Are you unsure of what to post or share, when?  Are you overwhelmed or unfocused when marketing your abundance of products or blog articles?  Are you reaching your customer when THEY want to hear from you and with the information they need AT THAT TIME and are you promoting your business in a way that will gain followers and clients?

As a professional art jeweler and art mentor, I have article after article, product after product and SO many places to talk about them: Twitter, Facebook, Google+ (Andrea Rosenfeld), my website, Linked In, other people’s blogs and the press but when, how and what do I talk about?

I can’t share items willy-nilly with no forward motion, no media or marketing goals.   It would be silly of me to build a cufflink campaign in the middle of August when it’s more appropriate to announce for Father’s Day in June!  And why would I detail how to prepare for a Trade Show in January/February while the shows are going on?  (my clients need that information months before!)

As super of a woman as I am, I’m not perfect and I need a guide.  My assistant and I use a marketing calendar to help stay sane and prepare my content, and you need one too.

Even if you’re just starting out on social networking and have 10 items in inventory, get started now planning your editorial content.  Why?

1. Anything that can keep you organized is better for you and everyone you work with.
2. Knowing your marketplace, when the shows are, when the seasons start and end and what holidays are important is imperative.
3. Your retail outlets will need you to be aware of THEIR important markets so that you can be their star vendor and assist them in selling your merchandise.
4. With all of the social outlets available to get the word out, you’ll need a schedule so that you don’t miss any or repeat yourself on one site, by accident.
5. You can connect with your customers better if you’re in tune to their buying cycles; holidays, start of seasons and speak to them at the correct time.

While a simple editorial calendar that tracks the date and content you are planning is a fantastic start, the editorial calendar I’m sharing tracks more details to help you see connections in your content and get ideas on how you can repurpose (recycle) what you have and what you are planning, and it helps make sure you have key information for things such as SEO (search engine optimization – how your are FOUND inside of search engines by potential clients).

The first thing I want you to do is make a master editorial calendar by month and enter the Holidays that affect retail: Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and so on, then write in the wholesale trade show dates that move your industry (you can use one or two trade shows that fits your buyer).  If you’re in fabric or fashion design, add the designer shows (NYFW), too.  Once you’ve done that, you can transfer those dates to the weekly calendar I’ll describe below.  *For my fellow romantics who enjoy writing on paper, you can use an actual paper calendar instead of a spread sheet.  Whatever works best for you.

MASTER EDITORIAL CALENDAR: 

1. Provides you with an overview, weekly and monthly.
2. Track key dates such as events, holidays or other things that may impact which content you want to share when. 
3. Include a brief overview of all of the content that is planned by content type and where you would share it. *note that for Twitter, the “X” means that I announce it on that date, not that I ONLY tweet about it on that date.  The tweets can be recurring.