Yesterday we explored taking an outside-in approach to planning a blog or content marketing editorial calendar. This social media strategy helps determine the relevant length an editorial calendar should extend based on the audience's perspective.
As you identify audience-oriented content topics, here are three important questions to ask as you consider where the topics fit on the content marketing editorial calendar:
- Will the audience be thinking about this topic as it's happening?
- Will the audience also be thinking about the topic sooner and / or later than it's happening?
- If they will be thinking about the topic at other times, when will that be?
Beyond simply identifying audience-oriented topics, these outside-in timing questions help improve how to sync topics with when the audience is actively seeking information or related content about those areas of interest to them.
Three Examples of Outside-In Timing and New Content Marketing Opportunities
1. One Event, Multiple Opportunities to Share Content
As we were developing the blog editorial calendar for a client in the market research field, it was clear their target audience operates on an annual cycle. We identified early fall as a time when the market research firm’s clients would attend the largest market research conferences. This is a natural time to talk about our client’s conference participation. Importantly, though, we also identified their clients as thinking about conferences mid-summer (“How to Choose the Best Market Research Conference”), immediately before them (“Getting the Most Value from a Market Research Conference”), and right afterward (“Top 10 Learnings during Conference Season”). Asking our three questions identified multiple related content opportunities (new content, sharing old content, soliciting guest posts, etc.) they might have otherwise missed.
2. Reaching Out Before the Primary Brand Interaction
I wrote earlier about Southwest Airlines sending me an email the previous evening saying we’d have Wi-Fi on my next morning’s flight. The night before was when I was actually THINKING about what work had to be completed before getting on the plane. The perfectly timed email from Southwest Airlines contained very pertinent information of benefit me hours before my direct interaction with the brand.
3. Shifting Timing and Content Sharing Opportunities
The Brainzooming Group has tried to emphasize strategic planning content later in the year since our experience has been many companies were thinking about strategic planning much later in the year than previously. This year, with many calls from potential clients already thinking about multi-year or annual planning processes, we'll be shifting strategic planning content to this more traditional timeframe in Q2, even if planning doesn't actually HAPPEN until later in the year.
Social Media Strategy from Outside-In Timing
As if it's not clear by now, we are big proponents of external audience-driven social media strategy as the way to make a content marketing effort come alive and truly engage your audiences. The challenge, as it always is, is after looking from the outside-in, taking the resulting topic ideas and making things happen with them. - Mike Brown
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