Blogging 101: Creating an Editorial Calendar

What is an Editorial Calendar?

An editorial calendar is a way to keep on top of your blog content and to plan out what you want your blog to look like in the long term. It will help you to see where you have (or don’t have) availability for sponsored posts or if you have a large time period without a post on a specific topic. I personally use a year long spreadsheet and I plan constantly throughout the whole year. I already have some posts planned for the Summer because there’s certain topics that are more related to the summer months than now. This doesn’t mean you have to write them and take photo’s now, it can be your basic ideas and maybe an outline of certain posts.

What format?

This is completely up to you and how your own mind works. You could use a year by year diary, a physical calendar, an online calendar such as google calendar, or a spreadsheet. I know a lot people also use pages in their bullet journals.

I originally used a plain calendar format in excel which was colour coded as to whether it was written or not. It was simple, but because I kept going over my set deadlines. I have now changed to a more in depth calendar which gives me more guidance as to what I need to do on time.

Here’s what I use on Google Sheets. If you want to use this template then you can make a copy on your own Google Drive or download it as an excel.

Why you should Create an Editorial Calendar?

Organisation

It’s easy enough to tell yourself you’re going to write a post on for Friday, but sometimes you can forget things. Being able to organise when and what your blog posts will be helps you to organise yourself to create them on time. It also gives you a longer lead time on motivation and inspiration. Writers block often comes when you don’t have the right ideas, but you can pre-write posts when you’re feeling inspired so when you get the dreaded block you don’t miss writing any posts.

Past content

It’s a really easy way to see what content you’ve previously written. So when I did my natural make up post, I could scan through my calendar to see which of the products I’ve already reviewed so I could add internal links. When you’ve had a blog for a few years with regular posting, it’s great to be able to see what you’ve done already.

Tracking Ideas

Sometimes I have a great idea for a blog post and I just drop it straight into my calendar so when I next come to writing, I can see what ideas I’ve had. This also means that I have ideas for the next few months which makes it a lot less stressful because I don’t need to worry about finding ideas for content.

Track your categories

For me, I like to know what categories I’m posting about. I write a lot about books, but I don’t see my blog as solely a book blog as I write about lifestyle, beauty and university as well. With my editorial calendar I can see when I’m writing too many posts in one category and I can mix up when I’m posting to make it more even.