How to Build a Monthly Content Strategy for Retail Businesses
- by Rose Regier
This post was written by our Account Manager Rose Regier.
It’s no secret that we love a good spreadsheet. Let’s just say they spark joy, so we use them a lot. And the monthly content calendar spreadsheet we use with our retail clients might be our favourite.
If you’re not a retail business, don’t go just yet! What we’re about to share can apply to any type of business.
Before we dive in, let’s talk about why we should plan our content. Why go to all the effort of planning content a month in advance? Wouldn’t it be easier and less time consuming to post on the fly?
Read on, because we’re about to show you how planning content frees up time to spend on essential marketing activities that have a big impact on the success of your brand.
Here are the benefits of a monthly content strategy:
1. Strategy in action
Planning posts in monthly blocks allows you to see at a glance how your content aligns with your digital marketing strategy. It also allows you to identify any gaps in content and make sure no product category is left behind.
2. Consistency is key
Building and maintaining a relationship with your audience takes consistent effort over time. Posting a flurry of content one week and then disappearing for a month can leave your followers feeling annoyed or disinterested. Using a content calendar allows you to spread out content so that your audience hears from you regularly and stays engaged. Plus, it’s great for the algorithms.
3. Tracking for the win
Although the monthly content calendar is mainly a planning tool, it also keeps a record of what you’ve done in the past.
This allows you to keep track of what you’ve posted so a) you can avoid duplicating content and b) you can measure the effectiveness of each category of product posts.
4. Stay one step ahead
Identifying key events — like holidays, sales, and product launches — and plugging them into the content calendar ahead of time means you never have to worry about those important posts slipping your mind.
Let’s move on to the “how.” How does the monthly content strategy work exactly?
How does our monthly content strategy work?
Our cloud-based monthly content planning spreadsheet allows multiple people to contribute in real-time. This gives our clients and account managers the ability to collaborate on the content planning process.
We work together to choose specific products to highlight based on the following criteria:
- New arrivals
- Most loved items
- Products we need to move
- Holidays or seasons
- Sales or promos
Each month gets a tab in the spreadsheet, and serves as a record of the content we’ve shared. Product categories are colour coded for a quick visual way to see the variety in planned content (e.g. clothing, accessories, jewellery) and identify any gaps in the schedule.
Here’s an example of how the calendar might look like before the product details have been added:
Of course, we also leave room for posting user-generated content. Customer reviews are 12 times more trustworthy than messaging from a business, so we make sure to work content created by customers who know and love our clients into the mix.
In a perfect world, all content would be planned in advance, and we could wrap it in a bow and send it out into the world.
The reality is that planned posts sometimes need to change, and some posts are time-sensitive and need to be created in real-time. Staying on top of upcoming posts to ensure the content is still accurate/relevant is crucial, so we bake this into our process.
Posting on the fly might seem faster and easier, but our brains work better when we dedicate ourselves to one task for a few hours as opposed to rapidly switching from one task to another.
Creating content in "blocks" of time instead of posting on the fly ensures higher-quality, on-brand content because we're not scrambling to come up with something new every day.
Even better: having the foundation of a monthly content plan frees us up to spend time on the behind-the-scenes activities that get results for our clients:
- Monitoring and responding to customer comments/messages
- Researching and adjusting hashtags
- Staying on top of social media trends and social platform updates
- Engaging with customers and vendors by commenting on their posts and stories
- Reviewing and sharing user-generated content
- Analyzing data across all platforms and adjusting the marketing strategy
Want to know more about working with us and how we can help your business succeed? Get in touch and let’s chat!
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