With the new year comes new digital PR and marketing campaigns. So, for those currently planning their activity for the year ahead, we’re back with our ultimate content calendar which has been refreshed for 2023 and lists the best days of the year and other major events happening to give your campaign content an additional news hook.
No matter what your sector, we’ve got something for everyone.
Fashion? Party with Barbie on the 21st of July. Entertainment? Plan your superhero content ahead of the 5th of May when Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3 hits the big screens. Property? Multiple house price indexes will be published across the year. Pets? We can’t forget National Love Your Pet Day on February 20th. Food and drink? Well, we have Nutella Day on the 5th of February, Nutrition and Hydration Week starting on the 13th of March, and Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day on the 12th of April. See, there really is a day for everyone and everything!
We hope you find our new 2023 content calendar just as helpful as we do when it comes to finding new hooks to elevate your digital PR campaigns!
What is a content calendar?
A content calendar is a basic schedule showing when and where you’re going to publish content. Sometimes it’s also called an editorial calendar, or a content plan. Essentially, a content calendar allows you to see at a glance what content you’ve got coming up, from social media posts to planned PR outreach.
A content calendar usually includes:
- Upcoming posts or campaigns
- Date and time the content will go live
- Copy and creative assets
- For social media, the networks where the post will be published
- Links and hashtags to be included
- If the content has been signed off
Filling out a content calendar can be tricky – and that’s where we’re here to help. Essentially, our national day calendar can help you fill out your content calendar with ideas for social media, digital PR campaigns, email marketing, blog posts, content ideation and more!
How to use a content calendar for digital PR
It’s tough coming up with ideas for digital PR campaigns, especially if you’ve been working with a client for a long time!
If you’re looking for campaigns for a client for a certain month, you can use this asset as a day of the year calendar to find quirky ideas for outreach. Having a starting point to focus on, like a day of the year or an event, sometimes makes it a lot easier to come up with campaign ideas. You could even hold a brainstorming session with your team based around a few key dates in the calendar and see how many ideas you can come up with!
Having a campaign linked to a specific day of the year makes it easier to find a seasonal, timely idea that’s easy to pitch to journalists. It’s also worth bearing in mind that tying your campaign into a specific day might help you get coverage, since there’s a specific deadline – if you’re lucky, it’s less likely to languish in a journalists’ inbox.
Creating an SEO content calendar using days of the year
Looking for ideas for a 3-month blog roadmap for your SEO content strategy, or need some quick ideas for a blog post next month? Use our national day calendar to get some ideas for themes you can write on, and then target a blog around that. For example, let’s look at National Taco Day, on October 4th.
Start off with some ideation – maybe you could write a blog on the best taco recipes, look at the history and culture behind the humble taco, or write a guide on how to make taco seasoning. Once you start looking, the ideas will keep coming – if you’re writing for an event or wedding related brand, you could go for a piece on building a taco bar for an event. Or for a home and lifestyle blog, how about tips on throwing a taco dinner party?
Once you’ve got a couple of ideas, it’s time for some keyword research – take a look at your favourite keyword research tool to see if there are some good keyword clusters for your content, check how many searches a month there are, then throw it all into a roadmap and boom – you’re ready to write. And for more ideation tips, check out our team’s guide to SEO content ideas that work!
Using our content calendar for social media
In charge of your brand’s social media strategy? If you post every day, then planning your brand’s social media calendar for the months ahead can become a real chore. If you’ve got a quiet spell with no new product launches, or you’re struggling for user-generated content, then creating some posts around specific days of the year is a good way to keep your social media profiles updated – and keep your engagement rates up!
Even really specific or niche days of the year can work well. Yeah, okay, ‘World Toilet Day’ might not be what you expected to post about in October, but for a fun and easy-going brand, you could start a conversation by asking your followers about their biggest bathroom bugbears. Or for a more socially-conscious brand, use the day to raise awareness about the global need for people to have access to proper sanitation and private toilets. There’s plenty of potential for any of the events in our day of the year calendar!
How to use our content calendar
Hopefully, the content marketing calendar is pretty self-explanatory – if you’ve seen a calendar before, we’re pretty sure you’ll be good to go. But here’s a few quick tips on ways to use a day of the year calendar to get the most out of it.
Views
We’ve made the calendar as easy to use as possible. If you’re looking for some quick inspiration for your next post or campaign, you can scroll through the content calendar in list mode to see a quick description of the event. Alternatively, use the monthly calendar view to make planning out your next month of content and campaigns even easier – you can see all of the major events and days of the year at a single glance, and pick the ones that are right for your brand or client.
Search for an event
Got a great idea for a PR campaign, but not sure it’s going to get pickup in a busy news month? Search our national days calendar for a specific idea to see if there’s a day, week, or month dedicated to your topic, and use that day to target your outreach for a higher likelihood of coverage!
Filter by category
To make the calendar as useful as possible, we’ve added some powerful filtering options – narrow down what you want to see by categories, from arts and automobiles to travel and tourism. No matter which industry you work in or what sector your client might be in, it’s really easy to find a whole range of relevant ideas.
Filter by location
You can also filter by location – by default, our ultimate content calendar shows every national day of the year, event and holiday, but you can filter down to see results that are appropriate for the UK, individual countries in the UK, the US or internationally.
Filter by day of the week
Maybe you post on one day specifically, or want a day that’s more likely to get pickup from journalists. We’ve got you covered – filter by day to see the events for a specific day of the week, plus any relevant national weeks that are running across the week.
We really, genuinely hope that our c3 marketing calendar is useful for you and your team, for everything from Twitter posts to top-performing PR campaigns. When it comes to national day calendars for 2023, forget scrolling through Google – make sure you subscribe to our content calendar and get everything you need all in one convenient location.
Looking for a bit more support on your digital and organic strategy? Contact connective3 and find out how we can make your life even easier.
