Creating an Editorial Calendar

Purpose-driven editorial calendar

Editorial strategy

1. WHAT IS AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR?

DEFINE YOUR EDITORIAL CALENDAR
So what is an editorial calendar? Well it's best defined as a written document that organizes the
timing of your content production, publishing, distribution, and measurement efforts. The
document helps make collaboration and strategizing with a team much easier. An effective
editorial calendar outlines what specific content is being produced and published by your
organization. Timing of this process, content ownership and other details involved with your
content. It's a flexible document that will definitely change over time as campaigns get altered,
product gets delayed, content gets improved and more.

An editorial calendar is primarily an execution document that should be used in tandem with your
content strategy which is created for planning purposes.

BENEFITS OF A SUCCESS EDITORIAL CALENDAR

1. It helps your company in planning and organizing campaigns, concepts, and ideas related
to content.
Through the organization editorial calendar provides, you and your team can consistently
brainstorm ideas and concepts ahead of time for a collection on the document. Think of
this practice as an ongoing brain dump of all your ideas to address later.
This way you're regularly collecting and discussing topics for campaigns to prepare for the
team when it comes time to actually do the work. An organized approach prevents
confusion around when content is published, who is responsible, where it'll be distributed,
and other details to help give your content the greatest chance at succeeding.
2. The second benefit to using an editorial calendar is it allows your brand to remain
strategic. This document is meant to guide your editorial timeline, but is not set in stone
and should be adjusted consistently to adapt to changes in your strategy. This helps your
colleagues remain focused on progress with content and alter their work based on any
adjustments to the original plan. For example, let's say your organization ran a three-
month test on LinkedIn to see if posting more often had any impact. You discover that by
sharing four times a week instead of three times a week drove more interactions on
LinkedIn and more traffic to your website.
3. Team collaboration is the third benefit to using an editorial calendar, as the document acts
as one place every contributor in department can review what's happening. A calendar
can help reduce the amount of emails, chats, and phone calls happening between
 colleagues, which all translates to time saved. Coordination is key when organizing the
efforts of multiple people all working on the same content campaign. A calendar can help
prevent issues coordinating assets, getting your approvals, and lay out what is needed to
run a program across departments. Tools like Google Sheets, Trello, and CoSchedule make
it simple for all members to view the same document across devices to ensure everyone is
working toward the same goal.
4. The final benefit is buy-in from stakeholders. Getting your boss to approve and
acknowledge your campaigns is important, which an editorial calendar can help secure by
having all upcoming content at their fingertips. Reviewing an editorial calendar makes it
easier for a supervisor to see what's in production at a glance, providing them with a
roadmap of what's happening with content company-wide, making it easier for leadership
to approve, deny, alter, and even suggest ideas to enhance your approach to content. The
goal of their involvement is to help improve the performance of your company's content.

An editorial calendar has many benefits, but most of all it helps you strategize to improve your
content and foster better communication with your team.

ELEMENS OF A SUCCESSFUL EDITORIAL CALENDAR

There are a few ways to build a results oriented editorial calendar. Your calendar exists to make it
easier to achieve your objectives with content, whether that is driving more awareness,
establishing trust, or otherwise. If your calendar is set up incorrectly, it can quickly become a
burden as opposed to a useful tool for moving your marketing efforts forward. Strike a balance by
including enough information on the calendar so that is actionable, but also not too much
information that may make it overwhelming.

Every editorial calendar should include five elements to be both comprehensive, and focused on
the right tasks.
1. First, and editorial calendar needs a timeline that outlines when and content and
campaigns are being created, published, and distributed each week. The timing element to
an editorial calendar is typically broken down by showcasing a month per page. Now this
will make it easier for everyone to view what's happening both on a daily and weekly basis
each month. The other pages of an editorial calendar should feature future months, which
makes it simple to review what's ahead, but doesn't overwhelm a person when viewing a
specific page. Everyone on your team needs to understand the timeline your calendar
covers to properly plan their tasks.
For instance, a blog post might require two weeks of preparation from start to finish, and
this timing should be taken into account on your calendar.
2. Secondly, add the pieces of content your business is planning to produce in different time
slots throughout the calendar. Label your content with the name the topic is covering to
quickly tell the difference between each individual item included. You might label and
upcoming podcast episode discussing exercise tips for runners with the following
description: Podcast Episode Three: Running Tips. Or, you could label and upcoming blog
post on healthy dinner recipes with the following label: Blog: Healthy Dinner Recipes.
3. The third element is establishing ownership of your content by assigning each individual,
or department to the items they are responsible for. Establish each person's role in the
overall content process whether they are an editor, content producer, or project manager,
and ensure their contribution is clear on the calendar. This is important to ensure no
 content is neglected, and that the right person completes each item on the calendar in a
timely manner.
4. The fourth element to account for is the process of both creating and promoting your
content.
When creating content, clarify what types of content you're referring to as many calendars
include a few different types of content on the same document. Whether you're creating
white papers, podcasts, gifs or other formats, it is important for all contributors to be
aware of which types of content are being created. Each type of content has unique
considerations when being produced, like how long it takes to develop the content,
resources needed, what departments are involved, et cetera. For a promotion, identify on
the calendar where your content will live once published, and what specific channels your
team will use to distribute content.
Some forms of content will live on your website, while others will be published on
channels like SlideShare, YouTube, SoundCloud, or elsewhere, which needs to be
accounted for. Each channel requires different optimizations to upload content, and is
comprised of a unique audience with their own preferences all worth noting ahead of
time. When it's time to start promoting your content recognize that it may necessitate the
creation of more content to be scheduled on your calendar. For example, if you've
published a blog post on your website and plan to remote it further on Facebook, this
requires additional imagery, and copies from both that article.
5. Lastly, the fifth element is to include a section for miscellaneous notes. His section is
useful for detailing what assets are needed for a piece of content, or what metadata will
best optimize your content. You can take notes about what themes you will address, or
what major holidays and events you'll want to coordinate with. Now, don't add each of
the considerations to the miscellaneous notes, but instead pick and choose which are the
most relevant for your needs.
There you have it. Start thinking about how your organization will align these five elements into an
editorial calendar that is relevant to your circumstances and goals.

