There's no denying it: inbound marketing is a time-consuming undertaking. 

It’s a discipline that gives you what you put into it, and that’s why some companies hesitate to embrace inbound marketing as their bread and butter. Coming up with good content ideas when under the gun is virtually impossible, which is why it’s a good idea to consider options that will make your inbound marketing processes more efficient. An editorial calendar is a good place to start for the company that wants to utilize inbound marketing, but doesn’t have much time to waste.

The Time Bind

Inbound marketing with good content can accomplish a lot. It gives people a legitimate reason to become interested in your brand. It yields loyalty among people who read the content you generate. It converts leads into customers, and it gives you tons of data regarding anyone who comes into contact with your content.

Clearly, all of this takes time. Yes, it’s worth your time, but it’s a big hurdle for many companies to get around. Using company resources to create something that won’t be helpful for weeks (or months) isn’t always practical, nor is it possible. As a result, companies are in a very tough position, and the answer is almost always to push off going inbound until a later date.

The Future is Now

The problem is, companies who continue to delay the transition are doomed to failure. While Company A is forced to put off inbound marketing efforts, Company B is making a fortune off of their inbound content because it’s already been on the web for some time. Company A is going to have a tough time catching up.

This isn’t just true of companies who haven’t yet converted to inbound marketing. Even those companies who already do inbound marketing can have trouble justifying the time necessary to produce great content on a regular basis. Again, for every company who doesn’t have the time, there’s a direct competitor who makes time and reaps the benefits directly because of their investment into inbound marketing.

Why Editorial Calendars Work

Inbound marketing often trips companies up because they don’t know where to start. An editorial calendar makes it easier to come up with a content strategy, one that aligns with the goals of the entire company. It also helps to solve the problem of not being able to find time to commit to inbound marketing.

An editorial calendar can be as simple as your Google Calendar, or it can be a powerful template purchased from a marketing company. What’s important is what goes into the calendar. The editorial calendar should contain a theme for the content that’s being produced, what type of content, who it’s being marketed to, and where it will be featured. The calendar should also list what types of metrics are being used to determine the success of the content, the landing pages used to capture potential customers, and the calls to action that will be pitched to readers.

The organizational benefits of using an editorial calendar are obvious. But the benefits go so much deeper than having everyone on the same page. Now, it’s possible to plan for tomorrow while simultaneously figuring out today. You can see if you’ve already covered a topic, plan content around specific dates on the calendar, and get an idea of whether an idea will really generate the desired interest. Lastly, you can go back and look at previous installments of the editorial calendar to determine what worked and what didn’t, giving you a residual education about the needs and wants of your audience.

Bottom Line

Inbound marketing is serious business these days. It’s not something you want to put off for too long. Time is always an issue for any company, but time should never get in the way of developing and sticking to an inbound marketing strategy. The benefits are well worth the expense, especially when tools such as editorial calendars make operations as seamless and smooth as possible.