Building a comprehensive content strategy has a number of advantages; it can help grow a site in organic search, build a strong and loyal audience and increase conversions, to name but a few.

(And that’s not even to mention the fact it gives you something to say on Twitter, other then what you had for lunch!)

Here are my top tips for building a content schedule.

First things first:

You’ll need a calendar, preferably an online one for easy sharing and teamwork, based on your team size. You can use a Google Calendar, or for more options, consider a Google Document. Both are free, easy to share, and allow for collaboration.

In your new calendar, you can start filling in dates for when specific team members will write a blog post for your site. You can also add important dates relevant to your niche. Check out holidayinsights.com; whether it’s Peanut Butter Lovers Month or World Teacher’s Day, you’re sure to find something that fits your niche for your writers to get creative with.

Step 2:

Next look through your business calendar, are there any upcoming industry events or conferences that you could cover or mix in with your content schedule? Get these added to your calendar.

You’ll also want to see what the blogging community have been writing about. In Google on the left hand side you will see an option for ‘blogs’ select this and click on ‘Custom range…’ Now search something generic but related to your niche, now go through the months of the previous year using the custom date range feature and see what people were writing about and if it would be suitable to write a similar post the next year. Often in seasonal niches, the same things are written about year in year out, make sure you are taking advantage of this and don’t forget the most important thing – Add your findings to your calendar.

Just a little bit more…

Next you might want to check your analytics and look for the long tail traffic keywords that have found your site through ‘question’ type phrases such as the ‘Who’, ‘What’ and ‘Why’. To do this simply create an advanced segment that will do the job for you. Here’s one I made earlier!

This will now show you what people are searching for, to find your site. Now, much like with the Google blog searching above, go through the months with this segment applied and see if you can spot any ‘evergreen’ content ideas that you can put into your content calendar.

The great thing about having the ability to collaborate over a content schedule is the sharing of ideas, encourage your team to share their thoughts and opinions. This will only improve the quality of the work you put out across your blog and social channels.

Once you have done all of the above, you’ll have nothing to worry about, except writing everything of course!

Creative Commons image: daniielmoyle on Flickr