Pattern Your Audience: How Editorial Calendars Can Increase Your Readership

If you can develop discernible patterns of behavior, you can create expectations among those who are aware of it.

If you visit the same diner every night for a week, the waitress on the night shift will start to expect your presence. If you’re a likable character who tips well, she’ll even look forward to you showing up.

In the same way, bloggers and marketers can generate anticipation and desire from their audience by deliberately devising a predictable content schedule. Publish an interview on every Wednesday without fail. Release your email newsletters at the same time every Friday afternoon.

Make your readers look forward to something by creating a formalized content system, not dissimilar to the editorial calendars of your local newspaper. Your favorite columnist publishes her opinion pieces every Tuesday. The Sunday papers come with extra crosswords and other word puzzles.

Analytics expert Avinash Kaushik recently talked about the need to ‘pattern your audience’, a tip recommended in his excellent article on blogging. In that context he primarily uses the term to refer to the act of publishing posts at the same time:

If possible write at regular intervals. Almost always I’ll post on Sunday night (Monday AM in Europe), and if I write two then Wednesday night (Thursday in EU). If you pattern your visitors then they’ll know when to check in for new posts (if they are not Feed Subscribers). It is disappointing for them to come & see nothing new.

I’ll like to take this concept of patterning one step further and relate it to the development of a publication schedule which involves different types of recurring content, in other words, the editorial calendar.

Traditional media like magazines and newspapers have been using editorial calendars for a long time to produce articles which cover a range of issues considered important, interesting or relevant to their target audience.

Vinny Goldsmith recently wrote a great post on the use of content to get repeat visitors. He talks about the concept of editorial calendars and also offers some examples of content you can create. Let’s build on that in this article.

How to Plan and Create Your Own Editorial Calendar

Image Credit: MegElizabeth

Start by looking at the time span of a year. In each of the twelve months, mark the major public holidays or cultural events which are relevant to your site’s niche. Aim to publish a feature writeup a few days before the holiday or event.

For example, you can publish an article about taking pictures during Halloween or even revamp your entire site for a controversial April Fools joke. Be creative. It doesn’t necessarily have to be text-based material.

Apart from creating seasonal content, the patterning process also arises when you develop content which repeats annually. For instance, an annual guidebook on industry standards, an annual Christmas contest or industry awards listing.

Anticipation for each annual feature can be built up through tactics such as long term visitor polling and the use of articles which highlight the content of previous years.

After setting a yearly calendar, focus on a monthly and weekly period. Commit to publishing content of a certain type on a few specific days every week or month. For example, I’ve recently started a weekend media series, which showcases books and films which I find potentially interesting for Dosh Dosh’s readers.

These articles will only be published on Saturday and some readers do look forward to it. If you are creating your own content, remember to pick days which fit your personal schedule, in order to ensure that you’ll publish the articles on time.

19 Different Ways You Can Pattern Your Audience

Image Credit: a metropolitan symphony

Let’s look at the various types of content you can repeatedly use to pattern your audience. All of these content types can be scheduled on a weekly or monthly basis, depending on your resources and your end goals.

If you plan far ahead enough you can build anticipation by highlighting upcoming material in the same format. For example, you can promote a future podcast with a particular expert during your current or existing podcast.

1. Interviews. Set aside a day every week to interview a personality in your niche. This is a fantastic strategy to get some attention for your website and brand, especially if the personality in question is considered an authority or expert on a topic that is highly related to your website’s focus.




2. Feature Story. Write a special article on a specific day every week. These articles should be different from the other articles regularly published. Examples of feature stories include tutorials, picture essays or exclusive interviews.




3. Columns. Get reliable authors to write regularly on your website. Give them their own corner to broadcast their opinions. This can be done on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis. Columns are a great way to add a new voice to your site and will attract new readers who are drawn to the columnist’s style.




4. Reader Quiz/Q and A. Put up a quiz on the same day every week or engage your readers in a Q and A session. Request them to ask you questions on any topic or engage them for feedback by posing a specific question.




5. User Profile Highlight. If you run an online community like a forum or social network, you can pick one user to highlight every week or month. For blogs, you can highlight your commenters and use it as an incentive to encourage active discussion/participation on your site.




6. Videos/Podcasts. Create weekly videos and podcasts and publish them on the same day. This has the added benefit of reaching others because videos and podcasts are mobile content that can easily be shared. SEOmoz’s Whiteboard Friday is an good example how to use video weekly.




7. Free Reports. Create and offer a free white paper or mini eBook on the same day every month. Set up a resource page and list all the free reports there: people can then share the reports by downloading and sending to others.




8. Industry Roundups. Set aside a day at the end of the week to do a roundup of what’s been going on in the industry. This can also be done in the form of a speedlinking post, which shares the interesting articles you come across. Two of the best roundup articles I’ve seen are Search Engine Land’s SearchCap and Steven Bradley’s This Week in SEO.




9. Meme Days. Start a meme on the same day every week. Memes are generally fun to do and they can help you to make some new friends. Their informal nature might not work for more professional websites.




10. Reviews. Write a review of a product or service that’s relevant to the topic of your site. This can be published weekly and affiliate links can be used in these articles to generate some extra income as well.




11. Reader/User Polls. Poll your readers every week and share the results with your audience in order to generate further discussions. Problogger has been practicing polling regularly and this poll on blogging is a good example.




12. Website Highlight. Set aside a day every week to highlight a website or blog that you find interesting. You can write about why the website is helpful for your audience and indicate specific aspects of the website which make it attractive as well.




13. Application Launch. If you’re the adventurous sort, set down a date every month to launch a new online tool or application that you’ve developed. This can come in the form of a greasemonkey script, viral widget or Facebook app.




14. Weekly Comic Strip. Hire an illustrator or cartoonist and get her or him to create a weekly cartoon related to topics covered on your website. This is commonly practiced by newspapers and magazines. Blogs like Freelance Switch have been using weekly cartoons for sometime. Here’s an example.




15. Summary of Performance. Once a month you can do a summary of how you or your blog is performing. For instance you can write about the month in review and how you achieved your goals (or failed to). Or you can write about how your business or blog has fared in the last month. Specific details can include personal goals, income, pageviews or references on other websites.




16. User-Submitted Content. Set aside a day every week to publish content submitted by your audience. This can come in the form of a guest post by another blogger or an article submitted by a member of your community. Unlike a regular columnist, this mainly involves a group of different rotating authors.




17. Monthly Contests/Deals. Hold a special contest at the end of each month to reward your loyal readers or customers. Give them a special discount on a service you offer or a product you sell. Set up a lucky draw and get your audience to participate. This is a good way to keep your customers/readers engaged and happy.




18. Monthly Post Digest. Do a roundup of all the posts you’ve published in the existing month. This can include all your articles or only the more popular ones. You can also create a special RSS digest feed for readers. Lorelle is example of a blogger who creates a weekly digest that includes links to other sites and posts from her archives as well.




19. Article Series. Commonly practiced by many bloggers, an article series involves a collection of sequential articles on a specific topic. Each new article builds on the one before it while pre-selling the upcoming post. For an example of what an article within a series looks like, check out my introduction to social media marketing.

There’s probably a few more content types but these are generally some of the ones you use to pattern your audience. By producing content regularly on specific days or times you will give your audience something to look forward to, and hence a reason for them to come back to your website.

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