Whether or not you’ve noticed it, scheduling our hectic lives in a calendar is crucial for our well-being. Developing a calendar to maintain your life reduces stress levels and gives you more time to fit in the things you enjoy without sacrificing the more critical things. Still, more importantly, it creates structure and stability for your overall life.
Similar to your day-to-day life, developing a calendar for your business is a necessity for managing operations. On our daily calendars, we usually categorize our day/month with the events we have, work, school, vacations, errands, and meetings. However, within the business world, we use an Editorial Calendar to categorize the subjects that relate to content being published to the public through a company blog, social media posts, or press releases of industry media websites.
What is an Editorial Calendar?
An Editorial Calendar is a calendar that schedules your “rough draft” of plans for the next few months or years all at once. Editorial Calendars consist of a few key ingredients that help provide your content with the firm and the organized foundation it needs. Some key aspects you may need to consider are topics that you want your content to relate to, who your audience is, what methods and platforms you will publish your content on, and how to manage your time effectively. It gives you the flexibility to accomplish more promptly since everything gets planned ahead of time, no scrummaging through ideas at the last minute or procrastinating and potentially missing deadlines. Of course, things might move around, switch up, or change a bit within that time, but the serenity of knowing that you do have some game plan already set for you is all the more worth it.
What is the Difference Between an Editorial Calendar vs. Content Calendar?
Oftentimes companies and clients will mistake Editorial Calendars with another calendar within our business and marketing world called a Content Calendar. Compared to an Editorial Calendar, which sets up your schedule months to a full year in advance, a Content Calendar is your more “live in the moment” type of resource. While a Content Calendar emphasizes the more specific minor details such as how many meetings you have this week or what time you need to publish your content in the next couple of days, the Editorial Calendar looks at the “bigger picture,” such as the type of themes your content might be for the following months and gives you a rundown of how your upcoming year might look like. Think of it as a blueprint for your business’ content, providing you and your clients access to strategize and construct an outline for how you’re going to keep your content running this year, with the ability to go in and tweak a few things here and there as the year goes by.
Why Your Business Needs an Editorial Calendar?
Have you ever found yourself unfollowing a content creator or company on any social media platform or unsubscribing from emails, blogs, or informative websites due to sporadic content? We have to! Consistency is key, especially when continuing to grow your business or platform. We’ve all found ourselves thinking that if we write down a quick “to-do” list, we can manage our schedules and content but always forget some aspect that goes into them. When building an Editorial Calendar, we have every last detail laid out for us ahead of the production time so it can keep us prepared but also help us avoid the frustration of forgetting any element. Continue to stay updated on relevant or trending topics.
- No repetition and recreating the same work that’s already been created
- Clear and concise; it is simple to look back to and reference because it is so organized and simple to understand
- Clients remain satisfied and impressed with your services because they can see how organized, productive, and serious you are about working with them when keeping up with an editorial calendar for their business.
- Hold your team accountable to remain productive, manage your work, and finish tasks on time because you understand your assignment, what it should consist of, and when it’s due.
- Very accessible, not only shareable with the rest of your team/staff but also with clients, so they feel included and engaged within the game plan; it gives them reassurance about your strategy and the status of projects and goals.
- It makes scheduling simple, without too much clutter going on. Everything is labeled effectively and presented clearly by color coding, categorizing, and grouping specific details or headings such as the due dates, what stage of the process you’re in (in progress, ready for review, edits, and revisions, etc.) what platforms you’re going to be using, who oversees what portion of the project, and so on.
The Peace of Mind of Knowing What’s Going On
Having an Editorial Calendar for your business will help your business continue developing and expanding. It gives your clients peace of mind knowing what’s going on within their business, what’s getting worked on, when things are likely to be finished, and what the upcoming projects are. It not only builds a more structured and trustworthy relationship between you and your clients but also gives you more confidence knowing everything is under control and running smoothly on your part.
To learn more about Editorial Calendars and how to create your own, keep up to date with our upcoming blog posts.
Sources:
What is an Editorial Calendar and Why is it Important? – Agile & Co. (agileandco.com)
Editorial calendar vs. content calendar: Which is right for you? – Elite Editing
Content Calendar vs Editorial Calendar: Why You Need Both! (writeforme.io)
Planning Out an Editorial Calendar for Your Clients (zerys.com)
Why You Need an Editorial Calendar (+ 3 Steps to Create One) | GatherContent
Eden Filos is a writer, content creator, and marketing coordinator. She is passionate about informing others about the most up-to-date trends within the business world, strategies, and sharing knowledge, content, and resources to assist people within the industry through multiple platforms while cultivating and advancing her understanding of the topics.
