How I create the MKT1 content calendar
A behind the scenes look at my content strategy - Part 2 of 2
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I don’t have a big team, an army of freelancers, or an unlimited amount of time in my day to create MKT1 content. But I do have a system. One that lets me create a lot of content—across newsletters, podcast episodes, templates, LinkedIn, events, and sometimes even YouTube, without burning out or falling into the trap of random acts of marketing.
In this two-part newsletter series, I’m sharing my strategy and system in hopes it helps you refine your own. In part 2 (this newsletter), I focus on executing on said strategy. Because even if your startup has a strong content strategy, great execution isn’t guaranteed.
Some teams build rigid calendars that can’t flex when the world changes (likely why I see so many companies making blog roadmaps that look like they are from 2010). Others abandon their strategy entirely as the ink is drying, respond to any and every internal request, and end up saying nothing memorable. My system lives in the middle: structured enough to stay strategic, but flexible enough to respond to the moment.
The system I use isn’t complicated, but it makes a huge difference in how efficiently I can produce content that actually drives impact (and revenue).
In this newsletter series:
This is part 2 of my “behind-the-scenes” newsletter series:
Part 1: How I built the foundation of the MKT1 content strategy.
My perceptions and storylines (like “marketing is strategic, not just execution”)
My content pillars (like ecosystem marketing and org design)
My core principles I follow to make sure my content is useful and unique (like “always add value” and “no dead ends”)
Part 2: This newsletter - How I plan and execute the MKT1 content calendar
Step 1: Map out monthly-ish content themes
Step 2: Build a flexible content calendar (and know when to break from it)
Step 3: Repurpose and distribute as you go, not weeks later
Step 4: Map everything into 4 parallel content streams (this is less complex than it sounds)
Paid subscribers: There’s a new annual content calendar & strategy template in the MKT1 template library, alongside a handful of other content-specific resources you can copy and adapt.
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Step 1: Map out monthly-ish content themes
For the first couple years of MKT1, I wrote one big newsletter a month. All my content was centered on a monthly theme, except for some repurposed and one-off social content. I wrote an “anchor” newsletter related to the monthly theme, and then created an additional newsletter for paid subscribers, templates and resources, an occasional event, and my main social posts all around this theme. This is still mostly true—even though I typically publish more than one big thing a month these days.
I usually make a rough roadmap with my monthly themes 3–6 months in advance. When I’m planning out these themes, I try to get breadth across my content pillars (e.g. ecosystem marketing), but depth on my perceptions (e.g. “Marketing is a strategic function–up there with product”). More on my pillars and perceptions in the previous newsletter »
The point of laying out high-level themes is to make sure you have proper coverage of the things that matter most to your business before you jump into the content creation process. But also, if I didn’t make a high-level content calendar this way, I think I might lose my mind a little (or a little more than I already have). I need to have a high-level topic I’m thinking about for a while and not spread myself too thin mentally. I think this goes for entire marketing teams too, focus helps.
Here’s an example of how I lay out monthly themes:
On the flip side, don’t over publish
Your cadence for creating “anchor” or “big” content doesn’t need to be monthly. You need to adjust your cadence for your company. You can do a quarterly theme if it better suits you. Sometimes my own themes span across 2 months (e.g “Account-driven GTM” and “Annual planning” spanned 2 months). Semi-counter-intuitively, you should default to less, not more.
Don’t make new stuff all the time if your quality bar and distribution are taking a hit. If you are making too much stuff and not even having time or bandwidth to distribute it, your fuel & engine are out of whack. And my number 1 rule of marketing is to keep your fuel and engine aligned and in balance with each other and with your audience.
For me at MKT1 this is relatively easy to keep balanced. My content is on a platform that helps me grow subscribers. And now with my large subscriber base I have built-in distribution. I also have a decent audience on LinkedIn for distribution. For startups without an audience yet, keeping this in balance can be a lot harder.
Warning: Many startups make too much fuel, and lack a strong engine
Most companies focus too much on creating net-new content, treating their editorial calendar like a perpetual hunger that must be constantly fed (was I actually hungry when writing this? probably). It definitely doesn’t help marketing slow down when leaders demand “x pieces of content a month.” This mindset leads to shallow content that doesn’t drive real impact. After all, content isn’t really a volume game, it’s a quality game.
Try to avoid getting stuck in this hamster wheel of constantly looking for “new” ideas to add to your calendars!
Thought experiment: Make nothing new for 6 months
So here’s a thought experiment I often run with growth- and late-stage companies I work with: If you published nothing new next quarter, what would your social calendar look like?
When I ask this, people usually say, “Oh we have enough content created that we could share it for another 6 months and do nothing new, but I’m not allowed to do that!”
I then ask, “Why not?” If you have quality content that hasn’t been properly distributed and/or repurposed, why not use it?
Yes, making nothing new can be a tough sell internally (especially to your CEO or sales team), and you probably will want to make one or two new big things at least—since business needs, audience wants, and market forces do change.
But it’s often riskier to focus only on generating new ideas than to double down on the good stuff you already have. New content takes time, budget, and coordination, and most of it never performs as well as your best work that’s already published. Repurposing lets you get more value from proven content, reinforce key messages, and reach more people across more channels, without the constant pressure to reinvent the wheel. So if you’re considering a big new content project, your default should be “no” unless there’s a compelling reason it’s truly additive and uniquely valuable.
Repetition is a good thing, for your content team and your audience.
It bears repeating (pun intended) that repetition and consistency are essential in marketing. Your audience is likely not watching every single thing you do, so saying something more than once, and in different ways, is not only a good way to get mileage out of your content, it’s a smart strategy. In other words, it’s okay to sound a bit like a broken record:
More from MKT1
✂️ Templates and discounts for paid subscribers: Paid subscribers can find all templates here, including a ton of content marketing templates (audience analysis template, content examples, mapping content to funnel stages, GACCs brief, content roadmap, etc). Active discounts on products we recommend.
🧑🚀 Job board: Jobs from the MKT1 community. Paid subscribers can add jobs to our job board for free.
👁️ Related newsletters: Content Roadmapping, Content Distribution, Perceptions, Behind the scenes of my content strategy
📖 Keep reading: Paid subscribers get access to the rest of this newsletter which shows how I work off a pre-build calendar, plan ahead for repurposing, and use roadmaps to track everything.