Post with a purpose: Free editorial calendar template for your blog

Every month, Google receives over 100 million searches asking the question, “What is a blog?”  A small business blog is one of the most important tools for marketing your business. Want to learn a few creative ways to use your blog for business growth? In this post, we are including a blog toolbox packed with everything you need: our editorial calendar, an SEO tip sheet which shares how to optimize blog content for search engines, and the guide for creating incredible visual content, featuring 97 tools that are free to use.

Begin by using an editorial calendar.

An editorial calendar is a strategic way to tie content together, and integrate marketing and business goals with the blog strategy. Editorial calendars give us a ‘big picture’ perspective of the month, or quarter, or year.  They are a tactical tool to help integrate content with important business developments like upcoming events, product launches, expert interviews, and company news.  They allow for multiple users, help foster collaboration with your team, provide a tracking mechanism, and serve as a workroom for story-building.

Get started with myMarketing Cafe’s editorial calendar template.

Our authors use a simple excel spreadsheet to manage the blog editorial calendar. I’m including a free template with this blog, and instructions for using it, along with real world examples.  To help with content development, we rely on various sources: questions we receive from the myMarketing Cafe community, internet searches for trending topics, latest big news, and upcoming events.  We also use our blog to support business goals and key developments.

Add strong visual content to your posts.

Audiences today have short attention spans, and posts with visuals receive 94% more page visits and engagement than those without. Visuals help readers retain the content and it’s highly shareable. Our blog strategy calls for us to include links, photos, videos, slideshows, and templates whenever possible. Rich and robust content is shared more frequently and is more valuable to your followers.  (For help, read Gini Dietrich’s post on Spin Sucks, featuring 9 tips to write a great blog post.) Creating visual content doesn’t have to break the bank. We’ve found 97 marketing tools to help create dynamic blog content. Grab the free eBook.

Enhance your blog posts with strategic keyword integration.

Once you develop your content supported by inbound and outbound links, it’s important to integrate keywords into your blog. I use the Google Key Word Tool, to help me identify the most searched keywords associated with the topic I am covering. For example, when I searched for keywords relating to a blog editorial calendar, I found the phrase “What is a blog?”  This phrase had low competition and over 124 million global searches per month. Score!  Using the keyword tool helps you strengthen your blog with content people need and want.

Write content for people, tweak for search engines.

It’s not enough to simply write what you believe your audience wants to hear. It’s the most important aspect, but editing your content for search engines is important to your business. When optimizing your posts there is a check list to follow, it brings the attention of search engines to your headline, URL, meta description, images, and content. Download our SEO excerpt. It walks your through easy steps to fully optimize your post without sacrificing content.

Later this month, I will share about opt-in video strategies, and a dirty little secret to help you grow your business. Don’t miss out. Subscribe Today!