Getting Organized: The Editorial Calendar
This week we are going to discuss content for your blog, from getting organized to actual ideas about what to write. I want to start the week talking about one of my favorite tools for staying organized, the editorial calendar. I briefly mentioned it here, but I want to go into a little more detail here. I have found this tool when working with clients to be very effective for keeping them on schedule and focused because it allows them to plan ahead.
If you aren’t a natural writer or are new to blogging, it’s often hard to come up with content ideas on the spot. I find this especially true when I am busy and focused on my client’s projects. The editorial calendar forces you to sit down and look at the upcoming month and begin to fill it in with ideas for your blog as well as other marketing tools. Remember we are integrating here. Look at your schedule for the upcoming month and see what may be going on that you can incorporate into your social media content. Are there upcoming trade shows, holidays, promotions? You get the idea, right?
In addition to the content, there are some other items I like to incorporate into the calendar especially when working with a team. First i like to add to the calendar what days we will be posting to the blog and include the content topic as well. This gives a bird’s eye view of your content for the month allowing you see if you have spread it out well or if you have too heavy with one topic. Of course if you are doing a series like this one, then it will be topic heavy. It all depends on your goals.
Along with the content, I like to include who is responsible for the content, again if it is a team blog. This allows each team member to look at the calendar, see what they are writing about and when so they can incorporate it into their own schedule. If there is an approval process in place, you will want to put due dates on the calendar as well just to keep things on track. Back things out from the post date to create the workflow for the calendar.
One idea for your editorial calendar is to look at what days you want to post and try to keep them consistent. This is something I have been trying to improve upon because it gives your readers a better idea of when to expect new information from you. It also helps to build content creation into your routine. Some blogs are very successful creating a certain topic of content on specific days, so that on Monday’s the readers can expect the same theme in the posts. I love this idea and have struggled to come up with a great idea. Any input would be greatly appreciated…
I would love to hear from you on this subject. Do you use a calendar to plan content? Any additional ideas we should include?
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Comments
[...] I had enough content to fill a whole month so I created my editorial calendar, which I discussed yesterday. Once I had the main topics for the month, I sat down and wrote out an outline for each post so I [...]
[...] I had enough content to fill a whole month so I created my editorial calendar, which I discussed yesterday. Once I had the main topics for the month, I sat down and wrote out an outline for each post so I [...]
Another great post, Beth…and another reminder that I need to get organized!