How to create an effective editorial calendar in 2023?

Editorial Calendar: Definition & Components

The editorial calendar for organizing your social media and blog content

This planning tool is a must-have for implementing your content strategy on your blog or your SMM strategy for your social networks. This dashboard gives you an overview of the content to produce over a given period.

The editorial calendar will allow you to manage, plan, and even anticipate the content to create, over a quarter or a year. You can easily distribute tasks to accomplish across different platforms (which you'll have selected beforehand), and of course according to your editorial guidelines.

Still a bit unclear for you? Let's say that a good editorial calendar, to be implemented, must answer several essential questions centered around your content:

• Who: Who is your content intended for? Who are your personas?

• Why: What are your objectives? What is your call-to-action?

• What: What are your topics? What do you want to talk about?

• When: When do you want to publish your content?

• How: What format for your content (blog article, infographic, video, etc.)?

• Who will be responsible for creating this content?

And above all, don't forget that an editorial calendar is only effective if it addresses the different issues and needs of your personas at each level of your marketing funnel.

This tool will then allow you to have an overview of the content to produce and therefore anticipate the work required for an effective strategy!

The editorial calendar for your content strategy

More than just a simple spreadsheet, it's a complete work methodology. You'll be better supported in creating your content and more capable of managing your content and inbound marketing strategy. You'll also have a general view of your various publications over the long term.

But that's not all! It's also a great collaboration tool that will encourage exchanges between team members on topics to address, formats to choose, etc. And thus avoid the famous blank page syndrome.

Whether you're a copywriter, community manager, video editor, etc., you need to have an editorial calendar. The editorial calendar is as essential for a newspaper as it is for blog articles, for example. Creating an editorial calendar ensures logic and organization in choosing topics, publication rhythm, formats, etc.

This content should of course be diversified and varied. Don't forget that a topic can be adapted into several forms. You'll then have more visibility with your targets and more opportunities to convert your prospects into customers.

However, if you're not particularly comfortable with content production, you can outsource this task. You'll just need to create briefs related to this content to communicate your wishes to a freelancer who will handle the creation part for you.

Otherwise, you'll need to dedicate time to it, and especially train in techniques specific to each content type, such as using graphic design tools, video editing, different writing methods, etc.

What should an editorial calendar contain?

An editorial calendar must contain a certain amount of essential information for you, your collaborators, and freelancers, if you wish to outsource your content creation. Of course, you can supplement it with other sections (example: mandatory links in your articles to promote internal linking).

But an editorial calendar should always mention the type of content to create, i.e., the formats you want to use (blog articles, infographics, videos, guides, etc.). As well as the destination of this content—on the website? On LinkedIn? On YouTube? On Twitter? etc.

But it's also important to designate the person responsible for creating content (example: if you've hired a community manager, they'll handle content related to your social networks). And the title associated with this content, to see more clearly the theme being addressed.

💡 Of course, these titles should be SEO-friendly.

You should also plan and indicate the publication date to know which content to prioritize and to help your team organize better. Each publication should be accompanied by a status, such as: to do / in progress / review / completed.

Finally, the last section but just as important as the previous ones: SEO elements. By associating the main keyword with your editorial calendar for each content piece, you keep in mind the objective of this publication and what you want to rank for.

Why Use an Editorial Calendar?

Editorial calendar: Planning advantages

The editorial calendar is ideal for maintaining a regular publication pace, a significant point for being appreciated by search engines and having SEO that holds up. Especially since with a consistent rhythm, you'll manage to build audience loyalty!

It's also the ultimate tool for avoiding blank page anxiety. No more panic—with the editorial calendar, your content is established in advance and even allows you to define other ideas! Plus, with this tool, we avoid procrastination. We know what needs to be done and when it needs to be done.

Editorial calendar: Production Tracking advantages

The editorial calendar is an essential tool if you plan to effectively track your content strategy. It offers you a general overview of your strategy and allows you to know, for example, who to contact for specific content, which themes are most or least covered, which content to prioritize according to requirements, etc. Not bad!

Thanks to the editorial calendar, you have a 360° view of all your content already produced and those that will need to be produced. You're therefore better able to evaluate the consistency of your strategy with your editorial charter. If you identify an imbalance between themes, for example, the editorial calendar will allow you to spot the problem.

Editorial calendar: SEO advantages

Finally, the editorial calendar isn't simply a visual representation of your content allowing you to organize your publications. It's also a very useful instrument for implementing an effective SEO strategy.

Assuming your editorial strategy is well-built, you can center your content on target keywords searched by your personas. For example, you maintain a blog section on your website. To be effective, your articles should be classified by themes and by "ranks." We can outline it like this:

• A "rank 0" article that addresses the theme globally and completely

• Lower-rank articles that allow you to push the subject further

• Everything linked by internal linking connecting the different articles

The editorial calendar will allow you to better control the implementation of this strategy.

