Marketers are juggling a lot of tasks, constantly planning campaigns in the future while executing ones that need to go live today.
If they become too fixated on the future, they might forget what needs to be published next on social media or their blog right now.
To avoid floundering like a comedian struggling to think of jokes on the fly while on a stage, you should balance planning with execution to ensure you aren’t unprepared.
Skilled marketers avoid the dreaded, “What should I post today?” feeling with an organized, strategic editorial calendar outlining their every move.
But what exactly is an editorial calendar, and why does your business need one?
In this post, we’ll examine everything you need to know about editorial calendars and provide the tools necessary to personalize one that fits your business needs.
What is an editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar is a living document that includes publishing dates for upcoming pieces of content on your social media platform, blog, or other publication.
Businesses use editorial calendars to ensure that their marketing campaigns stay on-track and their audience is able to consume relevant, timely content each day.
Editorial calendars act as the “home base” for all marketing initiatives. They keep teams in constant synchronization and align them with marketing objectives.
More than 42% of marketers use an editorial calendar, which is a 5% increase from last year.
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With editorial calendar usage on the rise, you might be wondering, “How is an editorial calendar different from a content calendar?”
Let’s take a look at the synergy between the 2 calendars and the components of each.
What is the difference between an editorial calendar and a content calendar?
Should you create an editorial calendar or a content calendar? In some instances, you may need both (or at least a hybrid of both).
Editorial calendars focus on the topics you’ll be covering in your marketing campaigns across all your channels. The calendar could include individual article sub-topics, publication dates, and who is assigned to be working on each asset.
Ultimately, the editorial calendar will have the publication date — the final step to push the asset live and deliver it to the target audience. This helps keep teams aligned and on the same page.
Content calendars focus on a more detailed level, highlighting each piece of content and how it plays into the overarching campaign outlined on the editorial calendar.
Content calendars focus on the day-to-day development of the content asset, while editorial calendars keep the entire monthly, quarterly or yearly campaign schedule in view.
By understanding the difference between an editorial calendar and a content calendar, you can decide if it’s better to have individual ones or combine them for your business.
Why do you need an editorial calendar?
For any marketing team, an editorial calendar is considered a “must-have.”
Marketers view editorial calendars as invaluable assets that keep their campaigns and overall businesses moving forward.
The calendars function as a blueprint for what needs to be done in order to drive new revenue through marketing initiatives across traditional and digital marketing channels.
The benefits of an editorial calendar include:
- Increasing flow of new ideas
- Synchronizing internal teams and external contributors
- Greater collaboration amongst team members
- Easier-to-scale content marketing efforts
Managing all your marketing campaigns is difficult work. It can be even more challenging with freelance writers and designers who are contributing from afar.
This structure is common for most marketing teams. In fact, half of B2B marketers outsource at least one content marketing function. In addition, 71% of companies with 1,000+ employees are more likely to outsource some of their marketing efforts.
With an editorial calendar, team members near and far can all be united under one centralized resource for upcoming deadlines and launch dates.Managing content markers, facilitating content creation, and overseeing your entire editorial process is near impossible without one.
With a content plan and publishing schedule, your editorial team will have monthly themes, marketing objectives, and a workflow at their fingertips.
Now, they’ll be able to take an idea and turn it into a content piece that is aligned with the overarching marketing strategy.
What are the components of an editorial calendar?
Now that you know why an editorial calendar is necessary for your business, let’s start to build one that is personalized for your business needs.
You can start conceiving your editorial calendar by considering what will populate your rows and columns. Often, your rows would include new content assets that have been added to your schedule, while columns would include specific details related to each asset.
Common components that are worth their own column are:
- Content title: the working title for the piece of content
- Content type: whether the content is for an email, press release, blog or social media
- Owner: who is responsible for driving the production of the content
- Content status: whether the content is assigned, in production, or published
- Design status: whether the art is assigned, in production, or published
- Overall status: the current state of the piece of content, often distinguished by colors (green, yellow, or red) that correspond to its status
- Publish date: when the content asset will be available to the target audience
- Link to content: finalized link to content asset after it is live
As you can see, editorial calendars are necessary tools for effective content management.
With columns designated to each category, you can easily see where content issues are arising and correct them before they impact your marketing campaigns.
How should you use your editorial calendar?
If your editorial calendar is all set up, now is your chance to dive in.
To get the most out of it, log all your content pieces, sort and filter with status tracking, integrate it with your tech stack, share for collaboration and create a dashboard.
staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud offers an editorial calendar template to get you started if you need help.
Log all your content pieces
Keep track of everything that is currently scheduled or in motion.
Your editorial calendar should showcase all your pieces of content currently in your pipeline with their desired publication date.
Import from an existing Excel document or add manually row-by-row. This ensures that the content production is on-track to reach its publication date.
Sort and filter with status tracking
Editorial calendars provide you with a bird’s-eye view of your marketing initiatives.
This includes understanding what will be published and how different pieces of content complement each other.
With a status tracking or tagging feature, you can search and filter based on content type or the current status of the content in the queue.
This function helps you stay on top of your content production efforts and ensure all deadlines are being met.
Keep your team on top of their deadlines with staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud’s filter capability.
Integrate with your tech stack
Make your editorial calendar work for you with automations and integrations with your tech stack.
From email marketing software to your database, staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud editorial calendars can integrate with dozens of different software, ensuring that the marketing machine you’ve built stays in motion.
For example, staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud integrates with MailChimp, a popular email marketing software. Once connected, you can set up rules to create new contacts, add items or update lists when a certain action takes place:
With integrations, you can eliminate manual administrative work and focus on important aspects of your business.
Share for collaboration
Share and send your editorial calendar to all team members, contract writers, and key organizational stakeholders to ensure everyone is on the same page.
This will provide everyone with the view ahead and ensure that issues or obstacles can be resolved in one unified workspace.
An editorial calendar is only effective if everyone on your content marketing team has access.
You can add and revoke access controls to your editorial calendar workspace on staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud.
In addition, staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud offers an import/export function to download all your information into an excel document. This is helpful if you want to attach an excel document that includes your editorial calendar.
Create a dashboard and connect it to other calendars
Your editorial calendar may give you a broad view of your campaigns, but it likely won’t cover everything that’s happening within the marketing department.
Connect the calendar to other marketing calendars such as a content calendar, social media calendar, or even business goals.
That way, your editorial calendar can serve as a hub for all your marketing campaigns.
Getting your editorial calendar started
An editorial calendar outlines all upcoming content pieces, as well as their assigned writers, designers, status, and publication dates.
Content marketing teams should have an editorial calendar to ensure they are moving in-sync with one another. Adopting one can help source new ideas, keep your team on track, foster collaboration, and aid in the scaling of your content marketing efforts.
Start compiling your social media posts and planning your entire content strategy with staging-mondaycomblog.kinsta.cloud’s editorial calendar template today.
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