The world of social media and content material advertising is a fast-moving area. Any people or groups working in these worlds know the way important it’s to have the best instruments in place to make on a regular basis work circulate extra easily.
At Buffer, not solely are we writing and publishing weblog and social media posts every single day, we’re additionally a totally distant and distributed firm. For our Content material staff, particularly, we’re 4 folks unfold out throughout three timezones. The character of our overlap and versatile work schedules means we have to keep much more organized, on high of what’s being printed and when, and hold all an important data in a single area.
Enter our content material calendar.
Our Content material staff publishes a minimum of 4 articles every week, one for Monday by Thursday, plus we usually refresh older content material and ship a weekly e-newsletter. We additionally publish to social media every single day of the week throughout six social media platforms. Add all of this up, and it means the one method to hold observe of all the pieces is to maintain it in a single place with a centralized content material calendar.
We work from a content material calendar inbuilt Notion, and on this submit, we’ll go over how we work collectively as a content material staff, precisely how our content material calendar is ready up, and we’ll share a free template of our very personal content material calendar in Notion that you may duplicate and begin utilizing instantly.
How we work collectively
How we collaborate as a staff has advanced lots over time, and it’s nonetheless altering usually. (Right here’s a throwback to how our staff labored collectively again in 2017.)
We hold an open thoughts and attempt to query our personal processes to see the place they are often improved. Plus, by sharing our personal methods transparently (like on this submit!), we regularly get nice suggestions from our neighborhood and may make changes and enhancements.
The instruments we use
Instruments are the infrastructure behind any staff, so listed here are the entire instruments we use and what we’re utilizing them for.
How we divide possession
We’re a small and nimble staff made up of Mitra, our Social Media Supervisor, Tami and Kirsti, our two Content material Writers; and myself as our Head of Content material. We additionally work with a content material company that produces roughly 4 posts month-to-month and one freelancer who produces two content material refreshes each month. At bigger firms, there are total groups devoted to modifying weblog posts and who give attention to publishing — not so for us.
Buffer, as an organization, is a spot the place there’s plenty of flexibility and freedom with the expectation that you simply personal your tasks and drive your work ahead. It’s the identical on our Content material staff — we collaborate on our content material calendar to determine what we publish and when, however each particular person “owns” the Notion playing cards for the posts they’re engaged on and is accountable for retaining them updated and letting the remainder of the staff know the way progress goes.
How we collaborate
As a distributed staff that works remotely and a staff that has a excessive output, we attempt to keep away from too many conferences so there may be loads of time for heads-down work, like writing and batch-filming video content material. Even so, we do have common staff conferences to remain aligned.
- Editorial Evaluation: Each two weeks, we’ve an editorial assembly to evaluate the subsequent two weeks of content material, test in on timelines, make sure that we’ve sufficient selection and canopy any well timed subjects, and plan for upcoming holidays.
- Content material staff conferences: Twice a month (starting and mid-month), we do content material staff calls the place we evaluate all of our metrics for the final month, mirror on what’s working and what isn’t, and iterate from there.
Exterior of conferences, we sustain a gradual stream of threads in our content material staff channel in Slack, the place we get suggestions from one another, share concepts, and have a good time wins.
We additionally collaborate immediately in Notion to depart feedback — many of the feedback for weblog posts occurs within the Google Doc the place the define after which draft reside, however for social media posts we depend on Notion to go back-and-forth with concepts and recommendations.
How a chunk of content material goes from thought to printed
Our system has been working very well for us to take concepts to content material that we’re sharing and publishing. Right here’s every step of our content material creation course of:
Including a card to Notion
Each thought begins as a card in Notion. We’ll additionally create and add playing cards for occasions which are already deliberate and have content material related to them — issues like product launches.
Including a date to start out planning
Some playing cards get dates instantly, and for others we wait till it’s nearer to once we’ll need to publish them. Mitra retains a number of weeks of content material concepts deliberate out at a time, for instance, and nonetheless retains concepts in Notion as nicely. On the weblog facet, we’ll go over concepts and add dates within the Editorial assembly for the weblog content material calendar to verify we’ve the subsequent two weeks absolutely deliberate out.