Creating an Editorial Calendar in 8 Steps

Step 1: Build your personas

One of the first things to do when implementing an editorial calendar is to study your targets, i.e., your buyer personas. Here, the objective is to:

• Determine their socio-demographic aspects

• Know the problems/needs they face

• Find what means they use to search for information

By working on your targets carefully, you can create relevant content for your audience and adapt it according to your personas' maturity. In your editorial calendar, don't hesitate to indicate these elements if it can help your team see more clearly and mention which themes correspond to which targets.

Step 2: Determine your objectives

Once your personas are defined, you need to clarify your objectives! Everything published must serve your cause. No question of posting content randomly and seeing what happens. No. You need coherent objectives with your published content and in connection with your audience.

During this step, don't forget that the goal of a good content strategy is to advance your prospect through your marketing funnel. However, if you already clearly have your objectives in mind (especially if you've established a well-built content strategy) and are simply looking for an effective work method, skip this step!

Step 3: Research your content topics

You now know which path to take; you'll now need to find relevant and interesting topics for your audience! For this, you need to respond to their needs and problems that you identified during the first step.

You can also get help from the competition by checking out the content they offer. List the themes addressed, in what formats, and for which platforms. Social networks are particularly a fantastic source of ideas.

Finally, adopt an SEO approach. The goal is to study user queries and search volumes. You can thus find your topics based on keywords searched on search engines.

🗓️ Example: If you have an article idea, it's important to add the target keyword to your editorial calendar.

Step 4: Classify your content topics

Once you have your ideas in mind, sorting is necessary! Indeed, on one hand, all topics aren't equal in terms of relevance, and on the other hand, not all can be used. You must therefore evaluate whether your ideas are worthy of interest or not.

💡 Look at the search volume of your keywords; it will tell you if you should focus on a particular idea.

You can then classify your topics according to the theme addressed, format adopted, your personas, etc. And remember, each content piece should help advance your audience through your marketing funnel, whether it's attracting visitors to your website or a call-to-action—your content must have a precise goal.

Step 5: Formalize your editorial calendar

You now have what you need to build a really solid editorial calendar. You can now integrate your different topics and formalize your tool by indicating the elements useful for good management of your editorial calendar, such as:

• Title

• Theme

• Person in charge

• Format

• Publication date

• Status

• Main keyword

• etc.

It should be easily accessible for your team and for people external to your company (if you plan to work with a freelancer for content creation). Choosing an editorial calendar tool should therefore be done according to its complexity.

Step 6: Add briefs to your editorial calendar

Integrating briefs into your editorial calendar is recommended, especially if you want to outsource part or all of your content. The objective is to guide the person responsible for content creation so they go in the right direction and have support to rely on.

So don't hesitate to create a document for each topic and integrate it into your editorial calendar by:

• Indicating the desired structure for the content in question

• Mentioning relevant sources for inspiration

• Taking important notes, such as visuals you might have thought of

Step 7: Create your content

It's now time to create your content! With implementing an editorial calendar, this is an opportunity for you to get ahead on producing your content. Indeed, you no longer need to find content ideas. Everything is already planned in advance; you just need to take action!

Block out time on your calendar dedicated to writing articles, creating visuals, or editing your content so you're not caught short by lack of time.

Step 8: Evaluation and calendar adjustment

Your editorial calendar is complete. But the work doesn't stop there! It's necessary to regularly track your content progress and impact. This will allow you to identify themes that work best or those that, conversely, generate little traffic.

It's thanks to your analyses that you can make adjustments if necessary and optimize your editorial calendar as well as your content. You can thus eliminate uninteresting topics and focus on those with potential.

And don't hesitate to test new ideas! The goal is to constantly improve and adapt your editorial calendar.

Some Tools for Your Editorial Calendar

Excel spreadsheet software

If you want to create an editorial calendar at low cost and simply, Excel is the tool for you! Very flexible, you can create your editorial calendar from A to Z by adding columns that suit you.

However, unlike other tools, you won't be able to add attachments to your editorial calendar. The interface being very limited, you'll have few options.

Trello management tool

Trello is software comparable to an online notebook. Very flexible, it will easily adapt to your needs. You can notably:

• List your ideas and suggestions

• Integrate the status of content to produce (to do, in progress, or completed)

• Manage illustration ideas and resources thanks to attachments

• And many other things!

However, you may need some adaptation time before having the tool fully in hand.

Online Calendars

Online calendars like Outlook or Google Calendar can easily serve as your editorial calendar. Thanks to their calendars, you can easily get a general view of your content to produce.

This type of tool is especially recommended for simple editorial calendars, preferably with a single content manager.

Basecamp software

Basecamp is software used notably for planning and distributing tasks to team members. Rather simple to use, it offers numerous functionalities for organizing and prioritizing your work.

You can then easily assign content to create, schedule it, and even create checklists!