We all know a long term strategy to developing content is necessary for our sites to become known as authoritative. 

Yet most webmasters, bloggers, etc. tend to think of content development along two lines:

1. Quickly conceived short postings about current news and developments in their niche (this is what most blogs are known for)
2. Thoughtful link bait that attracts inbound links from other webmasters and bloggers (check out the SEOmoz Beginners Guide for some ideas (this section and the one right after)

But what if we wanted to think longer term about how we developed and released content to our audience?  What tool might be useful?

Think Big, Just Like Old Media
For decades or even centuries, newspapers and magazines have used editorial calendars to plan and organize their content development many months ahead of time.  This was, of course, necessary because of the long lead times in producing and distributing printed publications.  Even daily newspapers would have most of their stories written days or even weeks ahead of time, but they always left room for any breaking news. 

An editorial calendar lays out what you'll be writing about months in advance.  It is used by printed publications to not only plan what will be written, but to help the salespeople sell more targeted advertising far ahead of time.  A good example of an editorial calendar can be found at Packaging Digest (PDF).

Making Readers Want to Come Back
Obviously, how you organize your content and what you write about will depend on a lot of things (your niche, your audience, your expertise, etc.), but a good way to get started is to think about some different ways you can give your readers something to look forward to.  Again, big media can give us a few ideas:

•     Regular Columns or Features
•     Annual Guides
•     Continuing Series

Lets take a look at each of these.

Regular Columns or Features
These have long been a staple in newspapers, magazines, and even television news for a long time (I think 'A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney' predates the invention of TV itself).

It is something a lot of successful bloggers are starting to do as well: SEOmoz Whiteboard Thursday Evening, Nathania Johnson's Online Marketing Quotes of the Week, Lisa Barone's Friday Recap, or even Shoemoney's recent Friday Afternoon Looking at Pamcakes (or whatever it is called). 

The great thing about a regular column is that if you're swamped with too much work and you can't commit to writing it yourself, then you can always ask a fellow blogger or frequent commenter to step in and write it for you.  That could even be the column itself - a rotating cast of guest bloggers or one regular guy or gal that shows up once a week to take over your blog. (For the over 40 crowd - remember when MTV used to actually play music and every once in a while they would turn over the network to some D-list celebrity [Pauly Shore, Weird Al, etc.] and allow them to "program" the whole day's worth of videos?  Good times.)  One thing about regular columns is that you have to commit, at least for a period of time. 

If you decide to abandon the idea later on, you need to tell your readers and give them at least some reason why: we're replacing it with something better, the guest blogger has moved on, I just want to take things in a different direction, etc.  To do anything other than this is to cheat your audience, even if it is only a few dozen regular readers.

Annual Guides
This is another area where smaller online marketers have yet to catch on, even though they are uniquely positioned to do so.  An annual guide is great for a few reasons.  By its very nature, it should be comprehensive and authoritative so it'll attract a lot of attention and hopefully links from others in your area of expertise. 

It can also be very newsworthy if it is backed by some well thought-out polls, surveys, and interviews.  And, as such, it is excellent press release material.  The reason smaller online marketers are ideally positioned for releasing an annual guide is because they cover areas of interest that a lot of bigger media outlets overlook.  No matter your niche, you can probably write a guide about it (The Annual Guide to Chuck Norris Collectibles, for instance).

If you have enough imagination, you can release an annual guide a few times a year, covering different topics at different times.

Continuing Series
This is probably the best way to bring new readers back, especially if you announce it. 

A continuing series should be like acts in a play or chapters of a book.  Think story arc.  You should leave your readers satisfied with what you've given them at the time, but enough of a teaser/cliffhanger that they'll want to come back.  I read once that an easy way to monetize some of the content on your site was to take your 70 or 80 best posts and then put them together into an e-book.  If we take a step back and reverse this, we could outline our continuing series like chapters of an e-book and just post it sequentially.  You can always go back later on and clean up the content and offer it as an all-in-one e-book solution.  Think about how satisfied your readers will be along the way.  Unless, of course, you forget to save what you're writing and leave your readers feeling empty inside- check out the BTW ;-)

Other Stuff You Should Read:
I spent a lot of time over the weekend reading every single YOUmoz post available.  There was some good stuff in there that I've missed, and I'm sure some of you have also.  From time to time, as I continue to submit to YOUmoz, I'm going to post the URLs of what I think are some of the better posts so you can take a look.  Today I have two posts from Bud Caddell. 

The first one is valuable because it talks about why members of a community should participate early, even if they know next to nothing:

Is the Quality of YOUmoz falling?

The second one is a good and short primer for writing quick attention grabbing posts:

This Message Will Self-Destruct in 10 Seconds

I hope you enjoy.