You’ve finally launched your blog, and it’s doing great! The comments are coming in, many people have signed up for newsletters, and you’ve got an ongoing weekly posting schedule that you’ve laid out. However, you’ve hit a wall. It’s difficult to stay on top of the topics you’ve already written about and the ones you’re supposed to be writing about soon.
How do you organize your topics? How can you ensure your marketing team is well-organized and topics aren’t repeated? Here’s the solution: create an editorial calendar!
What is an editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar serves as a visual representation of your content marketing activities, depending on the blogging strategies you have in place. It helps your marketing team keep track of ideas for blog posts, blog schedules, blogging schedules, and themes that may impact the plan for marketing content.
In contrast to a content calendar, an editorial calendar considers the bigger picture and is broken down into topics and subjects. Imagine it as the basis for all your content planning.
When creating an editorial calendar, specific facts will need to be included to benefit yourself and your staff. You might want to consider including the following items while keeping in mind the things that work for your team.
- Important dates (events, seasonality, etc.)
- Topics (subtopics could have relevance)
- Posting rhythm (weekly, monthly, etc.)
- Main distribution channels (website, social networks, etc.)
Calendars can also contain the content owners and assign the tasks to each team member responsible for creating content. The stages of production (in-process editing, approvals, etc. ) along with time frames for each one will provide an even greater degree of transparency in the coming documentation and information disclosure. Be more clear when there are delays.
At the day’s conclusion, the details in the editorial calendar should comprise elements that aid both you and the team in curating content more efficiently. If an element hinders your progress and isn’t making your content more streamlined, take it off.
What is the recommended frequency to update and use your calendar?
There’s no ideal or incorrect time to begin creating your calendar for the coming year. However, the earlier you tackle it, the more time you’ll allow your team to think about what’s coming up. A solid editorial calendar before the start of each calendar year can help guide your content strategy, ensuring everyone is following your goals.
It is crucial to be flexible. It’s not a good idea to set it in stone. Instead, go forward and make modifications as needed. Remember, an editorial calendar is intended to serve as a guide, not a directive.
We also suggest checking the schedule in advance and frequently. In reality, this involves using a calendar to ensure that your content is organized and on time. If your marketing team follows regular communication every week, you can look over the editorial calendar every meeting for an overview.
How to create a kickass editorial calendar?
Having a thorough editorial calendar is important, even when it seems so boring. Why bother when you’ve got many other things happening? You can simply write fantastic stuff when you get inspired, and you’ll be fine.
Well, sure. However, you’ll not get the results you’d like to see.
We’re big fans of editorial calendars because:
- Your major sales and promotions will be more effective.
- It is possible to plan, which is particularly important during busy times like the holiday season (B2C) and tax season (accountants and CPAs).
- Your messages will be consistent.
- It’s not a waste of time to fill the gaps.
- Your content will be more well-organized, thought-provoking, relevant, and engaging to the people you want to reach.
It’s a good idea to share the information with the entire team to ensure they’re informed of what’s happening and what’s to come down the road (especially crucial if a client tells them something! ). It’s one of the best ways to remain organized and consistent regarding the use of social media and content marketing.
Most importantly, it’s the sole method of planning your company’s expansion. Here are some of our suggestions for making the most enthralling editorial calendars for your company.
Combine multiple platforms into one calendar
It means that your blog, emails, or social media schedules will be combined into an Excel spreadsheet and a Google Sheet. If you break them up into distinct files, you might overlook something.
We would rather you not be completely confused when trying to organize or modify your calendar. To avoid having an overstuffed and cumbersome sheet, we recommend creating separate worksheets for each platform. So, your blog will be on one worksheet while your email is on a different one and your other social media accounts on the third.
Be super detailed
The more detail there is, the less confusion there will be in the future. If a team member is helping out with social media, they will all remain on the same level. If you have to switch the content, you publish based on an emerging story or trend you wish to discuss. You can shift the content that was scheduled for later on in the month (or the year).
Organize your sheet
Here’s a list of columns that you could incorporate into your blog calendar:
- Month
- Topic (fill the title when you’ve finished writing the article)
- Image concept
- Draft date
- Publish date
- Status
- Autor (if the members of your staff, associates, or suppliers are contributors to your blog)
- Keyword
- Hashtag
- Notes
Here are the columns that can be used for marketing via email:
- Month or week
- Theme
- Lead image concept
- Tip of the month or week
- The article (s) of the month/week
- Information about sales or promotions
- Draft date
- Publish date
- Status
- Hashtag
- Notes
Not to leave out social media:
- Month
- Publish date
- Status of the publication
- Topic
- Hashtag
- URL/link (for both the original and edited content)
- Copy of Facebook (what does your status update be?)
- Twitter copy
- LinkedIn copy
- Google+ copy
- and all other systems you’ll be employing
- Notes
Conclusion
Editorial calendars can make the creation of content simple! Be sure to keep an eye on your calendar and update it regularly to ensure that you don’t run empty of ideas.