Photo Credit: WagaBoy
For decades, the term “editorial calendar” has been used by traditional print journalists in board rooms and staff meetings, but we are in a new era of communications and the editorial calendar is a helpful tool that can also be used by PR specialists, marketing team managers and even business owners. But what is it? An editorial calendar is simply a content and interaction plan that allows effective planning and strategic follow up. The document paints the bigger picture for bloggers and journalists as they write articles throughout the year. On any platform, content should be continuously fresh and relevant for your audience; an editorial calendar allows bloggers and business content marketers the chance to think like publishers.
How do I make an editorial calendar?
There are many ways to get to that final destination but the starting point remains the same. Begin by writing down all of your ideas; this includes topics and themes for your blog in addition to relevant dates and events that could correspond with special themes or postings (e.g. product releases, special events, holidays, seasonal changes, etc). Having all of your year or season’s events and activities written in one place will promote continuity when creating content for your readers throughout the year. After you have organized your thoughts on paper you can begin creating a plan and a schedule for posts; this is the most important phase of creating an editorial calendar.
Creating an editorial calendar that is unique to your vision can be as easy as designing a few tabs in an excel spreadsheet. Picking tabs and topics for your personal calendar can be unique to your goals, but start with a tab titled “Master Calendar;” this will be a general overview of potential topics along with key dates and events. The master calendar is a brief synopsis of where your year will go and is a more organized way of tracking the information to find during your initial brainstorming session. After you have created your master calendar, you can then move forward and create another tab within your workbook to house your new detailed editorial calendar.
Check back soon for part two. We will give you step by step instructions for creating an editorial calendar that will ensure high quality content for your followers and optimal success for your business or blog.