your prospects to the next phase.
3) Make Awareness a Priority
Creating the perfect content for your ideal client is useless if they don’t begin the journey in the first place. This is why Awareness is a critical component. Create engaging content and optimize it around keywords the buyer is searching for when researching their need. Also, make sure your campaigns contain all of the keywords your prospects might use. Google Keywords Planner can be used to supplement this process. The goal in the Awareness phase is to provide engaging content that answers questions the buyers didn’t already know. Quality content will also help increase the organic search ranking of your website.
4) Utilize Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is a system used by sales and marketing professionals to identify the worthiness of a lead by attaching a value to it. The value is based on the information provided and behavior related to interest in a product or service. The higher the ranking, the more likely the prospect will convert into a customer.
Segmenting and lead scoring is critical to great workflows and getting the right offer to the right person at the right time. Too many companies push all leads into one giant bucket and then wonder why they quickly opt out of communication.
5) Get a Workflow Tool
A 2017 study showed that 82% of companies agreed that marketing automation could make them more efficient, delivers an ROI and can increase marketing’s contribution to the pipeline. Why? Because automating workflow makes following up on leads easy! Also because it makes delivering the right offer to the right people at the right time, possible. Workflow tools such as HubSpot or Autopilot align content and offers you’ve created with your inbound strategy to nurture leads through to the decision stage.
6) Evaluate and Optimize
Lead Nurturing is one of the most critical processes for any marketing or sales department. Having a direct effect on your company’s bottom line, you need to ensure that your workflow is well-designed, transparent, and measurable. Evaluating your existing workflow will allow you to see what’s working and what’s not. Brainstorm with your marketing team and ask questions such as what happens when a lead fills out a form requesting an ebook? They receive the ebook download and then what? Are they contacted again? When? How? Mapping out these existing workflows will allow you to see the gaps in your workflow if any. It will also allow you to see additional opportunities to reach out to your prospects. Once you have thoroughly evaluated your current system, you can begin to revise it, improve it, and optimize it. Let your workflow tools do the heavy lifting for you!
The Bottom Line
Lead Nurturing is an essential marketing strategy for any growing business. Don’t wait and hope your customers find you. Lead them to your business or product by creating engaging and relevant content and providing that content at the right time. Don’t waste time marketing to the wrong demographic, identify your ideal customers, craft an appropriate message and reach out, when the time is right. Set up a system and let your workflow tools do the rest. Before you know it, you will have customers lining up, ready to get onboard with your service.
Content’s Role in the Marketing Funnel
The primary goal of a marketing strategy is to create engagement with your potential customers that leads to conversion to a customer. Customers typically follow a path in making their decision, educating and becoming aware of the solutions, differentiating and evaluating the options and supporting their eventual decision. This journey is called the marketing funnel and your content strategy should consider the prospect’s behavior in each stage and support their unique needs at each step.
Not all prospects will follow a direct path through the marketing funnel, be prepared to convert prospects to customers at any stage. Conversely, establish a strategy to reduce the exits at each stage. The marketing funnel consists of three major
Top of Funnel -
At the beginning of the customer’s journey, they are becoming aware of your brand, the issue you solve or need they have, and the products or solutions available. The goal of content at this stage is to generate interest to a wide group and begin engagement with as many opportunities as possible.
Content that is effective at the top of the funnel includes:
White Papers - Educates the prospect about issues and solutions, problem-solving guide
Checklists - Appropriate steps to follow
Infographics - Easily digestible content that helps a prospect identify the need or solution
Blog Posts - Establish credibility and educates prospects on your capabilities and expertise
“The goal at the top of the funnel is to make prospects aware of their need and your solution”
Middle of funnel
By now, the prospect has become a strong candidate for your service or product. They are now looking for more specific product details and trying to differentiate between providers and may not yet trust you. There is a greater opportunity at this stage to acquire the customer but not guaranteed.
Content that should be provided at this stage of the funnel should be:
Case Studies - Most effective way to provides specific details how your company has delivered solutions to customers. Should be applicable to their needs.
Industry Reports - Helps to contrast products or services through third party reports
Product/Service details - Specific attributes of your product or service
“Content marketing should convert people at any stage of the funnel”
Bottom of Funnel
As the prospect reaches the bottom of the funnel, they have most likely selected your product or solution and are trying to support the decision-making process. This is your best opportunity to convert them to a customer. Be aware, however, this is also typically where an additional decision maker shows up. You should be prepared to address any new participants needs and the right content can expedite this.
Content that should be utilized at the last stage of the funnel helps convert the prospect to a customer:
Testimonials/Review - Confirms credibility and success with your prospects peers.
Implementation Guides - Can demonstrate the robustness of the process for onboarding or utilizing your product/service.
The funnel doesn’t end there. Converting a prospect into a customer is just the beginning. Content plays a crucial role in retention of customers and building advocacy for your product or service. Strong support documentation, an effective presentation layer and consistent communication improve the experience and create repeat customers.
Each stage of the marketing funnel you are creating content for requires a different approach.