The Digital Engine Content Matrix & Editorial Calendar

In our instruction on content design, The Digital Engine teaches course participants how to create a content matrix. This matrix is critically important as it becomes the building blocks for your rolling editorial calendar, which is the life blood of your inbound marketing campaign. Unlike paid digital, inbound marketing is organic in nature and critically depends on content creation and curation. To make sure that you have content planned out plenty of time in advance, you must have an editorial calendar. To begin building that calendar, you must have designed a content matrix first. The content matrix will help you identify three main components:

1. The “Who” of digital communication effectiveness,
2. The “What” of digital communication effectiveness, and
3. The “Where” of digital communication effectiveness.

When you consider effective digital communication, the who, what, and where are important considerations that should be carefully and strategically planned. We lead our course participants through a process of developing each of these areas through a process of market segmentation and targeting. We help you identify your specific target markets, serialize the messages that you will communicate to them, and choose the specific communication channels by which to express your message. Once these areas are all strategically assembled and entered into your content matrix, then we use this process to help you create your rolling editorial calendar.

In the real world, we consult with companies to build a 90-day rolling editorial calendar. This means that the first month (30-days) of content is created, scheduled, and locked-in for publishing. Rarely do we change the release date of this content unless something extremely important and timely has occurred. The second month (30-days) is in the process of being created and scheduled. It’s a mix bag of ideas and set content. The reality is that you should be living in this month of content as you are daily preparing and scheduling here. Finally, in the last month (30-days) of your existing editorial calendar, these are primary ideas and brainstorming sessions on what to deliver to your customers two months from now. Maybe one day a week, you will assemble ideas in this last month of calendar and begin assimilated data and possibly curating content that will begin to fully take shape next month when the calendar rolls over to the next period. If you stay consistent with this timing process, then you will never run out of content. As I say to my students:

“The worst thing that can happen to you in an inbound marketing campaign is to sit down at your computer to write content that is scheduled to be delivered today.”

You never want this to occur because this is when you make mistakes. This is when you will forget to update hyperlinks, make grammatical errors, or have incomplete and sometimes incoherent thoughts. Content is never as good as when you have time to let it ruminate and sleep on it for a few nights. Inevitably, you will wake up with an idea or thoughts on how to tell the story better, but without that time to marinate, you content will just not develop as nicely as you would have wished.

To learn more about how to create a content matrix and subsequent editorial calendar, check out The Digital Engine curriculum and courseware. We have courses for all ages and all education levels. Whether you are a high school or college instructor looking for curriculum for your classes, or whether you are looking for continuing education as you build your skill sets or develop a new business, we have a course for you. For a courseware and curriculum preview, feel free to register for demo course. This demo will allow you to not only get a feel for our content modules and practical takeaways, but it will also allow you to preview the navigation engine to our learning management system. You will find that it is easy to read and navigate through all of your learning modules. If you have questions before diving into the demo course, feel free to contact us. We look forward to serving you today.