TYPES OF EDITORIAL CALENDARS

One calendar just isn't enough, you need a few. The reason, one editorial calendar won't meet the
needs of different departments and contributors. You also don't want to overload any one
calendar with tons of irrelevant information. Multiple calendars will help you really focus your
efforts. Understanding the different calendars worth producing can help your company effectively
manage an editorial strategy. There are two main categories of editorial calendars, Master
calendars and secondary calendars. To avoid confusion at this organization, use one tool to
manage all of your editorial calendars in the same dashboard.

A MASTER EDITORIAL CALENDAR provides all readers with a high level view of what's happening
across a program without the specifics. This calendar shows activity with content on each channel,
department, giving stakeholders an overview of all editorial work, minus and unnecessary details.
This type of calendar is especially useful for your boss, who's looking to review an editorial on a
broad scale, doesn’t need to view too much information on the document. Include scheduled
content, major campaigns, themes addressed, holidays and relevant events. Content types and
publishing dates across departments and channels on a master calendar to ensure it is actionable
and provides a broad editorial overview.
The other categories of editorial calendars are SECONDARY CALENDARS. Which provide the
necessary details around your content in a department or as it relates to a specific task. Most
organizations use a couple secondary calendars so that contributors only see and interact with a
document relevant to their roles and responsibilities.

There are two types of secondary calendars, DEPARTMENT-SPECIFIC AND TASK-SPECIFIC

CALENDARS.

A DEPARTMENT-SPECIFIC CALENDAR, as it states in the name, outlines the editorial requirements

of an area of your business that manages content in some form.

Examples of department-specific calendars would be,

 a public relations calendar,
 an internal communications calendar,
 a marketing calendar,
 a research and development calendar,
 a customer service calendar,
 an engineering calendar,
 etcetera.

If a department creates content at your company, consider providing them with a secondary
calendar to help organize their needs.

A TASK SPECIFIC CALENDAR focuses on planning out the necessary aspects of content creation,
content promotion, or both parts of the process.

These types of secondary calendar highlights all the details related to each step of the content
workflow to assist your team on the day to day management of editorial. These details include
ideas for future content; assess needed, additional notes on content, ownership of each part of
the development and promotion process and more.

 Example of task-specific calendars would be,

 a social media calendar,
 blog calendar,
 a video production calendar,
 a podcast calendar,
 a written content calendar,
 a visuals calendar,
 an email newsletter calendar,
 Etcetera.

Feature both content creation and promotion on the same calendar when possible, but sometimes
there's just too many details to coordinate. In this case, an editorial task may require its own
calendar to manage it properly, like the production of a video series might require. The goal here
is not to create as many calendars as possible, but instead understand the two categories of
calendars and apply them to your situation. Every brand investing in content should build out a
master calendar and a few secondary calendars to handle this process with ease.
2. GOALS OF YOUR CALENDAR
HOW TO PAIR AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR WITH THE RIGHT DEPARTMENT
Using multiple calendars to run your content marketing is important, but don't overdo it. In this
video, we're gonna discuss four considerations to decide which departments need their own
editorial calendar, or who should just stick with an existing one. So the first thing to do is identify
who decides. The responsibility in making this decision lies with your marketing department, as
they should oversee all editorial work. Ideally, marketing should know your editorial plans inside
and out. They are aware of company initiatives, and they can ensure all editorial content has a
consistent tone, mission, and objective.

Departments outside of marketing that may require their own editorial calendar are
 Public Relations,
 Internal Communications,
 Human Resources,
 Sales,
 Customer Service,
 Production,
 and others.

The first consideration to help decide whether a department should have their own calendar is if
multiple people plan to use it. There's no perfect rule here, but if a department has three to five
employees working on content, then they should have their own calendar. This way, the number
of contributors to your calendar is kept at a small number, and keeps the document highly focused
on specific goals, needs, and preferences.

If less than three people are working on content from a department, then their input may be easily
integrated into an existing calendar. For example, if your company's engineering department ran
its own blog, and only had two people contributing to it, using an existing calendar would be
sufficient. However, if you had six people contributing to that blog, it would be ideal for them to
have their own calendar, due to the size of their team.

Another consideration for creating a calendar is the complexity of a department's editorial work.
How do you determine complexity? The complexity of a department's efforts are defined by the
amount of content being created, how many steps in the process they're involved with, and the
types of content being created.

In terms of the amount of content created, discuss and analyze how much content a department is
currently producing, or would like to in the future. For instance, is your department creating three
blog posts a month, or three blog posts a week? The more content you're producing, the more
likely another calendar is required. Also define whether this group will focus on one step, or a few
steps in the process. The more involved the team is in creating and promoting content, the more
likely they'll require their own calendar to coordinate. For example, if a production team shoots,
edits, and promotes your videos, then they are involved in three steps of the process.

This level of involvement will likely require that they have their own editorial calendar. Certain
types of content are more complex than others, requiring a different amount of time, talent, and
resources to create, as compared to other formats. Complex content will need its own calendar,
while a simpler form of content that's easy to produce can be added to an existing calendar. The
commitment required to create an image for a blog post, as compared to a Youtube video, is
drastically different, when you compare the commitment of four hours weekly versus 14 hours
weekly.