Drafts and evaluations
Every bit of content material is reviewed. Content material is both peer-reviewed or absolutely edited earlier than it goes out on social or on the weblog.
Schedule
It received’t come as a shock that we love scheduling our content material out upfront – our aim is to schedule all of our content material for the weblog the day earlier than on the newest, and Mitra schedules social posts on the finish of the week for the next week.
Submit-publishing, we observe a complete host of metrics, and weblog and social post-performance are reviewed month-to-month.
Our content material staff rules
There are three rules that we hold top-of-mind on the content material staff for our work since all the pieces we create displays Buffer as an organization and as a model. They’re:
- Add worth. We don’t create simply to create; we’ve one thing to say, and we need to assist our neighborhood and clients. A part of including worth is consistency. We are going to present up persistently for our clients and neighborhood with high-quality content material.
- Be Buffery. Our content material ought to feel and appear prefer it’s coming from the Buffer staff — a giant a part of that’s voice and tone. Buffer posts sound completely different from posts every other firm may write, and one other a part of that’s the content material itself. We should always have our personal distinctive opinion and strategy for each subject.
- Construct in public. What we share on the Buffer weblog and social channels is among the major methods we might help our complete firm proceed to construct in public. We might help facilitate this by pushing to submit issues early into our journey of speaking about it at Buffer, not ready till one thing is full. We will encourage teammates to take part in weblog posts and social posts to share their work and assist be the catalysts for extra of a tradition of constructing in public at Buffer.
How our content material calendar is ready up
Central to our collaboration as a content material staff is that this one database in Notion, our content material calendar, the place every bit of content material we’re going to publish exists in a single card with a complete host of details about it.
Right here’s what a full week of our content material staff calendar seems to be like:
On the high of this, you possibly can see that we’ve completely different views arrange. The primary methods to view the database are:
- The entire calendar
- The calendar filtered for less than weblog posts
- The calendar filtered for less than social media posts
- A board view to see content material based mostly on standing
- A listing of concepts for weblog submit content material
Inside Notion, you will get very particular in regards to the properties you arrange. Listed here are the entire properties we use for our content material calendar.
How we handle weblog posts
For weblog posts, our major properties are:
- Standing (Thought, Deliberate, Engaged on, Drafted, In Evaluation, Able to be scheduled, Scheduled, Printed, Paused)
- Creator/Proprietor
- Channel (weblog or social media platform)
- Description (what’s the submit about?)
- Publish date
- Draft hyperlink (to a Google doc)
- URL (what’s going to the URL of this weblog submit be?)
- Featured? (a checkbox to find out if we function a submit)
- Final edited by (mechanically updates who final edited the cardboard)
- Final edited time (mechanically updates the final time the cardboard was edited)
How we handle social posts
For social posts, our major properties are:
- Standing (Thought, Deliberate, Engaged on, Drafted, In Evaluation, Able to be scheduled, Scheduled, Printed, Paused)
- Creator/Proprietor
- Channel (which social media platform)
- Publish date
- Graphics (hyperlink to any graphics created)
- URL (hyperlink to the weblog submit)
- Final edited by (mechanically updates who final edited the cardboard)
- Final edited time (mechanically updates the final time the cardboard was edited)
The aim for all of those properties and for this database is to steadiness together with the entire important data alongside making this a lighter raise in order that we are able to hold this method working and up-to-date as a staff with out it taking an excessive amount of time each week.
Our content material calendar template
We’ve a simplified model of our very personal content material calendar accessible as a template that you may duplicate to your personal Notion area right here.
We advocate utilizing Notion’s filters to customise the views to no matter you’d use most and, after all, including in every other properties that might be helpful in your staff.
Cross this alongside to anybody eager for a greater system for his or her content material, and depart a remark with different templates you’d wish to see from us, plus anything we are able to reply on how we collaborate!
