The Power of an Editorial Calendar
Being prepared is never a bad thing.
Thanks to Stil from Unsplash for the picture above.
When you're running a business it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day. You have deadlines and meetings, and there are emails to send, customers to stay on top of, staff to manage...the list goes on. But when you stop and think about how many hours go into each day trying to keep your business afloat (and what happens if one of those days is taken over by life) it's easy to see that there's more than enough time for creating content for your website or blog.
However, many small businesses don't take advantage of this opportunity because they aren't sure how or where to start. That's where an editorial calendar comes in handy! In this post we'll talk about why having an editorial calendar is important and give you some tips on how best to utilise one.
An editorial calendar provides visibility.
An editorial calendar provides visibility. As mentioned above, it allows you to see the big picture. You can easily see what needs to be done and when, and how all the pieces fit together. With this information in hand, you can better manage your time and resources—and prioritise accordingly.
An editorial calendar also helps you identify overdue tasks that may negatively impact your project's success if not completed on time. This type of transparency is vital for keeping everyone involved informed about what's going on with a project at any given time—and for preventing any surprises from coming up down the road (which would only add stress).
Editorial calendars help you plan.
Here's how it works: You sit down, and decide what you want to accomplish each month. Then, you plan out your editorial calendar accordingly.
You can do this in a number of ways:
By quarter (January through March, April through June, May through August)
By month (March through April or May through June)
By week (Sundays are for planning photos for the following week; Mondays are for writing the posts themselves; Tuesdays are for research and interviewing sources; Wednesdays are for reading sources' books/articles etc.)
By day (I'll write one post per day at X time on Y day)
Editorial calendars will help you look ahead.
An editorial calendar will help you plan ahead. You can see what you have planned for the next few months, as well as what you need to do in the future. You may also find it helpful to keep track of what you've done in the past and/or are doing right now.
Editorial calendars are a time-saver.
If you're wondering whether or not an editorial calendar could help you streamline your content creation process, the answer is a resounding yes. How much time do you spend writing and editing articles? A few hours? Maybe even just 30 minutes? Well, what if I told you that using an editorial calendar can save you about 80% of that time? That's right: instead of spending several hours writing and editing each article (or whatever it is), it would only take around 20 minutes.
The best way to use an editorial calendar is by laying out all content ideas in advance so they're ready when they need to go live on your website.
This means that instead of scrambling at the last minute to come up with new ideas for blog posts or social media updates, everything has already been planned out in advance so all that remains is simply getting those pieces into place online on their designated timespans.
Editorial calendars increase accountability.
Editorial calendars are a great way to stay organized and on top of your work. They help you by:
Organizing your workload: With an editorial calendar, you can see what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and how much time is left before the deadline. This helps reduce stress because everyone knows what’s expected of them in order for the project to happen on time.
Improving accountability: A clear schedule also improves accountability because it shows who is responsible for which task at every stage in the process—from planning through completion.
Editorial calendars improve your content quality.
It’s an easy way to plan ahead.
You can see what content you have already created and what is missing.
It helps you stay on top of trends in your industry (and capitalize on them).
You can see what content is trending on social media, keeping you up-to-date with the latest information consumers are searching for online.
An editorial calendar will make it easier for you to be more effective at content marketing in less time
An editorial calendar will make it easier for you to be more effective at content marketing in less time.
You can use an editorial calendar to plan ahead, look ahead, and manage your content marketing. Additionally, the visibility that comes from using an editorial calendar not only helps you stick to a plan but also makes it possible for interested parties (like readers and customers) to see what’s coming up.
As you can see….editorial calendars are a necessary tool for any content marketer. They help you plan and organize your content, which means that you can spend less time scrambling to put together something that will actually be helpful. More than anything else, though, they make it possible for you to look ahead at what’s coming next without having to worry about everything else on your plate right now. If you don’t have an editorial calendar yet or feel like yours could use some improvements, then follow our advice above—it really works!