If you need a reason why using a content calendar can boost your marketing success, we’ll give you 10.

The first is because the best marketing content calendars combine tools and resources to give you an edge over your competition. With an estimated 82% of marketers actively using content marketing as a core business strategy, having a comprehensive and complete marketing content calendar can make a difference. You can:

• Create targeted content.
• Create with intent instead of guesswork.
• Track content performance.
• Have more opportunities to differentiate your brand.

According to the Content Marketing Institute/MarketingProfs B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends: Insights for 2023 research report, 64% of the most successful businesses have a documented content marketing strategy compared to 81% of the least successful companies that don’t.

What tactics are those successful marketers using to boost their content rankings? Semrush’s 2023 global report on the State of Content Marketing finds:

• 55% create more content and post more frequently.
• 53% focus on improving the quality of their content.
• 37% prioritize research-driven content.
• 36% focus on improving technical SEO.

All of these tactics can be executed more efficiently with better outcomes by using a marketing content calendar.

9 More Reasons You Need a Calendar Designed For Content Marketing

1. The Best Tool for Your Content Strategy

In addition to leveraging a competitive advantage, using a content calendar that’s made for marketing enables you to:

• Define a sustainable, scalable strategy for your content marketing, including actionable plans.
• Visually organize all your marketing efforts.
• Plan editorial and schedule campaigns more efficiently.
• Communicate clearly across your entire content team and with other stakeholders.
• Offer transparency on due dates, to-do’s related to each asset, individual responsibilities, and the status of every content project.
• Evolve the way you plan, create, and promote content.
• Improve content quality, which can lead to increased lead generation and more sales.

2. Better Team Organization and Alignment

Gone are scribbled notes, forgotten emails, and endless meetings. With a cloud-based content calendar, your team will have a better way to keep track of new content ideas, recognize gaps in the content cycle, and get real-time project updates.

3. Deliver Better Content

When your team has a clear picture of the content pieces people are already working on, it’s easier for them to think up new and related ideas to enhance and support them. Create a space in your marketing content calendar where your team can develop new content ideas.

4. Improve Engagement

To keep your audience engaged, they need to receive relevant, entertaining content consistently. Irregular posting and articles that don’t connect with them won’t cut it. If all that is written down in your content calendar, it keeps your team accountable for writing valuable content on a set publishing schedule.

5. Prioritize Audience Interest

If you don’t have a good idea of the content topics that are working for your audience, you won’t keep up with the quality. You might even start duplicating your efforts. Avoid these content gaps or random topic choices with your well-planned content calendar.

6. Use Topicality and Timeliness to an Advantage

When you know certain holidays are coming up or a specific time of the year that is important to your audience, it’s easier to plan specific content events that would mean more to them and ultimately to your business. You are less likely to miss out on an opportunity to attract prospects with timely content, which could help build your credibility.

7. Collaborate With Ease

By making your content calendar accessible to everyone, people in all departments as well as other stakeholders would have clear visibility into how your marketing efforts can improve company culture and team relationships. It’s also easier for your content team to stay on the same page with each other, making it easier to work together for better results.

8. Make Content Promotion Part of the Plan

Content creation and social media marketing go hand in hand. They need to be planned out in your content calendar. When you schedule what content you’ll publish and where you should also schedule what social media promotion you’ll publish and where. The consistency will not only benefit your social media presence but make for content that’s more readily consumed by your target audience.

9. Find Out What Content Is Performing as Planned

Your content calendar is one of the most valuable tools for measuring the success of your content marketing. You can easily generate reports on content production and performance metrics to get insight into what’s working, what’s not, and how to plan more effectively in the future.

11outof11 Knows Content Planning

When you’re ready to make a content calendar the foundational part of your marketing strategy, connect with 11outof11. Request a complimentary call with an 11outof11 expert. Contact us to learn more.