Planning ahead: How an editorial calendar helps
One of the most important tools to a person responsible for their company’s content marketing strategy is the editorial calendar.
Planning content in advance is an essential element of marketing strategies. You know what you’re doing and when you are doing it. An editorial calendar takes away some of the uncertainty of what’s ahead.
An editorial calendar helps you, as the content creator, envision the planned content – your blogs, narrative stories, surveys, question-and-answer articles, downloadable publications – for the week, the month, or longer. You can plan and coordinate publication of content with relevant events and milestones. By knowing what’s coming ahead, you can set up time in your schedule to get up to speed.
Organization is essential when it comes to your content creation strategy, and the editorial calendar is a key way to stay organized.
There’s always creating and customizing your own, editorial plan spreadsheet with Google or Excel. It’s free, and you can customize it to your own needs and specifications. For those looking for a template to create an editorial calendar, there are plenty out there. Here are three of them:
- This editorial calendar plugin from WordPress allows the user to update both the calendar and the unpublished posts.
- Looking for something more visual? This Kapost template lists color-coded updates for writers, editors and publishers. It’s marketed toward mid-sized and enterprise marketing companies and brands.
- There’s also this content marketing calendar template from Vertical Measures, a download that provides users with their own tutorial, a sample calendar to illustrate how a business might use it.
What has your experience been with editorial calendars? Do they help? Any suggestions on how to use them better? Let us know.
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