Keeping It All Together – The Content Calendar:

When Jeremy hired me to head up his marketing and media for CrossFit Central the big buzz words of the day were still “Web 2.0” and “Blospot”. This was prior to Twitter hitting it big, Facebook Fan pages were just introduced into the market (though not readily used yet) and there was no chance you would hear the phrase “social media” being used in casual conversation. It was way before AngryBirds would steal the hearts of thousands and before the first iphone hit the market. At that stage in the game there were few websites, within our immediate market, that were achieving what we desired – consistently putting out fresh content and building an online community committed to excellence.

The first year was spent figuring out what worked and what didn’t. I quickly learned what people were attracted to and what they wanted more of. I researched other markets and brands to find out what they were doing and implemented it into our online communication. I also spent a large portion of my time figuring out what the heck to post on the front page of the website.  I never let a day go by without a post that included a picture and I was committed to that post consistently being published by 8am, but there were times when I would wake up early in the morning, go to the computer and think – “what am I going to post today?” This quickly moved to planning and pre-posting a week’s worth of posts ahead of time. This helped me get more organized and the posts made sense as they flowed from one day to the next, but it was still missing the mark for a well thought out plan, organization and the much needed momentum building. As CrossFit Central grew we opened new gyms, started new brands and launched new websites. We had so much more to promote and talk about, I had to find a way to successfully market our programs, balance our content so that it shaped and cultivated our online presence and clearly and strategically communicate the message that we wanted to get across to our community and potential clients.

Enter the Content Calendar. Now – this is a tool that everyone in charge of running a website plugs in to.

The content calendar is created at the beginning of the month by the coach or staff member that run’s one of our websites or blogs. We have duplicated this with each of our websites and is a SUPER helpful tool. It helps the coach plan out what they are publishing ahead of time, take pride in their website and give the clients the powerful and useful content they want!

The Rules!

• Post About Your Clients!
  Highlight their progress, their PR’s, their successes, what they’re up to. Call them out by name on your website, use fresh pictures and pictures of YOUR community.
• Don’t be a Cookie Cutter-Robot!!!
  The point of creating this calendar is NOT to become a boring, no-personality, robotic website. The point is to help keep you organized, keep your content fresh, powerful and balance it out with a strategic eye.
• Be Flexible!  Your calendar will change throughout the month. You might receive an awesome email from a client, a picture from a coach or just took a picture of the new equipment that arrived – be flexible enough to move your posts around and accommodate these organic happenings at your gym.

• Be a Resource
  Link to articles, videos and other content that is relevant and helpful for your community. Example – posts on nutrition, strength workouts, traveling workouts or CrossFit.com videos

#TRUTH: “A blog post should be like a mini skirt – long enough to cover the essentials, short enough to be interesting.”

If you want to write a full blown article – DO IT! There is nothing better than providing original, useful content and being a resource to your community. Post the full article in a designated “articles” or “media” section of your website and keep your blog or blog-style website as a blog. At CrossFit Central, the coach’s personal blogs will often include multiple paragraphs which resemble a short article, but the front page of the website is typically 3 paragraphs, max.

Below Are 3 Steps to Creating Your Content Calendar:

• 1. Print out a copy of the next month’s calendar and grab a pencil

For everyone who uses an online calendar, I get that. But for this purpose, use the age-old method of paper and pencil, at least for your first content calendar creation. You will erase and re-write things multiple times until your calendar is complete. Then you can go online and plug in what you’ve mapped out.

• 2. First fill out everything you KNOW you can plug in

These are the systematic promotion and follow up posts that surround your gym’s event calendar.
Event Recaps: If you have a weekend event or free workout, dedicate the following Sunday or Monday is to an “event recap” where you post pictures from the event, highlight any PR’s and write any congratulations. After an event people are hungry for any and all content. They want to see pictures, look at scores and read about the event. Think of yourself competing in an event – don’t you do the same thing in the days following a competition?

Promoting an Event: (this pertains to an event or challenge that requires people to pay for the challenge or event) Begin promoting your events 6 weeks out from the actual date. Six weeks prior schedule an “event teaser post” where you announce the name of the event, how many spots will be available, the date, time and add “more details coming soon…” At 5 weeks out publish all event details and schedule the date you will open registration. Then schedule at least 2 more posts dedicated to promoting this event. Be sure to vary the content so you’re not “pushing” the event in your audience’s face. Try to balance it our by publishing testimonies from previous events, interview clients that have registered for the event, highlight previous event PR’s, post pictures of the new equipment that will debut at the event, share pictures of the T-Shirt design, etc., etc.

Free Events or Community Events: For events like our reoccurring Nutrition Meeting, a community Happy Hour or Pot Luck dinner we will generally announce and promote 2 -3 weeks before the event date and schedule one other reminder post.

• 3. Plug in the Goods!

Now, go through your calendar and plug in topics, be sure to vary them throughout your month so that your website will not be heavy on promoting events, heavy on athlete posts, or heavy on community posts. Instead – you want to balance it out so that it hits all of these. On the below example calendar you will see 4 “topics” that occur throughout the month. I plug these topics in and then go seek out the stories by emailing our coaches or going and getting the content myself.

Community Posts: These refer to posts of a group of clients after class, a picture of a class doing birthday burpees, clients traveling out of town to other gyms, recipe ideas

Success Posts: These posts are highlight clients in class – PR’s, Success Stories, Testimonies, and progress etc

Athlete Posts: These posts are typically geared toward the “hard core” side of the brand. They include a picture of an athlete “getting work done” in the gym or include a story on a client who takes on a sport outside of the gym. These might also highlight resources on strength, Olympic Lifting

Motivator Posts: This is a post dedicated to getting your community PSYCHED! Post a fresh photo from your community, link to a motivating video – an incredible article, quotes or words.

Note: If your brand is strictly for competitors your website might publish athlete posts a large majority of the time but you can balance it out with group pictures after a hard workout (community post). RedBlack Gym is one of our brands that is designed for the “Next Level” CrossFitter and competitive athletes. Many of their posts are geared toward lifting, kettlebells, training, and nutrition for training. But they do balance this out with a few “community posts” throughout the month.

Check out the example Calendar Below to see what a month of content might look like!

Black Text: Represents events, challenges and anything else we have scheduled for the gym
Red Text: Content Topics

*In this example we are a business that runs CrossFit, CrossFit Kids and Boot Camps so you will see posts dedicated to these programs

Black Text: Represents events, challenges and anything else we have scheduled for the gym
Red Text: Content Topics

*In this example we are a business that runs CrossFit, CrossFit Kids and Boot Camps so you will see posts dedicated to these programs

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