Content Marketing Strategy: Using Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is management tool used by bloggers and content publishers to control publication of content across different media: blog, email newsletters, podcasts, and social media channels. Why do you need one, you might wonder? Editorial Calendar helps you keep your content consistent and relevant, and if you work with a team – it helps everyone stay on the same page and know what’s happening and when. So how can you get one for your business? Read on to find out my top content marketing strategy tips.

Starting Points for Setting up Your Editorial Calendar

Your editorial calendar is going to differ depending on the type of content you produce and what is important for you to track in your business. So although there are 100s of templates out there – it’s unlikely one will fit like a glove for your particular business.

A simple editorial calendar that tracks the date and type of content you are planning is a great start. The more advanced editorial calendars also track more details to help you organise different content steams and repurpose existing content effectively, it can also include additional information like SEO data, social media posts, other people/businesses to include.

The program or system you use will depend on your business processes and what you prefer to use. For example, if you don’t like or don’t ever use Google documents, you are unlikely to find useful an editorial calendar set up in a Google spreadsheet. On the other hand, your computer or mobile device might not have access to Excel software, so that won’t be suitable for you.

You might also need two or more editorial calendars: a master calendar where you can see everything at a glance (blogs, podcasts, newsletters, social media) and separate calendars for specific marketing activities. Or you can use one spreadsheet with multiple tabs.

Your master editorial calendar provides an overview of all content that is planned by month and by week.

Therefore with your master calendar you can track key dates such as events, holidays or product launches that may impact which content you want to share when. With an international client base you can also include holidays in the various countries your clients come from.

For example, if you have a new special report or a product launch planned, you can plan a series of blog posts around that. Or, if you have an event or a workshop, you can plan to develop a series on top 7 (10 or any number) lessons from your workshop.

Looking at your calendar at a glance and matching it with your business goals and objectives helps you tie in your content marketing activities with your big marketing goals. Want to see a real example of what I mean? Here’s one from Forbes.

Ideally, your calendar should also help you to track inspiration too – ideas you know you want to create content around, but haven’t yet decided how. For example, you could have a separate tab for just “ideas dump” or brainstorming – before you take each idea out of there and find it a home in the schedule at a later stage.

A good editorial calendar for your blog will include:

• Who is writing content – you, your team, guest bloggers;
• Type of content – post, video, interview, infographics etc.
• SEO data – keywords, title, description.
• WordPress meta data – categories, tags.
• Planned date – also you can include stage dates like content is due by…, images due by…
• Your content goal and how you will measure it (KPIs) – optins, shares, enquiries etc.
• Performance tracking – you can input data from your marketing analytics tool.

For you as a chief marketer of your online business, an editorial calendar comes in handy for:

• Scheduling your own blog posts.
• Scheduling blog post contributions by guest authors.
• Scheduling the creation and deployment of other content (ebooks, presentations, infographics etc).
• Tracking events that can generate content (conferences, workshops, holidays).
• Gathering ideas that lead to content (comments on blog posts and social media, questions from your clients and free consults).
• Managing and scheduling social media posts.

WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugins

As most of you will run your blog on WordPress, it’s a good place to get started with setting up your first editorial calendar. Here are three WordPress editorial calendar plugins to check out:

• EditFlow combines a calendar with the ability to make editorial comments and keep track of your content budget. Plus you get a calendar to track your posts and easily drag them around. This is the plugin we use here for my blog.
• Editorial Calendar gives you an overview of scheduled posts, which you can move via drag and drop and makes it easy to track post status. You can also create and manage drafts easily.
• CoSchedule is a premium editorial calendar plugin with comprehensive features and functionality. However before you go all in and purchase a license I would advise using a free option for a white to test whether a WordPress plugin will actually be useful and helful for you – as actualy in your business you might find you prefer a Google spreadsheet (or something else – see below for some ideas!).

Other options for your Editorial Calendars

Google spreadsheet: you can develop a template for your business and easily share it with others in your team to contribute and track actions. Here’s one example here.

Excel spreadsheet: you could share it via Google or Dropbox, or just use it yourself (if it’s just you for now in the business). Some examples are available for free to download on Bob Angus blog, Brandeo blog, or Marketing Savant blog.

Post-it notes: if you are a hands-on and visual person (or just love pretty stationery like me!) then you might like this idea from Elizabeth Loves blog on planning your editorial calendar using a diary and colourful post-it notes. And this example from Damask Love looks amazing, although will take some time for DYI label creation and design.

Written-down planning: if you can’t plan on the computer and prefer a good old-fashioned pen-to-paper approach, then this idea might suit you better – Artsy Mama walks you through her approach.

 So in a nutshell…

When creating a content marketing strategy for your business it’s a great idea to set up an editorial calendar. The calendar will help you organise your content, schedule, delegate within a team, brainstorm ideas and at a glance see how different pieces of your marketing puzzle come together.

There are various tools and plugins available to implement a calendar in your business – the first step is to work out what you will track, when, who will use it, and what technology in general you are most comfortable in using.

Although there are many templates available which you can download, your actual editorial calendar will be unique to your business – so don’t be afraid to customise, chop and change, and make it your own.

If you have any questions on how to get started and how to set up an editorial calendar for your business – just get in touch or leave a comment below.

By the way, content marketing strategy and planning are part of the Marketing Mentoring I offer – you can find out more here.

Over to you!

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