Following up on an earlier post about designing your content calendar, this post will focus on three key items that are a must for an effective content calendar.
And using the rock, pebble and sand analogy, you can plan your content creation along the lines of long-term, medium-term and short-term contents.
Speaking of long-term contents, this could mean ever green materials that stay relevant for long periods of time, which could be for several months or even years. In the financial services industry, ever green materials could be about investment strategies for young professionals, wealth creation for families or preparing for retirement for mature readers.
These are topics that are always relevant and of interest to readers because they talk about issues and things that affect the readers.
Learning experiences from people from different walks of life can also be used as a base to develop ever green content about savings, investment, trading and other finance related topics. If you have happy and satisfied clients who are willing to talk about their experience, their stories can provide some interesting ever green content.
Medium-term contents may be developed and designed around new products, promotions or campaigns you are planning to launch within the year or a certain period of time.
For example, while you can write an ever green article about using Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) as an investment vehicle, it is also possible to create a medium-term content (blog post and video post) about a specific ETF and its benefits to a particular investor group.
By using medium-term content, you can add a level of urgency and create more interest among your target audience.
Short-term contents are usually news-driven and time-sensitive materials that must be developed in 
response to a current event or breaking news. These are almost reactionary materials or something written due to a specific or unfolding event.
While it may be quite difficult to plan for this kind of content because you have to be always watching whatever is happening – current events or breaking news – to be able to react, it could be an effective way to attract a high number of readers and followers if you have some insightful contents to offer.
For example, the fluctuation in currency markets is always of interest to people as it affects almost everything from your holiday cost to petrol expenses or whether it is time for you to shop online or to buy locally.
If you can create content around these currency fluctuations and push them just in time for people to get insights on what’s the best course of action given a particular currency move, you could provide a vital content that could reach a wide range of audience.
A combination of these materials – long-term, medium-term and short-term contents – is important if you want to reach out and keep your target audience. It will also help you in planning and making your content calendar more effective as it will help you plan for those contents that need longer time to develop. At the same time, a mixture of different content types will give you the variety and flexibility in your content creation.
