Different Types of Content Missing on Your Content Calendar

One of the marketers’ many challenges is to ensure that the company or brand has content spread throughout the whole year. As such, marketers create a content calendar that can help them decide content to publish.

In general, most content calendars may include only the following posts to schedule and publish:

• Blog posts and articles
• Images
• Videos

These three types of content are high-performing content that elicits responses or generates views or clicks.

As you can see here on Trello, they organize their editorial calendar on their site. It has seven boards, which allows writers and editors to collaborate on every step of the writing process.

While these are high-performing content, you should consider 12 types of content to include on your content calendar.

Newsletters

For those who want to implement multi-channel marketing, email marketing is one of the best channels to reach your target audience. By doing that, you can write newsletters to connect with your audience and generate more leads in the process.

As for content, the sky’s the limit. Most marketers go for weekly roundups, promotions, and announcements.

Podcasts

Podcasts may seem like an unconventional choice to add to your content calendar, but it drives engagement. 

In the US alone, there are about 150 million podcast listeners monthly. One of the best things about podcasts is accessibility, so you can upload your podcasts on Apple or Spotify.

You can discuss topics related to your brand, company, or startup. Make sure it piques the interest of your listeners, which could give them the incentive to listen either weekly or monthly. Maybe have a special guest for an interview over from time to time.

For inspiration, here’s Buffer’s editorial calendar done in Trello. On their editorial calendar, you’ll see there’s a card for Podcast, which is on their pipeline.

eBooks

One of the most invaluable pieces of content you can publish to add to your content calendar is an eBook. Marketers find that eBooks can help customers in their purchasing journey. It’s up to you what type of eBook you want to write and publish.

However, if you’re uncertain about what type of eBook you want to write, many marketers practice repurposing their content. It doesn’t take much time, effort, and cost to repurpose content because it’s available. eBooks are a prime example of repurposed content. Some marketers would compile their blog posts into one guide that many can download.

Most marketers would make their eBooks free for download, while some may charge a small fee (when done right).

In their monthly editorial calendar, you’ll see that CoSchedule added an eBook for publishing in May and August.

Events

According to Co-Schedule, you can publish content about events such as conferences, workshops, and countdowns. It alerts your customers or clients that you’ll take part in these events.

For startups and small businesses, you can offer workshops about your products or services, which could spark the interest of potential customers.

For big-name brands or companies, you can publish content about the conferences you’re attending, and invite people of interest.

User-Generated Content

You might forget one of the most important aspects to add in your content calendar. And it involves your target audience.

User-generated content has significance because it comes from your customers or consumers. Adding this to your content calendar can spice up the content you’re publishing. It also shows that you value your customers and consumers.

Types of User-Generated Content you can use for your marketing strategy:

• Reviews or testimonials
• Comments
• Videos

You can publish user-generated content on social media, which is where you’ll find many of your customers. You can integrate it on your blog by using a screenshot.

An important thing to note: Ask permission from the user or customer if you can republish their content on your site, blog, or one of your social media accounts.

A good example of using user-generated content on social media is sharing the story of your followers to your own Stories page. This way, not only do they get recognition, but it may motivate others to do the same, which you should also share.

Based on CoSchedule’s findings, Whole Foods curates customer-related content on their content calendar.

Checklists

You know how checklists make you productive or help you accomplish goals? The same idea applies when you create checklists for your customers or clients. It gives them a sense of accomplishment when they fix any of their pain points or issues.

You can publish it anywhere! You can post it on social media, your blog, or an email. Make it accessible and give them a chance to create a checklist based on your brand, product, or service.

Webinars

If you or your company wants to establish expertise and authority towards your clients, creating or hosting a webinar is the way to go. Those who host their webinars, present a lecture or a workshop.

You can host a webinar demo of your product or service, you can present a lecture from a conference you attended, or you can hold a seminar about a topic directly related to your company or brand.

Plus, in webinars, you can distribute other materials for free such as eBooks or checklists for them to share with others.

Infographics & Data-Driven Visuals

You may consider this as an image, but infographics and data-driven visuals can drive more shares than just photos of your office, company, or products. Done right, you can create infographics or data-driven visuals that tell a story using data and numbers. It’s either based on your research or others.

You can even think of infographics as a visualized version of your data, which would make it easier for your target audience to read your content better.

Guest Posts or Collaboration

Another way to establish expertise is to tap another expert to write for or with you. The expert may write topics that you may not have knowledge of or to boost your relevance to your target audience.

Writing articles isn’t the only way to collaborate with the expert or blogger. In some cases, companies like Hubspot or Mailchimp may collaborate with other companies to write eBooks or case studies.

Commenting on Forums, Blog Posts, & Social Media

Whew, that’s wordy!

This practice may get flak especially if you focus on commenting only, which may result in spam. You see, there’s still value in commenting and responding to your target audience because it shows you want to connect with them.

You’re missing out if you forget to respond to your audience. Your competitor might as well mark their territory, and prepare to kiss your followers goodbye.

Most marketers don’t know it but posting or commenting on Quora yields good results, provided the marketer or company supplied a substantial response to a question. Who knows, your response might become the next Google snippet. In turn, you might just get new traffic out of it.

To avoid getting flagged for spam, your best option is to respond to your blog posts. That way, you’re establishing a connection to your readers and might motivate them to read your other posts as well.

Social media may be tricky because you might get a lot of comments or replies, and you don’t know which one to respond to. And that’s okay! Find the ones that are relevant and would elicit more responses.

As an example of how you can reply to your followers on social media, look at Wendy’s. Even if they’re a well-known restaurant chain, they managed to respond to those they would “roast”, and enabled their followers to tweet them.

This might be old, but ProBlogger included commenting as part of their content calendar. It reminds you to interact and connect with your target audience.

Press Releases

Many corporations and big brands use press releases to update the media regarding a new update within the company. It’s one way to spread the word regarding your company since the media influences the news. You might get known if you write good press releases, since the media notices that.

Become more visible by writing these types of press releases:

• Events
• Product Launches
• Employee Hires and Promotions

Quizzes and Questions

It may seem unconventional to go for posting only a question or start quizzing your customers. But that’s the thing, you want them to be part of your marketing. You need to include them because they’re giving you recognition and revenue.

The beauty of posting quizzes or questions is you can publish it anywhere you wish. You can type a question as a social media update or post, which many influencers on LinkedIn do. 

Through the use of Stories on Instagram, you can create a quiz to learn more about your audience or test their skills about your brand, product, or service.

The Bottomline

Truthfully, there over 100 content types you can publish. Some work, some don’t, and that’s okay. The 12 listed are some of the tried and tested ones, which may yield high engagement when done correctly.

It may take some time to adjust to your newly filled and varied content calendar, but that’s a good thing. You want to reach your customers in different ways so they could get to know you better as a brand or company. In turn, it can generate not only revenue but loyal customers and new ones in the process.