To ensure that your radio station is consistently producing quality blogposts as part of a strong content marketing strategy, it helps to have an Online Content Calendar that everybody can see. I have created a template that you can use. This is very similar to the calendar that my team uses to manage the Taste Trekkers website. Enter your email address below to download the template for free.
Before You Begin
- This calendar is set up for a radio station looking to produce three pieces of a content a day, which is what I recommend. In the beginning, aim for one piece of content each day. Once you are able to produce that consistently, aim for two, and work your way up to three. You can add or delete rows in this spreadsheet to manage more or less content.
- Each sheet in this file is for a different week. Simply copy a blank sheet to create more weeks.
- This calendar assumes that multiple people will be creating content for your website, including your jocks, your promotions team, and maybe even external guest bloggers. Instead of keeping this file on one computer’s hard drive, I recommend uploading it as a Google Document and sharing it with all of the regular contributors. This way, everybody can stay on the same page.
- For Taste Trekkers, I hold a weekly staff meeting where we review the Content Calendar together. Because it’s rare for your entire staff to be in the building at once, it’s even more important for you to use this as a master document that everyone can see. If possible, I would still encourage you to try and conduct a virtual meeting using Google Hangout, Skype or Join.me on a bi-weekly basis to review the calendar.
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The Columns
- Date
- Day of the Week
- Author: This is the person who is responsible for creating the content. I recommend that your morning show create a shownotes page for every show (I will show you how in an upcoming article). Your fulltime airstaff should be required to write three to five articles per week. The rest can be done by other staff members or guest bloggers.
- Topic: You may want to write title of your blogpost here.
- Hard Date: Some blogposts must be published by a certain date or they will not be relevant. For example, you wouldn’t want to publish a concert preview after that concert happens. I call the dates by which a piece of content must be published in order to be relevant “hard dates,” and I keep track of them. Not all blogposts will have a hard date.
Don’t forget to Tag me!
- Artist: If you have a music station, you will want to tag every blogpost with the artist or artists featured in it. This is useful for a number of reasons. For example, if people want to search your website for articles on a particular artist, they will be easier to find. Also, if you want to repurpose older content at a later date, tagging the artists will allow you to do so quickly. If you have built your station’s website in WordPress and you have a programmer who really knows their stuff, I recommend creating a Custom Taxonomy called “Artist.” Otherwise, simply use WordPress’ Tags feature for the artist. (If you are a news or talk station, you may want to use this column for subjects, like “Barack Obama” or “Lebron James.”)
- Category: You will want to categorize your content. In WordPress, Categories and Tags are similar. I usually Categories to control the placement of content on the website, while I use Tags to help people get relevant search results.
- Media Included: If your post includes a video, audio file, slideshow, or other piece of media, note it here.
- Status: This column lets everybody know what’s going on with the blog. Because I build sites in WordPress, I use their default Statuses:
- Draft: A first draft has been started.
- Pending Review: The post is ready for an editor to read over and schedule.
- Scheduled: An editor has made sure the post is ready to go, and has set it to publish at a specific time in the future.
- Published: The post is live.
A badges gives them a way to brag about being on your site
- Subjects Emailed: I like to personally email every person or organization that gets mentioned on my websites. I politely ask them to share the post on social media, and I provide a small badge that they can place on their website with a link back to the post if they want. This increases the traffic back to my website. All of this is done after the post is published, and it does not need to be done by the post’s author (though that’s always more personal). I have the person who sent the email enter their name and the date in this column.
- Shared on Social Media: After every post is published, I track down the Facebook page and Twitter handle of every person or organization mentioned in the post. I post a link back to the post on their Facebook page. I also send out a tweet with a link to the article and the Twitter handle of the person or organization mentioned (see the sample tweet below). This means there is one Facebook post and one tweet for every link in the article (assuming it links to a webpage with social media accounts). Again, I have the person who shared the article on social media enter their name and the date in this column.
Loved talking with the owner of @RedBeeMarina about the best honey around! http://t.co/Qjnl3uPWL1
— Taste Trekkers (@TasteTrekkers) July 15, 2014
- Notes: In case you still have more to say.
Try using this template to manage your online content. I hope it is helpful. Please leave any questions or feedback in the comments below.
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