An editorial calendar is key to any marketing or public relations strategy, but people often ask us how to create an editorial calendar. At Point Taken, we encourage our customers to have an editorial calendar to manage their marketing and PR efforts. Not only will an editorial calendar help your team keep up with important tasks and meetings, but it is also a great way to ensure your content is published in a timely and strategic manner.

If you’re not familiar with editorial calendars, an editorial calendar is a workflow space where a team can schedule and edit their work on a daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly basis. Team members can each serve as creators and post their upcoming content, let team members give feedback and also ensure content is developed and published on a consistent basis.

To develop an editorial calendar, first make a list of your goals as an organization and decide how you want an editorial calendar to help your team meets those goals. Optimizely says there are several different formats for editorial calendars and prioritizing your company’s goals will help you determine which format will work best for your team. Spreadsheets, calendar apps, in-person white boards and more – there are many options, and some companies even use more than one option, depending on the preferences of their team,

Forbes says one of the most important things an editorial calendar can do for your organization is strategize your content. Not only does it help organize expected dates and deadlines, but it makes dealing with unexpected events more manageable.  Your editorial calendar helps your staff see the bigger picture. Some use an editorial calendar just for planning dates and timelines, but Forbes believes an editorial calendar can do so much more for your organization. 

Planning your calendar each week or month in advance (depending on your timing preference) will not only help keep your team more organized, it will also increase productivity which in turn will hopefully generate more sales or donations.

Once you have your goals laid out and a plan showing which ways an editorial calendar will help your team, Convince & Convert says you can pick your format. You can choose something as simple as an Excel spreadsheet, or you can pay for a more costly tool or software program. Another thing to keep in mind when starting your editorial calendar is the importance of categorizing. Color coding is a very popular way manage an editorial calendar. Whether assigning each team member a certain color or giving a specific type of project a color, coordination can help a team become more productive, especially when it comes to group projects.

If you are interested in starting an editorial calendar for your organization or would like to revamp what you are already using, we would love to help you take your content strategy to the next level.