A lot’s happened in 2016. Like the new editorial calendar. Talk about the most evergreen comment possible, amirite?!
Looking back at the year, Verblio’s really brought the heat as we have never before.
In fact, 2016 marks:
- Verblio’s first full year of content with the help of a blog editorial calendar template and an actual real-life semblance of a strategy (le gasp!)
- A revamp on our blog, name, design, and calls-to-action
- Three brand-spanking-new product announcements: sleeker customer interface, flexible scheduling, and topic ideas
- 6 new Verblio hires (including CEO)
- Countless writers accepted
- 1 new office
- …and a partridge in a pear tree. (sigh, that one’s just wishful thinking)
It especially hurts to admit that we hadn’t had a fleshed out blog content strategy in place before this year. For a blogging company? Pshhh. Seems impossible.
But when you’re a company that runs primarily on inbound-inherited, high-intent organic traffic, a concerted, thoughtful content marketing strategy quickly becomes one of the most worthy objects of our attention & affection. 🙂
And in looking at the stats from the past year compared to 2015, we can certainly say that our new focus on adhering to our own editorial calendar has paid out in spades.
Check out our year-over-year numbers from 2015 to 2016:
- 115% increase in sessions (unique times folks visit our blog, including multiple pages)
- 143% increase in users (unique individual visitors to our blog)
- 105% increase in pageviews (overall times people view the blog)
We’re biased, but to any marketer, those are healthy metrics.
Additionally, on the individual blog post itself for the editorial calendar template for 2016, the 20.83% click-through rate is unreal.
This CTR number alone has formed a substantive, new component of our 2017 content strategy. What is that, you ask? This CTR has spurred us into creating more high-quality, gated content (even though we love ourselves a transparent, educational, open-to-all blog post as much as the next person, if not more). Think 10x content in the words of the wise Rand Fishkin of Moz.
Bottom line: this blog editorial calendar template blew our freakin’ minds. Even more than we thought it would.
So, no duh, we’d be silly to not share with our wide base of customers and writers to implement for the upcoming year. Because we’re no Scrooges, that’s why.
What’s new for the 2017 version of the editorial calendar template?
Honestly, not much! After a year, it seems crazy to think that we have made only minimal changes to our 2016 version.
Turns out a super-simple Google spreadsheet works just as well (if not better!) than a fancy-shmancy, development-intensive calendar. In other words—take this template and repurpose it to your heart’s content—for your agency clients, personal use, or dress it up real nice as your own lead-generating download in your free time to reflect your brand’s look and feel (no judging if Comic Sans is your font of choice).
Here’s what 2017’s iteration includes:
- Each month with its very own tab
- A tab specifically for the running list of blog post ideas
- A ‘Logins’ tab to keep contributors on the same page
- Loads more on the ‘Resources’ tab on SEO, keyword research, image sources, etc.
- A sample checklist of your individual blog’s formatting/style/design preferences for posts (feel free to start with those for Verblio’s Hydrant blog as a start!)
- A new ‘Post Contributor Frequencies’ tab to keep track of who writes for your blog, and how much per month (including a running list of guest posters)
Plus, here’s a bonus topic description outline you can use to get organized, or bring an freelance content writer (like Verblio, hint hint) quickly up to speed on what you expect from the piece.
Alright already! Can I download the editorial calendar template?
Don’t let me stand in your way anymore. Download now.
Get your blogging prepped and ready to tackle 2017. It’s coming quick, and it’s gonna be great.
