Putting your content plans on a calendar will help you keep your sanity. Image: Flickr / oskay / CC-BY-SA

Content marketing takes a lot of daily effort and planning. For small affiliate marketers, taking a few tips from big marketing departments can help give your content marketing a professional look and feel and help keep you on track.

Schedule your content

First and foremost, the most effective marketing follows some type of schedule. By scheduling out the topics and types of content you will be posting, you can maintain consistency much more easily. Scheduling out your content also allows you to create series that post on a regular basis and hit holidays and other big content themes without a rushed feeling. Start a calendar that includes:

• Content dates: The day your content will be posted live.
• Content topics: You don’t have to be specific, but general guidelines are helpful.
• Content type: Will this be an infographic, text, pictures, a video?
• Future planning: Looking forward at the types of posts you will be posting in the future, schedule any pre-planning work that you will need to do, such as contacting a graphic designer or filming and editing video.
• Call to action or landing page targets: Every piece of content you do should have some kind of call to action, targeted keyword or targeted landing page. Scheduling these out will help balance your SEO efforts.

Leave room for spontaneity

Scheduling content out too very far may limit your ability to react to new developments in your industry or moments of inspiration. Leave room in your schedule for spontaneity or inspiration. You should always have a backup post at the ready in case inspiration does not strike, but leave that room open for yourself.

Work ahead

One of the biggest benefits of having a marketing schedule and content schedule available is that you have an opportunity to work ahead. Writing posts ahead of time and scheduling them to be posted leaves you buffer room that allows you to market the content that is posted on each day, rather than rushing to create the content. A content schedule also allows you to work with salespeople, if you have them, in order to coordinate efforts. Above all, having a content buffer and content schedule allows you to maintain consistency, which is a proven way to get better traffic to your content.