How to Create an Editorial Calendar

What is an editorial calendar and how do you create one?

An editorial calendar is imperative for any business that creates and publishes content. This is the map by which you run the content show.

Making a plan for your content offers the following benefits:

• You can save time by batch-producing content (i.e. create a whole bunch of content ahead of time in one sitting… one and done!)

• Your content can be more consistent for your audience, building credibility for your brand

• Your audience will know to expect quality content from you, as long as you stick to your plan

• You can ideate content more easily with planning around campaigns, themes, or events

• You can be more intentional with how you want to grow your audience, produce content in specific formats, and deliver at precise intervals

• … and more

How to Create an Editorial Calendar

1. You Need a Platform

   First, you need to determine which platform will suit your needs best. You will want something that can be viewed in calendar mode (or set up to look like a calendar), as well as options for inserting or viewing fields like categories, tags, formats, authors, due dates, and tasks. A few platform options for setting up a good editorial calendar are Asana, Trello, or Google Sheets.
   
   Planning scheduled posts can be done inside or outside of the platform you use for building out your editorial calendars. Not all of your content will be for posting on social media, so using separate platforms works well. I personally like using Asana for planning content.
   
   Pro Tip: in the drafting phase of creating an editorial calendar, it is often easiest to start with a blank Word or Google Doc. Open one up and capture everything there, share it with key stakeholders, and then use the final version to enter it all into your calendar platform of choice.

2. Take a Long-Term View

   Now that you’ve decided on a platform, you can start thinking about the content itself. When thinking long-term about content, I typically consider 4 timeframes: (1) 5 years out (this would be major big-bucket items to keep in mind), (2) annually, (3) monthly or quarterly, and (4) weekly.
   
   With those timeframes laid out, think about your goals. Keep these at the forefront as you plan your content. What are your company-wide goals? What are your department’s goals? What are the goals you have for your content?
   
   You have captured goals so you can track progress, but that’s not quite enough. You’ll also want to write down all of your company’s major campaigns, events, and/or themes that could be relevant to your published content. These will likely fit into and/or overlap with each other underneath your goals. It can start to feel more like a matrix… Break down those campaigns, events, and/or themes into the four timeframes.
   
   It should start to look something like this:
   
   Goal: Grow email subscribers by 20% year-over-year
   Goal: Increase website traffic by 25% this year
   
   Next Year: New Product Launch
   
   Q1 Theme: Goal-setting & motivation
   Q2 Theme: Spring rain brings flowers
   Q3 Theme: Pumpkin spice & everything nice
   Q4 Theme: Annual fundraiser
   

3. Determine Formats & Frequencies

   Now that you have a long-term look at all of your upcoming goals and major campaigns, events, and/or themes written down, it is time to determine the content types and publishing frequency you can realistically sustain. Keep in mind that some content formats take a lot longer to produce than others. A highly produced video series will inevitably take longer than a social reel.
   
   It is a great idea to mix up content formats so that you serve your audience well and keep them interested. Repurposing content is great for this! You can turn a webinar into a blog series, or an email series into an eBook, or a podcast episode into a blog post. Another thing to remember is that the attention span of your audience will vary depending on the platform they are engaging with. Someone scrolling through a social feed will have a very short attention span, whereas someone reading articles on Medium will be in the reading/watching mindset, ready to consume a bit more content.
   
   Consider the following questions:
   - How many people will be working to ideate, produce, publish, and distribute your content?
   - What types of content do you currently produce? How is it performing?
   - How often are you currently publishing content? How is it working so far?
   - What formats can you add (or even omit) from your plan?
   - What media outlets do you plan to use for publishing and distributing content? (social, email, podcast, etc.)
   - Who in your audience uses those platforms? How often are they engaging on those platforms?
   - What is the ideal publishing frequency on each platform you are considering?
   - How long does it take your team to produce each type of content? (If you don’t have a process, make one!)
   
   Example list of formats & frequencies:
   
   Blogs: 2 per month
   Story Videos: 1 per quarter
   Social Reels: 1 per week
   eBooks: 2 per year
   Email Newsletters: 1 per month
   

4. Plan the Big Stuff

   You now have a list of your goals, major campaigns/themes, content formats, and publishing frequencies. Next, start putting the major pieces into the calendar. If you know you have an event on a specific date, add that in. If you have any milestones planned for your company that are relevant to your content, add those in, too. Input your content formats and frequencies to the calendar. If you decided to do one blog post every two weeks, then add those to your calendar. You can determine content topics in the next step, but if you know of specific topics you’d like to cover in specific pieces on the calendar (i.e. a goal-setting blog the first week of January), then fill those in.
   
   Look back at your goals. Is your calendar taking shape in such a way that you will hit those goals? What’s missing? What is on the calendar that doesn’t really need to be? It may help to play out some scenarios with your team to see if your drafted calendar is realistic.
   

5. Fill in the Gaps

   Now that you have the major content pieces in the calendar, it is time to fill in the gaps. Oftentimes, there will be some months that are heavy on content and others that are light. Zoom out and consider the production time/effort and frequency that currently exists in your draft. Where are there spaces that need filling in or moving around?
   
   It is usually easiest to fill in gaps with short-form content, such as social posts, video snippets, testimonials, or one-off email campaigns. You could plan for a social post 2-3 times per week on a given platform, and then regroup each month to plan those out more specifically throughout the year. It is helpful to have specifics planned out ahead of time, but don’t let that hinder you!
   
   Pro Tip: Many times, topics can be fluid on publishing date, as long as they fit in the overall theme or campaign. Being able to practice flexibility and adapt throughout the year is incredibly helpful. So hold your calendar with open hands and be willing to change things up as the year progresses.
   
   

6. Update the Platform & Assign All Tasks

   Finally, you’ve got everything documented! Now you can add in each content piece to your platform of choice, put due dates on each one, and assign each task to a specific person. Work backward from your publish date to create subtasks for each step of the content process. This will vary based on team and content type, but a general process would be:
   
   Draft > Review > Make Edits > Review > Finalize & Export > Review > Create Marketing Assets > Write Captions > Publish > Distribute > Analyze Performance > Repurpose (if applicable)
   
   There will likely be different people assigned to different parts of the process. The beauty of a team is that you can accomplish so much more with a collective and see all of the incredible skills of everyone involved shine through in the final product.
   
   Once all tasks and subtasks are assigned, stick to it! Content cannot be published if it isn’t actually produced. Hold each other accountable. And remember to measure performance. Putting something out there and then never checking on it will get you nowhere but on a hamster wheel of content production that may or may not be hitting the mark for your audience.

Creating an editorial calendar doesn't have to be overwhelming.

Content marketing is where I thrive. I can take it off your plate.