An editorial calendar is a tool that’s used by content producers and marketers to plan the creation, publication, and promotion of content across different digital mediums. The idea is to create a visual workflow that allows you to easily plan and schedule your content across days, weeks, and months.
An editorial calendar is a vital part of any content strategy as it allows you to forecast:
- When different content types will be created,
- What the topic is,
- Who will be writing them (if using different teams), and
- When they will be published.
An editorial calendar can also lay out how the content types will be promoted and on which mediums/websites. The end result should be an in-depth resource that is like a blueprint of your content production over a series of weeks or months. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to creating an editorial calendar. The way that it is laid out and its different sections will depend on how much content you plan to create, the size of your team, the stages your content will go through before publication, approval requirements, and so on. A good foundation of an editorial calendar should include the type of content (e.g. video, blog, infographic), the messaging you’d like to put forward, where it will be published (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, external website or blog), and when it will be published.
Most editorial calendars will resemble an actual calendar, with dates set out, content themes, platforms, etc. This allows you to adequately plan for the creation of new content, the repurposing of existing content, and to make the most of significant dates that could be used for newsjacking (e.g. Superbowl, Olympics, etc).