My last few blog posts have focused on the time and effort it takes to create great content that tells a compelling story and meets your business goals. But to do that consistently on an ongoing basis, you also need a plan — with a detailed B2B content calendar at the heart of it.
A calendar should not only map out the deadlines you need to hit but also communicate what’s coming to the sales team and other marketing groups to coordinate distribution and help generate better results. Of course, you can’t just create a calendar and hope for the best. You need to manage it continuously to ensure things get done on time.
A B2B content calendar that’s not just a calendar
Many B2B content calendars end up simply plotting content pieces against delivery dates. But it’s incredibly hard to get quality content out the door if all you track is the final deadline. You need to map out interim milestones for drafts, reviews and other parts of the process like design or posting to the web.
And even that is not enough. Delivering on time isn’t the only goal. As I’ve discussed previously, you need to make sure each piece of content is on message, targeted to specific personas and delivering against its goal. All of that information should be reflected in your calendar.
In other words, your calendar is more than a calendar: it’s a time-based articulation of your content strategy and plan.
…your calendar is more than a calendar: it’s a time-based articulation of your content strategy and plan
3 ways to map out your B2B content calendar
I’m sure there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to map and sort a content calendar. I’ve seen them organized by type, product, timeframe, you name it. All of those are internal perspectives, however: they’re about the organization, not how the audience looks for or consumes content. I don’t believe a potential buyer sits down and wonders what quarter your white paper is coming out or which content piece you have planned next for your product. A good B2B content calendar should be built with the buyer and their information needs in mind.
Here are three ways to map your B2B content calendar that do that:
By buyer persona
Starting with the obvious one. When you map your B2B content calendar by buyer persona, you make sure you consider what’s relevant for each buyer. This is where I would start to ensure you have a full set of content that moves buyers through their journey (more on this in a bit).
Planning content by persona highlights any gaps you might have — audience segments you may be overlooking, for example — and is a great reference for your sales team so they know which content to send when and to whom. They can also see at a glance new content pieces coming down the pipe that would make good follow-ups for their prospects.
If you’ve developed detailed buyer personas as outlined earlier in this B2B content planning series, building a content calendar around them will help bring them to life — and should be fairly straight forward because you’ve already done that foundational work.
By topic
While organizing your content calendar by persona is the recommended approach, let’s be honest, not everyone is able to do that out of the gate — especially if they have multiple personas they need to target. In that case, there is another, maybe easier, way to get your calendar up and running: mapping by topic.
Even if you’re still in the early stages of defining your buyer personas, you likely have a list of topics you want to cover to demonstrate thought leadership and create demand for your product.
When I say “by topic”, I don’t mean just one piece of content on a specific subject. To cover a topic properly and tell a story around it, you need to map out different pieces at different levels for different personas. That will give you momentum and real ownership of the ideas in your marketplace.
By hero/hub/help model
A totally different way to look at your B2B content calendar is to use the Hero-Hub-Help model. This was originally developed by Google/YouTube as a way to build a successful video channel, but it can be used for any content type IMO. I’ve used it to plan media strategies too but that’s for another day.
The Hero-Hub-Help model is based on building content for different purposes. Hero content grabs people’s attention. Hub content keeps them coming back for more, while Help content answers their questions.
If you combine this model with the topic or persona mapping, you can pull together a holistic B2B content strategy and calendar that delivers amazing results. The model really helps you think through the types of content you are creating and the depth of each piece to within the context of a bigger plan.
Use the buyer journey to prioritize your B2B content calendar
Chances are when you build a content calendar and share it inside your organization, people will say, “This is amazing — and can I have it all tomorrow?” Outside the practical reasons why the answer is “no” (time/talent/money/resource limitations), there are also some strategic ones, starting with the fact that your buyers can’t consume all your content at once — nor do you want them to.
If you’ve mapped your buyer journeys and planned content to answer their key questions, you automatically have a list of priorities, starting with awareness and thought leadership content. From there you can release additional content to move them along their journey, from one phase to the next and answering their questions at each stage.
If you’ve mapped your buyer journeys and planned content to answer their key questions, you automatically have a list of priorities…
This approach is well proven and takes some of the pressure off trying to deliver everything all at once. Plus, it gives you the chance to learn along the way and continually improve your pieces as you measure engagement and other metrics.
The next steps for your B2B content planning
With this post on content calendar development, my blog series on B2B content strategy and planning comes to an end. I trust that you found it useful and that you were able to gain some valuable insights that help you create better content to help reach your goals. I would appreciate any feedback on the series or if any questions remain. Please email me at brendan@zincmarketing.com.
And, if you are struggling with mapping out and/or executing your B2B content strategy, check out the B2B Content Survival Guide we recently developed at Zinc Marketing. If you want to talk about the different ways to approach your plan and content creation, we are here to help.
Download the B2B Content Survival Guide.
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