Have you tried to create an editorial calendar? When trying to actively write a business blog, there is nothing worse than sitting down at your computer, staring at a blank screen, and not knowing what you’re going to write.
If this has happened to you, you’re not alone because it happens to everyone who writes a blog. By creating an editorial calendar ahead of time, you will significantly reduce the time spent staring at a blank screen since you will know what to write about ahead of time.
What is an Editorial Calendar?
An editorial calendar is simply a calendar of blog posting topics that shows you what to post when. You can setup your editorial calendar based on the frequency you plan to publish content to your business blog. You can organize the editorial calendar strictly around months of the year or you can include another layer to organize blog postings by season depending on your business.
Organizing Your Editorial Calendar
Organizing your editorial calendar by season helps with planning specific blog topics while seeing the calendar in a monthly format shows you exactly when a blog posting needs to be published. Having a clear idea of timely themes throughout the year will help keep your blog postings relevant and create a basic framework.
Similar to a retailer’s promotional calendar, your editorial calendar may include seasonal themes like:
- New Year’s Resolutions
- Wintertime
- March Madness
- Spring Cleaning
- Wedding Season
- Graduation
- Summer Vacation
- Back to School
- Football Season
- Holidays
This is just an example, but you can see how you can divide the year into different themes. It really depends on the nature of your business.
Over the theme layer, you can then place months, weeks, or days. For example:
January
Week 1: Blog topic 1
Week 2: Blog topic 2
Week 3: Blog topic 3
Week 4: Blog topic 4
February
Week 1: Blog topic 5
Week 2: Blog topic 6
Week 3: Blog topic 7
Week 4: Blog topic 8
By following the editorial calendar structure, you’ll have a framework within which to create relevant and timely blog postings. Create the framework for your business, fill in the blanks with relevant blog topics, and you will have a year’s worth of content for your business blog.
Image by Michael McCarty
Are there other ways in which you organize your editorial calendar?
Free Content Marketing Plan Template
This free template will help you plan your content marketing activity from identifying your target audience to creating an editorial calendar for managing what to post when.
Use the plan to better manage your blogging activity so you’re never short on ideas and you always have your target audience in mind when writing.
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