Running your business without a blog editorial calendar is like throwing your best friend a party without any prior thought.
Imagine it’s the morning of the party. You blink back the too-bright sunshine letting you know that your alarm failed. You’re an hour behind schedule.
You jump out of bed and forgo washing your face. You just grab your toothbrush and run to your closet to choose your outfit.
You settle on a “meh” moody floral dress that’s not super flattering because you didn’t plan time to grab something cute at the Nordstrom sale. It’s slightly wrinkled and you get a little Crest on it, but that’s the least of your worries.
You haven’t planned the menu, or gotten extra ice.
Party games? You figured inspiration would strike the morning of.
The decorations you carefully Pinned and ordered are still withering away in their Prime box.
Playlist? LOL that’s a joke, right?! You can’t even find your bra right now.
People will still show up. You’ll probably have an okay time. But this party is a sad likeness of the soiree you pictured in your head.
[bctt tweet=”You wouldn’t throw a party without some planning. You shouldn’t invite everyone over to your blog without some either.” username=”CustomConvo”]
That’s what it’s like running your blog without a blog editorial calendar.
You wouldn’t throw a party without some planning. You shouldn’t invite everyone over to your blog without some either.
Maybe you love blogging, but sometimes you don’t know how to blog for your business.
Maybe you’ve got content ideas that would make Jenna Kutcher herself stand up and cheer for you! But you struggle with consistency and don’t really know how to plan everything.
Maybe your method of flying by the seat of your pants is creating stress for you – not the actual writing and publishing process.
Maybe, just maybe, it’s time to shake up your systems with a blog editorial calendar.
Blog Editorial Calendar AKA Content Calendar
An editorial calendar is a plan for your blog’s content. It also goes by “content calendar.” Though content calendar also refers to your content across all channels, including social media, you can use the two terms interchangeably.
No More Struggling to Plan & Organize Posts
You know how important your blog is for your business. It’s where you establish trust, build authority, and develop relationships with your clients and future clients.
Working from a blog editorial calendar lets you sit down, brainstorm for a few minutes, and have a strategic plan for the entire month…or even the whole year.
Wouldn’t it be nice to have themes planned out instead of rushing around at the last minute?
Wouldn’t it be great if your blog supported your business’ goals?
Wouldn’t you be less stressed if you had time to create a story and pick the right pictures too?
A blog editorial calendar will help you stop procrastinating. It will save you time in the long run. And it will help your business grow.
This post will:
- Tell you exactly why you need a blog editorial calendar
- Give you tools to create one
- Provide insight into how other successful female entrepreneurs use theirs
- Get you planning ahead
You Need a Blog Editorial Calendar
A blog editorial calendar helps you establish consistency. And consistency is more important to your blog than the cheese to sauce ratio is to a Neapolitan style pizza. Which is to say it’s life or death.
According to CoSchedule:
Folks who publish consistent content get as much as 30% more traffic for every post they publish, all while saving about an hour per post.
Consistency also helps with frequency. According to HubSpot:
The small companies that publish 11 or more blog posts per month drive much higher traffic than companies of the same size that publish fewer than 11 blog posts. Those that published 11+ posts per month had almost 3X more traffic than companies publishing 0 – 1 monthly posts, and about 2X as much traffic as those publishing 2 – 5 monthly posts.
Frequent posting helps you build an impressive library of content that keeps working for you. Those posts, called Pillar Posts, prop up your traffic.
As long as you create high quality, valuable content, people will return to it for months and years to come. Those posts give you credibility with humans and Google alike. They refer traffic from social media and other sites.
Most importantly, they convert into leads.
That same HubSpot study found that over 75% of their blog views and 90% of their blog leads came from old posts.
The types of posts that attract so much attention require your expertise. They require planning. They require time (more time than you think, always) to research and write.
They’re about topics that fall in your zone of genius. They’re the topics your audience and clients count on you to talk about.
They’re likely not about the route you and your (adorable!) GoldenSchnoodle took through the park yesterday. Unless, of course, you’re Serena of Pretty Fluffy and that’s what your readers want.
And you obviously know what your readers want, right?
When you write those types of posts, for those exact readers, those are valuable Pillar Posts.
And those blog posts? They make you money, honey.
Companies that published 16+ blog posts per month got about 4.5X more leads than companies that published between 0 – 4 monthly posts.
But they don’t happen by accident! You need a strategy to plan and execute them.
Nesha Woolery, graphic designer and business mentor for freelancers, sums it up perfectly:
When you have a whole month’s worth of content written and scheduled, you’re more strategic.
Beyond consistency and frequency of posts, an editorial calendar is how you create strategically. And strategy = value.
Why can’t I just keep my list of ideas in my Notes app?
Well, if we’re being honest, is the list confined to your Notes app? Or is some of it in Evernote? And another list entirely on your G Drive?
Do you have all your “stuff” on notepads and pieces of paper here and there? Have you tried going the organization route, but, IDK, you’re just “not that organized”?
You are a strong, independent woman who don’t need no desk littered with post it’s that say “WRITE ABOUT THANKSGIVING”!
You are a v. professional businesswoman. Someone who appreciates an expert opinion.
