If your business doesn’t already have an editorial calendar in place to organize the implementation of your content marketing strategy, it’s time to put one together.

An editorial calendar, or content calendar, is a collaborative document that maps out the dates, topics and responsibilities for content creation and social distribution. This includes blog posts, company events, holidays, email marketing campaigns and social media posts.

A well-defined posting schedule helps you stay organized and consistent, and allows for constant revision as the year progresses. Here are the top 5 benefits of utilizing an editorial calendar, regardless of the size of your organization.

Everyone Knows Their Role

With a consistently updated editorial calendar shared between relevant members of your team, everyone knows what needs to be done and who’s responsible. When the big picture can be visualized in a structured manner, each person more clearly understands how his or her individual role relates to the whole.

Your Message Stays Consistent

It’s important to keep your campaigns and overall digital marketing messaging cohesive. When all of your marketing components are accessible in a centralized place, your team has a more complete view of your brand message, tone and sentiment for each content distribution channel.

Efficient Budgeting Of Your Resources

You should include the overall budget allocated to each platform and marketing efforts for the year. You can always edit in real-time as you see how well each channel or campaign performs. This is a great way to keep track of your social media marketing ROI.

Publish High-Performing Content

Regularly check on the performance of your distributed content and take note of what is engaging your audience and driving action. Based on these analytics, you should have an understanding of the type of content your community responds to, the type that produces leads and which social platforms garner the most referrals. You can then make adjustments according to these findings.

Establish Deadlines And Expectations

Within an editorial calendar, your team should know when every blog post is due, when every email is scheduled for deployment, etc. This gives your copywriters a better handle on their schedule and allows them to plan out their research and writing.

A content calendar ensures that your marketing efforts run smoothly – and it allows your team more time to be creative and thoughtful, which in turn will result in more effective content.