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SMART MARKETING Planned to Perfection Increase marketing impact with an editorial calendar Small businesses across the world rely on social media to provide affordable, customizable, direct marketing to their customers. But as the medium matures, platforms like Facebook are making it more difficult for businesses to reach their fans without paying for ads on the site. Ashley Laabs, Editor, Smart Tan Magazine But this isn't all bad news. While organic reach of your posts may decline, marketing blogs report that engagement is up, which means higher quality interactions with the fans who see your posts. In order to optimize the number of people who see your posts and the engagement you get from them, social media demands quality content worth sharing. Posting regularly on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram while maintaining your email, print, direct mail, radio and other advertising sounds daunting, but one simple tool can automate the process and cut your work in half. If you want to make your marketing as easy as possible, adopt and stick to an editorial schedule. An editorial calendar is essentially a calendar that contains a detailed plan for how, when, where and about what you'll advertise. Marketing agencies, creatives, bloggers, and companies of all sizes use editorial calendars like an action plan for their marketing. By plotting out events and promotions on the calendar, you can create a comprehensive schedule of marketing activities and dictate your approach way ahead of time. Instead of scrounging up a random post whenever you happen to get on Facebook for the day, you can sit down and curate a week's worth of meaningful messages all at once. You'll be amazed at the improvement in your productivity once you get a plan in place. Seeing your month mapped out in front of you also makes it easier to create content shaped by the themes and celebrations that matter to your clients. Your tanners may love getting beauty tips around wedding season and skin care tips in the winter. Looking at the calendar also allows you to anticipate potential lulls in business or take advantage of under-celebrated events like Women's History Month, Groundhog Day, Daylight Savings and Tax Day. Another benefit of an editorial calendar is that you can designate times to address different subsets of your customer base. One size doesn't fit all when it comes to marketing, which is why you should plan posts and advertisements that address new tanners, non-tanners, returning customers, sunless tanners, men, women, and every adult generation. Diversify your messaging and measure what resonates with your audience. And don't forget to adjust your editorial schedule based on the results! The whole point is to create a tool that effectively utilizes your time and resources on marketing that works. Although there is an initial time investment in getting your editorial calendar just the way you want it, the process becomes quicker with time. Follow through on your marketing campaigns with ease, and enjoy a simple way to make the most of your budget and effort. Get Your Own Editorial Calendar An editorial calendar can be as simple as a paper calendar or planner, or as high tech as a Google Drive template that you share with your marketing managers. If you're not sure where to get started, professional writer Sharon Hurley Hall provides a great list of 14 free editorial calendars. Read her article at: http://blog.crazyegg.com/2013/10/18/contentstrategy-editorial-calendar/ 59 ❘ SMART TAN MAGAZINE ❘ SmartTan.com