A good plan makes your job much easier, and so do the right content calendar strategies. In this piece, we have some editorial tips and advice on what you need to put into your calendar for content and why a content calendar is a crucial tool.

The Importance of Content Calendar Creation for Writers

What's the point of content calendar creation for writers? Can't we just write things as they come to our heads? The 'no plans, just vibes' approach may work for amateur hobbyist writers, but if you are looking to make a living as an author or writer, then you need to have a plan. There are so many blogs online these days, and there are countless blogs that have been abandoned because of a lack of careful planning. If you want to monetize your blog or writing, you'll need to space out your content and write consistently, which means you'll need the right editorial calendar tips to follow.

Knowing what you are going to write about and when you are going to write it allows you to prepare and optimize your writing rather than throwing something together at the last minute. On top of that, using a calendar allows you to organize your blog posts and articles by theme and plan when to post on social media. Having consistent content also helps you build your author platform. Ultimately, your author platform is a key part of your brand, where you can promote yourself and even sell directly.

Why We Need the Right Content Planning Techniques to Succeed

The right content planning techniques ensure you are not under pressure to blindly come up with content at the last minute. A content calendar allows you to plan out your content in advance and organize your topics and dates.

In addition to this, planning content correctly means you will be able to spread articles, social media posts, and other content effectively. You want to have one week where you produce tons of content, followed by a lengthy spell of not having anything to post!

If you are working in a team, then content calendar strategies become all the more important as they ensure you have better communication with your colleagues and that everyone is on the same page.

Developing the Right Content Calendar Strategies

In order to develop the right content calendar strategies, you need to know what a content calendar is for. The purpose of a content or editorial calendar is to

tell you what the topic of the content is.
tell you who is responsible for the content.
tell you the relevant dates for preparing the content.
allow you to organize content efficiently.

Let's dive into editorial calendar tips, tricks, and advice.

Planning Your Content Calendar

Planning the content for your calendar takes a bit of prep work and brainstorming. The crucial thing is that you take an audience-centric approach.

This means you plan your content with your audience in mind by considering the following:

What do my readers want to read?
What do my readers come to me for?
What do my readers need?

In coming up with ideas for content, you need to keep your target audience in mind. This is basically the audience you are writing for.

It's worth looking at blogs or platforms run by similar writers to get ideas for content (although obviously, you shouldn't copy or plagiarize any of their work; you are just looking for inspiration). Then, when you have some ideas, you can do some research and further reading on these topics to see what kind of content you can create. Social media is a way for writers to interact with their audiences, so you could ask directly there what kind of things your readers want you to write about.

Content Scheduling Efficiency

The right content scheduling tactics are needed for you to plan your content correctly. A crucial aspect of this is the dates. Your content calendar should include:

The date the content needs to be written by.
When the content should be edited by.
When the content should be reviewed by.
A date for gathering images, videos, or links.
The final publishing date for the content.

It's best to be as specific as possible with dates, but at the very least, you should know the month the content needs to be ready to publish. Often, a good content planning technique for deciding dates is to start at the date or rough time you want to publish and work backward. For example, if you have a piece you want published in the first week of July, you can calculate from there how long it takes to prepare the piece so you know when to start working on it. Remember to allow time for research that is needed too.

Use the Right Content Organization Methods

In organizing your content, you have to look long-term at what your content is going to involve. This includes topics that you are going to write about or create content around. Some content is time-sensitive, and some content is evergreen.

Time-sensitive content has to be published at a certain time of the year in order to be relevant. For example, a Hallowe'en piece should be published in October rather than December. However, there are some topics that are not time-sensitive and can be published year-round.

When organizing your content, you want to spread out topics that are evergreen (always relevant to your audience) and not burn through them all immediately. If you're planning on publishing one piece every week of the year, it's best to place your time-sensitive content in your schedule first based on when it is relevant to your reader. Then, you can spread out evergreen content that doesn't rely on a specific season or time of the year.

On top of this, it's best to space out evergreen content that revolves around similar topics. If two of your evergreen topics involve the same topic, they should be spaced out. However, in terms of time-sensitive content, it is acceptable to have multiple pieces based on that topic at the relevant time of the year.

Use Calendar Management Tools to Boost Your Editorial Scheduling

When creating and planning content calendars, you need the right tools for the job. The main calendar management tool you'll need is a spreadsheet or interactive calendar of some kind. You could use a Google spreadsheet or calendar, or you could use an Excel spreadsheet with Open Office. There are other options available for online content calendars and spreadsheets, but crucially, you need a tool that:

Allows you to edit content.
Can organize the content in some way (i.e., by date).
Let's share the document with whoever else needs it.

An interactive calendar tool is an excellent content organization method to use as it can be updated regularly. It's best to use an online tool so you don't have to worry about saving and sharing individual files, which can lead to confusion over which draft is the latest.

Basically, you want a tool that makes following content calendar strategies simple and stress-free, and the right tool will help you optimize your content workflow.

Crucial Editorial Calendar Tips

Here are six editorial calendar tips you need to follow as part of your editorial scheduling best practices.

Ensure you liaise with the whole team before finalizing the calendar.
Include who is responsible for what on the calendar (particularly important if you have multiple writers or editors).
Regularly update the status of each item (i.e., in progress, being reviewed, stalled, finished, etc.).
Be as flexible as you can when you can.
Review your content calendar regularly and keep it up-to-date.
Be sure that everyone involved has access to the most up-to-date version of the content calendar.

In Summary

Using an editorial calendar helps you organize your future projects efficiently and plan out content accordingly. With the right strategies, you can be sure that you optimize your workflow by using a well-put-together calendar.