5 Tips for Using an Editorial Calendar to Manage Your Online Content

A Realistic Editorial Calendar is the Key to a Successful Blogging Strategy

We’ve all been there. You start off a new blog with the best of intentions, looking forward to slowly building your audience until you’ve established yourself as a leader in your niche as your credibility builds. Time passes, and daily activity dwindles into weekly posts into sporadic writing followed by total inactivity and the unrewarding feeling of a job left unfinished.

Used properly, an editorial calendar can provide your blogging campaign with just the right level of organization and accountability you need to follow through on your plans.

1. Be Realistic: It’s find to reach for the stars when you’re planning out your editorial calendar as long as you can also keep both feet on the ground. Be honest about how much time and energy you or your team has available to devote to creating and distributing fresh content.
2. Include a Time Limit: In the same token, don’t bite off more than you can chew by planning out an editorial calendar that covers an unreasonable length of time. Set yourself some reasonable goals that you can accomplish over the course of a month or a quarter, and distribute your necessary calls for account accordingly.
3. Staying on Topic: Editorial calendars are also a great way to keep your content on target. By scheduling topics that are relevant to your business and related to your primary keywords, you’ll avoid the temptation to stray away from your niche.
4. Plan Ahead for Seasonal Content: In addition to producing evergreen content, keep your blog timely and relevant by scheduling posts related to topics at the forefront of your audience’s mind throughout the year. From tax season and back to school to the holidays and New Year’s resolutions, there’s nearly always some shared cultural event that you write about in relation to your professional services.
5. Be Flexible: There’s no way that you’re going to be able to plan ahead for everything. Life happens, and things are going to occasionally come your way that will take precendence over your editorial calendar. You’ll also probably find that your blogging efforts take require a bit more time and care than you may have anticipated. Be patient and make adjustments to your calendar as needed, and you’ll avoid yourself a lot of unnecessary stress and frustration.

Suggested Exercise:

Take a look at some of the different editorial calendar templates that are available, and choose one that suits the needs of your blogging strategy. Schedule a series of blog posts that you can realistically produce over the next few weeks. As the days go by, keep your calendar up to date with your progress.

Is maintaining an editorial calendar helping you meet your blogging goals, or is it creating an additional burden to your workload? If it’s getting in the way of doing your job, you probably need to scale back the level of detail that your trying to track.