How to create a content calendar.

Businesses that consistently produce quality content get better value for money from PR.

So I often advise getting a good in-house content engine in place before considering investment in earned media.

You need spokespeople who can create content, and enough creative stimulus to support the spokespeople. 

You also need someone to own the content calendar and manage it.

A content calendar may include key themes such as;

💡 Nostalgia…. looking back at key milestones. Consider the big moments in your professional life; opportunities, job moves, pivots, places and people you've met. Use that previous experience to tell a story about today. These could even be moments from childhood or early adulthood that were significant and formative. Telling these stories has traction because people are interested in people, and find real-life stories more relatable than abstract theories. Write a list of ten, and expand on them in a paragraph.

💡 Audience answers… customer questions. As well as showcasing your expertise, this helps connect the problem a customer faces with the solution you offer. It's also great for SEO. Work back from the value your products create and phrase as questions; asking the product, sales and marketing teams what the problem statement is. 

💡 Take on a topic… addressing industry issues. Elsewhere in this book I talk about a PEST analysis, to identify the core issues in your category that the media who cover your category regularly write about; political and economic news, and sociological trends. Each can be expressed in a simple keyword or phrase. Identify expected political and economic news moments in the future (e.g. budget, legislation, trade org reports, company results) and social and technical trends (changes in technology and human behavior & attitudes e.g. AI, 5G, working-from-home, diversity) and take a view on these; stating how they may impact your sector and community). When elevated into media relations, and done quickly, this is also known as 'newsjacking'.

💡 Foundational POV soap box campaign… on industry issues. For some of the above issues there will be some where you can identify a specific change that people in power need to make to improve things for your commuity, sector or tribe and recommend a differentiated and bold course of action, and compel specific groups of people to support it and advocate the change. This becomes one of your foundational messages.

💡 Letter from… how things work elsewhere. This is about identifying differences in cultures and markets, and an insight into how things work - or don't work. It is about casting new light on a topic based on learned experience. For example if you are a global company expanding internationally this might be the success story from your domestic market, or explaining parallels between markets and cultures that help make the case for future success - or a cursory warning that something that worked in one place may not work in another - and why.

💡 Out and about… events, awards. This is literally talking about a personal experience of an event. Learnings, or new contacts made from an event. New data, stats or experiences that you've inferred from a conference. Or just a personal experience that relates to your working life. 

💡 Personal news… emotive stories. Particularly on social media, people are fascinated by personal stories. It helps others build a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and therefore, trust. For example, family, home life, hobbies. Many argue that platforms like LinkedIn have become overwhelmed by this 'wedding pictures are for Facebook' but I disagree, provided that it's in balance with other 'professional' content and is not framed not in an attention-seeking way. For example, aside from work my personal hobbies include being an amateur actor. I will post when I've done a show (maybe once, or twice a year) partly as I draw professional growth from my hobby, but also as it helps people know me better and relatable.

💡 News… impactful developments. As the business grows and changes, news helps tell a bigger story about its strategy and mission and place in the world, and depending on the impact will warrant a wider comms strategy. These should form the pillars of the content calendar and may warrant multiple posts over time to tell the story from different angles, using different channels and with different media to maximise the reach of the story.

💡 People profiles... behind the team. Similar to the above, new hire posts tell a story about the business. A newly created c-suite role, or a change or org structure tells a bigger story about the direction and priorities of the business and may even (depending on the size of the business and impact of the change) warrant a press release and/ or broader PR plan. But bringing any new person into a business helps build tactical momentum around the strategic journey - and people love to learn about people. A post on every new hire also makes new people feel valued and integrate them into the team.

💡 Updates… standard developments. This may be other company activity that is not strategically impactful, lacks the involvement of other big partners or names, or doesn't carry an impact number (i.e. people effected, or a monetary outcome). This might be a piece of content marketing, or a product update, that's potentially interesting (but not newsworthy) in the eyes of the media who cover your sector. As well as acting as posts, which will be of interest to your direct community or tribe, these can become supportive talking points in a business interview that might help tell the story, but are not strong enough to command media attention in their own right.

💡 Work... case studies. Every business needs to build a portfolio of third party recommendations or validations to earn trust, not just with potential prospects but also the media and other partners. Case studies can take multiple forms. It can just be the public appearance of new work, a report six months on what impact/ change the work or service has delivered, or a general written testimonial from the client with general positive tones about the experience of working with you or using the product. Or simply permission to use their logo on your website! A PR case study is much more impactful - by this I mean a client-side person who is willing to talk to a journalist about the work. This method works not only for customers, but investor, partners or even potentially staff or suppliers. Any positive third party validation helps build trust.

All of these things are made more impactful, relatable and relevant with data, people and examples. Try doing a session internally where you can pick 2-3 examples under each heading above. Then consider how these examples can be repurposed into 2/3 different media formats as well as text (graph/ carousel, selfie/ photo, video, poll). That's 10 areas x 3 examples x 3 formats... 90 potential pieces of content. 

Each is a LinkedIn post, about a third could work as SEO blogs, all curated through a monthly newsletter.

Living the values

Content can be very powerful if it shows how your business ‘lives the values’.

Most businesses have a list of values they aspire to live by; some verbs (and a sentence) to define behaviours.

But values can feel lofty, abstract and irrelevant - existing only in a powerpoint. Employees often struggle to name them.

Living the values helps define their meaning, helps assimilate and motivate employees, and authentically communicates your brand attributes to the outside world. How can you activate them?

Under each value statement add a behavioural statement, expressed in absolutes, i.e. “we will always, or we will never”.

This will help identify concrete examples against which the company either aspires to (peers we admire), or rails against (foes we oppose).

It will also identify gaps and opportunities in a company's behaviours.

If you can't give a concrete example against one particular value, maybe this means the value no longer holds true, or the business should look at its own behaviours and identify things it could do to actually live them.

Similarly, in powerful organisations this is how PR crises emerge - when behaviour that run against the values emerge and go 'unpunished'.