Here’s what Srini Rao, author of Unmistakeable Creative and host of The Unmistakeable Creative podcast has to say about calendars:
When it comes to task completion the major difference between a calendar and a to-do-list is that the calendar accounts for time. You’re forced to work within the constraints of the 24 hours that you have. Not only that, given that there are only 24 hours it also reduces the paradox of choice. This tends to be great for scheduling time for high-level creative output.
How to Set Up Your Blog Editorial Calendar
Convinced yet? Perf. But still wondering how to fill your content calendar with post ideas?
Two words: content prompts. You already know where to look. It starts with a p and it rhymes with “Babe, you’ve been pinning luxury chicken coops for 45 minutes, can we please leave for the movies now?”
If you, ahem, have an issue getting sucked into the Pinterest vortex (but the messy buns! the quinoa salads! the furniture makeovers!) here are a few of my tried and true sources for content ideation:
Elle Drouin of Wonderfelle Media
I love Elle’s incredible stock photography site, Styled Stock Society. And I’ve been a fan of her blog for years! She consistently provides valuable, enjoyable content. Now you can see why (and how).
Lauren Hooker, of Elle & Co. Design
Another fangirl alert: Elle & Co. is one of my forever favorite reads. Lauren’s systems are just like her designs: clean, bright, and impeccable. I love seeing how she runs her successful blog & business.
This blog planner isn’t free, it’s $25. But it’s more than a list of prompts. If you are a strictly analog person, or even if you just need to sketch out ideas before transferring them to your digital systems, this planner looks comprehensive and beautifully designed.
Bre takes a bird’s eye view of the whole year with monthly content ideas. This strategy gives you an even better blog editorial calendar because you’re taking the long view. If monthly planning gives your blog all the benefits we talked about above, just imagine what quarterly and annual planning could do for it?
Dedicate each quarter to furthering one of your business goals, and use your editorial calendar to support them.
When you sit down to look at the year overall, you just segment your goals (and your content) further and further into manageable pieces.
No more writing the day before. No more panicking when you have a batch day because you’ve got the week planned already. No more freaking out when you sit down to plan the month because you already know your topics from your Q2 refresher. And, of course, no worries there because you sat down with some hot chocolate way back last December to map out the rough sketch of your year.
And just like that, you’re the kind of business owner who plans their content a year in advance.
Am I a photographer? Absolutely not. My DSLR is forever set to automatic, sorry. But do I love this list? Like I love the Vici Instagram account, baby.
When I feel stuck writing about the exact. same. thing as every other writer, I look outside my niche.
If you’re a photographer, look at food blogs. If you run an Etsy shop, look at DIY home renovation blogs.
Sometimes you just need to shake up your brain to reframe your blog post ideas. Come up with new angles. See how something totally unrelated is surprisingly like [Your Special Thing.]
This will also help you stand out in your field by not sounding like your talented competitors.*
One More Tip
Because I’m a copywriter and content creator, I have to carefully guard my voice.
That means I can’t read too much of what other talented copywriters create.
I’m heavily influenced by the words I consume, so I don’t want to end up sounding like someone else…even if I have an ENORMO girlcrush on her.
It’s like when I spend too much time with my in-laws and develop a Long Island accent. Or when I hang out with my favorite Cheesehead and start saying “oooh’s” instead of “oh’s.” Or when I drink any amount of gin and start drawling like I’m Blanche Deveraux.
All fascinating accents that tickle the ear, and my fancy. But none of them are authentically me.
So to get inspo without picking up someone else’s “accent”, here are some sources I’ll explore when brainstorming:
- Fashion Blogs
- Disney Blogs
- Food Blogs
- Interior Design Mags
- Longreads
- My Favorite Writers on Twitter
- Classic Literature
- PubMed (trust me, when I can understand what those scientists are saying, they’re using excellent communication.)
What Other Successful Female Entrepreneurs Have to Say About All This
Content marketing has been one of the number one ways we’ve grown our business and without having an editorial calendar we definitely wouldn’t stay on track.
I keep track of not only which posts get the most traffic, but also the posts that get the most engagement (comments, social shares, opt-ins) and the posts that result in the most revenue.
I have blogged both with and without an editorial calendar and I can confidently say that it has made a difference to the quality of my blog posts. Most importantly, editorial calendar has helped save my sanity and be peaceful, as getting stressed about writing and publishing a blog post is the last thing you want to do after a busy day.
– Chaitra, PinkPot
After I wrote down a ton of small post ideas and then started scheduling them in a manner that made the most sense to me, I was literally floored to see over 65 posts laid out over the course of over three months. Gone was the feeling that I didn’t have anything to write about!
The Takeaway
You ever grocery shop without a list?
Same. It always ends in disaster. By disaster, I do mean over budget, over my Pub Sub quota, and with unnecessary cookies.
Trying to blog without an editorial calendar is the business equivalent of shopping without a list, after a kickboxing class, on a day you skipped breakfast.
Brain fog, bad decisions, and making stuff that fills you up, sure, but does it nourish you?
Probably not.
If you’re serious about your health, you meal plan, you make a list, you execute both. Or you outsource it.
If you’re serious about your business’ blog, you content plan, you make a blog editorial calendar, you execute both. Or you outsource it.
Your Turn
Have you tried an editorial calendar for your blog? LMK in the comments!