by Lexie Thomas, WP owner and content expert, and Moriah Morter, WP writing intern
Content planning is a beast. But that’s because content creators and marketers know the power and possibilities a single piece of content can have! If you’re creating pieces that align with your company’s strategic objectives and looking at how to leverage them … the list of places your content can be adapted for and pushed live quickly becomes daunting.
Staring at a wall of color-coded sticky notes? Lost in a string of emails? Those are your signs: You’ve reached the point that a shared content calendar is a necessity.
Types of content calendars
Content-planning tools have many names. For this article, we’re going to talk in terms of an editorial calendar, which can guide your long-term content strategy and provide a clear trajectory for all your content development efforts.
Where you set up your calendar is another consideration—there’s a sea of tools out there designed to streamline your content planning and empower you with extras like automatic publishing, AI, and analytics. For those collaborating with large teams and outside vendors, this path might be wise. For a smaller in-house team, a spreadsheet could be a perfectly reasonable place to start.
What is an editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar:
- Answers big picture questions that clarify content purpose, value, and intended audience.
- Provides a visual for how multiple content types can interact throughout the year and be timely for your customers.
- Aligns your content with your company’s brand voice, marketing themes, and keyword strategies.
- Helps ensure your team is producing materials that support your business’s strategic goals. (Because if your content isn’t contributing to growth—whether that KPI is warm leads or an actual increase in profitability—your content is not doing its job.)
What types of content are covered with an editorial calendar?
This varies from business to business. One approach is to zone in on organic content—or content you produce and publish, but do not pay for its guaranteed placement outside your own platforms. Some examples are:
- Blog articles
- Videos and reels
- Social media posts on various channels
- Press releases
- Podcasts and webinars
- E-newsletters or print newsletters
- Direct mailings
- Annual reports
Companion tools for editorial calendars
It’s entirely possible to effectively use one or more of these tools alongside an editorial calendar:
- A social media calendar that digs into details like actual post text and day-to-day scheduling and publishing
- A media-buy calendar for your pay-per-click, digital, and print ad buys
- Project planners for major productions like a catalog or conference
- A product marketing calendar that delineates when the buying cycle peaks for each of your products, so you know when you should be marketing what
The more content you’re producing and the larger your team, the more likely it is that a combination of these tools is needed to keep everyone aligned.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the benefits of an editorial calendar.
Planning ahead. At minimum, an editorial calendar covers content for a quarter; more often, a year is mapped out. This allows content strategists to view their production with an overarching perspective.
Use your editorial calendar to share major deadlines. (But not daily deadlines—save those for your companion tools.) Taking this proactive approach prepares you for seasonal changes, holidays, big events, fundraisers, and busy seasons. Instead of posting information about your big fundraiser at the last minute, you’ll know to start generating awareness two to three months in advance.
Planning so far in advance can appear restrictive. In reality, implementing an editorial calendar can enhance flexibility. With a proactive approach, you can ensure your major content deadlines are met in a timely manner with the ability to adapt if changes are needed.
Repurposing and expanding content. An editorial calendar is often the jumping-off point for identifying what content is being created that has the potential to be repurposed into another outlet. For example, an explainer video can be easily morphed into a keyword-rich blog article and parceled into a series of engaging social posts or even clipped into several reels. Without a visual, these relationships can be hard to see … and even if you know they’re there, they may not happen without getting them documented.
And, if you’re lacking in content diversity, an editorial calendar can reveal steppingstones to introduce content variety and spark ideas for new content types.
Providing clarity and encouraging communication. An editorial calendar can play an important role in revealing when you need a group meeting, further clarity, or more research.
If you’re working with external creative experts like the Write Place, collaborating to develop an editorial calendar can help streamline the process by defining tasks owners and needed deliverables.
For leaders and project managers, editorial calendar meetings provide the overview needed to:
- Clarify bandwidth
- Set budgets
- Decide production timelines for larger projects
- Highlight valuable content for everyone
- Preemptively ask questions
Creating the right content at the right time for the right audience is an art … and a science. Using an editorial calendar is one place where creativity can meet process, paving the way for a powerful content production plan and, ultimately, messages your audience appreciates and engages with.
Supporting sources and related reading:
