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Wednesday Webinars
Upcoming Webinars-
August 12, 2015
Editorial Calendars
12:00 pm
Christy Mannering, University of Delaware Web Developer
8/26 – Newsletters
9/9 – How to Create a WordPress Blog
9/23 – Agvocacy
10/14 – Figuring out Facebook Pages
10/28 – Snap It, Then App It
www.extension.umd.edu/womeninag
Editorial Calendar
To organize your print and digital media
A little bit about me
Christy Mannering
Web Developer,
University of Delaware
cmanneri@udel.edu
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/scrink (personal)
www.facebook.com/UDcanr (professional)
Twitter: @bringmeupmusic (personal)
@UDCANR (professional)
Quick laugh
Editorial calendars
▪ Why?
▪ To organize and schedule the publication of content
across different media outlets.
▪ Blog posts
▪ Twitter
▪ Facebook
▪ YouTube
▪ Instagram
▪ E-newsletters
▪ Press releases
Editorial Calendar Uses
▪ You want something you’ll use consistently,
not something you will look at for one
month and then forget about.
▪ Editorial calendars provide a tangible,
visual way of organizing which you can
print out and tack up, keep online or send
off to your supervisor every quarter as a
report of what you’re doing.
▪ Providing a work flow to collaborate can help
minimize duplication and help to share content
across networks with other markets in your
niche category.
Editorial calendars
▪ These are not meant to be steadfast or concrete,
they are meant to guide you as a content
manager.
▪ You won’t forget any important dates around the
corner.
▪ Since this is planned ahead you know you’ll always have
something in mind to post about even if you come in on
a Monday and are completely blanking on ideas.
Items for your calendar
▪ Dates you plan to do a task (having this in a calendar accessible to
your team allows for collaboration and allows for you to go on
vacation)
▪ Dates to create content for themed purposes.
▪ Your calendar can include holidays, special days in history, even gardening
cycles for when certain items are typically planted or harvested.
▪ Specify what outlets to post on (ie. Twitter or YouTube or Blog, etc.)
▪ If you choose to you can assign certain people to the tasks with an
assignment column in the calendar.
▪ You can also develop relationships with other bloggers and schedule
time on your calendar for sharing their content.
What do you hope to achieve?
▪ Each post should have a purpose. Even if the purpose is
light hearted and you just want to share a beautiful
photo you captured in the garden of a honey bee on a
flower.
▪ The purpose here is to connect with your audience outside or
typical fact sheets or research articles.
▪ Think about how you might measure the post. Do you
want to obtain more likes or more follows? Are you
looking for people to sign-up for your newsletter?
Sample Calendars
Ways to create an editorial calendar
▪ There are plenty of software
packages and online tools available to
help with creating an editorial
calendar.
▪ Here is an example of a WordPress
plugin called CoSchedule.
▪ $15/month (free trial)
Other WordPress Plugins
▪ Editorial Calendar (free)
▪ https://wordpress.org/plugins/editorial-calendar/
▪ Edit Flow (free)
▪ https://wordpress.org/plugins/edit-flow/
▪ Press Forward (free)
▪ https://wordpress.org/plugins/pressforward/
▪ This one collects content from other sources online into a tool on WordPress which
allows you to discuss and collaborate with team members.
Editorial calendars offline
▪ A sample of an editorial calendar we use in our office will be available
for download at the end of this presenation.
▪ Hootsuite offers a free template:
▪ http://blog.hootsuite.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Editorial-CalendarTemplate.xlsx
▪ Curata (a content marketing site) has a bunch of examples available:
▪ http://www.curata.com/blog/content-marketing-editorial-calendar-templatesthe-ultimate-list/
Which platforms should you post on regularly?
▪ Trying using Google Analytics
to help you with this part.
▪ You can look at insights and
analytics across platforms but
Google Analytics can also give
you an idea of how people to
your content.
▪ Acquisition > Social > Network
Referrals
How often should you post?
▪ The chart below offers some
basic guidelines.
▪ However, this is dependent
upon how much content you
have and how often your
audience refers to social
media.
Populating your editorial calendar
• Content doesn’t always
have to link to your own
materials or website.
•
•
•
Create new content by
adding your own
commentary to relevant
third-party content.
#thisdayinhistory
Ask experts to contribute
guest blog posts or Q&A
interviews on relevant
topics.
Share content from places
which you feel your
audience will appreciate.
Ideas for populating your editorial calendar
• Feedly
• This is an aggregate resources which funnels popular
content into one area based on tags and keywords.
You can easily find what other people are talking
about pertaining to areas or fields in which you
specialize.
•
•
You can share their posts (creating new relationships)
Or you can see what areas are trending and create a post of your own.
Using different types of media
• Link to blog posts
• Link to syndicated news articles pertaining to your field
• Use video, images and infographics to help tell your story
visually.
Infographics
▪ Infographics
▪ I use infographics a lot to explain things. They can be posted online and shared
or printed out and given to people.
▪ Venngage is the best infographic maker I have found online. There is a free and
a premium version.
Images
▪ Memes and quotes are often shared a lot across social media. You can
make your own.
▪ Have a customer testimony worth sharing or a new tip from an
expert you think your audience would enjoy?
▪ Create a “quote image” using these tools:
▪ Recite - http://recitethis.com/ (Just plug your quote into the box they provide and
choose a template.)
▪ QuotesCover - http://quotescover.com/ (The site allows you to create quote
designs for Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.)
▪ Collages of your latest garden tour or hands-on training?
▪ Use Fotor - http://www.fotor.com/features/collage.html
▪ Photovisi - http://www.photovisi.com/
Example quote (because I like it)
YouTube
▪ Some research and articles greatly benefit from
video explanations.
▪ Remember to keep it simple, videos longer than 5
minutes are usually not necessary.
▪ Always film horizontal, never ever vertical.
▪ Make sure your audio is clear if you are filming an
interview with an expert, while grasshopper
frequencies can be cut from video it’s very difficult
to do.
Following Up
▪ Now that you have a calendar and you have content you need to
make sure to follow-up with any extra engagement.
▪ If people share your content or ask questions just be sure to take time to thank
them for sharing or by finding an answer to their question.
▪ If you ever tease something online, “Stay tuned for our Friday
gardening tip.” Make sure to actually post something on Friday.
Quarterly Reporting
▪ Go back into your editorial calendar to measure how items did.
▪ Create a column which allows you to input data about how much
engagement or how many clicks something received. This will help
you to see trends of what your audiences like so you can create
similar content in the future.
▪ So if you post on National Ice Cream Day and it does well then you
have a post planned for next year!
Time for Questions