You’ve got a lot of things going on each day, each week, each month. Taking time to layout an editorial calendar can help you keep track. You probably already use a calendar for your business to keep track of appointments, projects, tasks and more. You may even include some personal items on your calendar. A good calendar system is an effective tool.
I recommend your editorial calendar should be developed as standalone for easy reference. However, you can add specific tasks to your business calendar if that helps you stay on track. Using a table or grid for your editorial calendar can be very helpful, particularly if you are sharing this with others. You can have a column that denotes who is responsible for the tasks included if you choose.
Editorial calendars are specific to social media posts, blog articles, content creation or other writing and publishing tasks. Items to include are the date, topic, title, posting medium, assigned to or notes. You can put together the columns as you wish, but the key is that they allow you to know who is doing what at a glance and when these tasks are to be completed (or when the must be started). At first, you may benefit from having a lot of detail included so there isn’t confusion. After you become used to the structure of your calendar you may find making slight changes or eliminating items makes more sense.
Any calendar is a tool and using this tool should help you be more efficient. If it’s not then either that tool isn’t for you or you need to find a better tool. When I work with clients who want blog content or social media posting, one of the first things we do after our consultation is come up with a working editorial calendar that helps everyone know what’s happening and what’s expected to happen.
Need help getting your editorial tasks off your “to do” list an moving forward? Contact me for a consultation to see how I can help you.
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