Create A Content Calendar for Your Ecommerce – Up Your Game and Be the Best in Digital Marketing

One of the common issues we heard from our friends connected through Commerceplus: they are always struggling with content-marketing ideas. Yes, you are definitely not alone when it comes to this. Everyone understands one of the keys to succeeding in digital marketing is consistency and a lot of Ecommerce merchants expressed their concerns as they are getting quite disheartened with the lack of inspiration for publishing some great content online.  

One of the missing pieces shared among these folks is a content calendar. So, what is a content calendar? It is simply an editorial calendar containing a list of the content you intend to publish on your Ecommerce business platforms. This calendar typically includes the type of contents, when the contents are expected to be published and which particular content in the list is going to be promoted. 

Many have dismissed the importance of a content calendar, but it is a crucial component for you to plan out quality contents for multiple weeks and keep track of your work. We believe that last minute work can hardly produce any great contents, so it is best to have a schedule to make sure you can achieve what you need with better effectiveness and efficiency. In this article, we hope we can provide you some useful tips and tricks in creating a functional content calendar. 

Creating Content Calendar for Your Ecommerce

1. Understand Your Audiences

Content marketing revolves around creating content to attract and engage customers, and ultimately, keep them. It is essential for the creators understand the purpose and work out something to achieve it with every single attempt. That being said, you need to have a particular group of customers in mind before you proceed. 

We recommend starting with 2 sets of customers: primary and secondary. Primary customers are usually the core customers who are interested in the products, while secondary customers are often the group associated with the primary customers. This way, you have widened the scope and diversified your target audiences. 

2. Set Goals for All the Content Marketing

Every single marketing post should serve a purpose, whether it is a blog post or pay-per-click ad. Are you looking to build a relationship or you are hoping for immediate sales through your Ecommerce business? When you are developing your content calendar, try to think about the business goals that you wish to achieve and make sure your content will align with the purpose. 

Regardless of your goals, be sure to make it as specific as possible. We are pretty sure that each campaign will have a different goal, but it should not stray away from the core values of your business. We understand that setting ambitious goals might be discouraging to some, but it is not entirely bad to have these targets and work hard towards the right direction.

3. Be Realistic – Know Your Capacity

We cannot stress enough on knowing your company’s capacity in producing content. If you understand your capabilities well, you will be able to complete your task in a timely manner without any surprises. If you unknowingly allocated more tasks that your team can handle, ie. your team is distracted with other operational tasks, you might end up facing delays. 

For instance, if your team can only produce a quality blog post, or some difficult-to-produce content that is free to be republished in other social media platforms, then be it. The chances are, a piece of quality content can attract the attention of the audience better, in comparison to many lackasidal, sloppy works that disinterests the crowd.

4. Brainstorm, Develop, Generate

It comes the time when you are in the brainstorming process to develop and generate content. But ask yourself this: is this content topic useful to my target audience? Audiences will be easily drawn to useful content with little effort required. If this content is deemed helpful in assisting them to achieve their goal, it is a successful content topic. 

Besides, you need to bear in mind that people are out and about looking for entertainment, especially on the Internet. Therefore, the content has to be entertaining in a way to reach out more potential customers. It is also great to study the SEO tools available in the market as it will be a helpful addition in the process of strategizing your content marketing. 

5. Stay Organized – Create Your Content Calendar

Depending on the size of your company, we’d recommend a different calendar tool to keep your content marketing calendar organized.  

For small online retailers, we reckon cloud-based spreadsheet systems like Google Sheet should suffice. If your company size is bigger, you may consider investing in Microsoft Team and utilize the Schedule function to include assigned personnel to the particular task. 

Suggestion for the arrangement of the columns in Google Sheet: 

6. Adjust, Refine, Update and Repeat

Here comes the final tip, and, nonetheless, one of the most important ones. Once the initial draft of your content calendar is developed, you will find yourself on the journey of making many adjustments to the calendar. This will be a continuous process and do not be surprised if you find yourself spending some time in refining your calendar. 

No matter how many updates you have to make, you need to stay focused on a specific content-marketing strategy that would help you in achieving your business goals. It is vital for the executors to make sure the plans are carried out according to the proper assessment. If you follow your strategic plan, we believe that it will contribute to the likelihood of your Ecommerce success.