How To Use Editorial Content Calendar Template To Get Organized

Creating Content is not an easy job. Proper planning and strategy are the key factors to generate high-quality content.

Starting from content creation to publishing, you come across many major challenges.

A high-quality content is enjoyed by the audience.

But, creating such high-quality content is not easy. You need to add multiple formats and channels to deliver good content.

“People don’t find content by mistake, or by accident. Every content plan needs a complementary promotion plan that combines paid, owned, and earned media.” – Matthew Gratt

It gets more complicated to keep production on track and deliver high-quality content before the due date.

But, using an Editorial Calendar Template, you can effectively plan and mark the progress. The Calendar Template helps you to share the content on a tactical level.

An editorial calendar template is also known as Content Calendar templates or Social Media Content Calendar templates.

What is an Editorial Calendar Template?

In the process of content creation to publishing, you need to follow a record of when, how, and where you can plan for the content.

The plan needs to be put up in a place where everyone can identify the process and it should be accessible to everyone in the team.

With Social Media Calendar templates, you can plan all the important steps required for your content creation.

It helps you to keep track of the upcoming content, promotions, social media posts, and you can schedule content for your team.

You can manage your content team effectively by using Content Calendar Template.

Who needs Content Calendar Templates?

As your content calendars hold all the important information about the content piece, in which your team is working.

Content creation is a complicated process. Therefore, many Publishers prefer Content Calendar Templates for content planning.

The calendars set out which content needs work, which content is ready to publish, and other important records.

As your business follows content as a marketing strategy, it can be in the form of a blog or a social media status.

Many businesses follow only a few channels of social media for handling the content. Publishing content is not only limited to any news channels and magazine.

It is an important form of marketing for every business. But these marking strategies need to be created with proper planning.

You need to keep them on track by using an Editorial Calendar template.

What information does the Content Calendar Hold?

Every Editorial Content Calendar Template varies, but you can create your own customizable calendar template according to the process you follow.

However, every template holds some of the basic features that are important for everyone.

Some of these important features are the monthly planning calendar, general schedule tab, content depository, and other updates for various social media platforms.

Here is the list of various Social Media Platforms you can use for content posting.

• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Pinterest

Some of the content strategies provide a successful promotion. In such cases, you can copy and reuse the planning strategy that you follow for each Social Media by using the content template.

According to research, the B2B markets that follow the content strategy have observed many changes.

70% have made major or moderate changes in their content strategy because of the pandemic.

Among the ones who made changes, 80% felt the changes had some effects.

22% observed these adjustments were benefits but for a short duration. Whereas 66% observe those changes create effect both for short term and long term.

The major changes made are in the field of messaging/targeting strategy (70%), an adjustment in the editorial calendar (64%), and changing the distribution process and promotion strategy of content (53%).

How to use a Content Calendar Template?

As you start the process of creating content to publishing, you need proper planning. Without proper planning, you might end up wasting time.

It is important to become organized, which helps you to succeed.

You can find these templates in various forms such as excel sheets and google sheets. The Content Marketing Calendar templates help in proper planning.

(Source: Hootsuite)

The Content Marketing Calendar templates are used for:

• It helps you to identify what content needs to be published. You can plan for the content next week or next month.
• Using Content Marketing Calendar templates makes you allocate about the deadlines. So you can complete the task before the due date.
• It helps you in identifying all your work progress in one place.

Various Formats for Organizing your Content Calendar:

If you are searching for a perfect editorial calendar, you need to focus on the formats.

The format of the calendar template is the major reason to achieve the team’s goal.

So here is the list of various ways to format your Content Editorial calendar:

Traditional calendar – If you are looking for simple ways to identify the progress of your work, you need to follow this format.

It is the best format to mark deadlines on a big calendar sheet.

However, the disadvantage of the traditional calendar is, it doesn’t mark the other important update about the work.

Kanban Board or Other Project management Tool – It is a visual system for Project Management tools.

This makes it easy to identify the editorial workflow irrespective of the quality assurance process. These features make it popular editorial management.

So, if you and your team need more planning and management to help you push things live.

Using Kanban Board helps you with it; it can easily accommodate your content calendar.

Spreadsheet – It makes your work easy as it aggregates all the necessary data points in one place.

These spreadsheets were used to update the entire task neatly into columns and rows.

It comes in various forms such as Microsoft Excel, Spreadsheets, and Google Sheets. It is easy to access and does not look for a high-learning curve.

The spreadsheet can be easily paired with Content Management Tools and Calendar Apps.

Content Calendar Apps – There are application and software platforms, which are designed for content management.

These apps hold both the features of Calendar and Project Management aspects.

This helps you in completing the job along with other features, which are effective for high-volume content marketing teams.

What are the benefits of using a content calendar Template?

Editorial calendar templates help you to schedule all the blog posts, articles, and other content.

According to Hubspot research “posting around 16 content in a month creates 3-5 times more traffic”.

But to create these valuable 16 pieces of content, you need to have proper planning.

To layout, all the processes included in the content from creating ideas to publishing them online.

It provides you with enormous benefits. The benefits you get from the Editorial Content Calendar are:

Manage content – Using Editorial calendar templates helps you to add every piece of content to the editorial calendar project.

You don’t need to dig into spreadsheets, emails, and docs. It is your one place to store all the content.

Breakdown the process – It helps you to segregate the task into various steps. So you can create better content.

The tasks include various steps such as edit, draft, approve, Setting deadlines, and publishing.

All the necessary steps can be easily scheduled in one place. It helps to visualize all the progress on a calendar.

Check Content Status – While creating a hard volume of content, it becomes difficult to know the status.

So to track the production of the content at every stage, you need the Editorial Calendar template.

How to create an Editorial Calendar Template?

To create an Editorial Content Calendar template you need to follow this process:

Identify the content types – As content is available in many types such as blogs, email, podcasts, Webinars, Infographics, Print magazines, Newsletters, and Brochures.

It is important to identify the content type.

Colour-Coding – The next thing to follow is to decide on color-coding. This helps to quickly identify the content on the template.

Also, the color-coding needs to be consistent, to avoid any type of confusion.

(Source: CoSchedule)

Access to the team -The final step you need to follow is to give access to the entire marketing team. Even the ones who don’t use it every day.

Giving access to everyone in the team will help to identify the task and the progress.

This will remove the process of back and forth about “what are we Publishing Next Month?”

Everything will be available on the calendar view.

The stakeholders will also get to see what you’re working on.

What are the content strategies required for an editorial calendar?

It is important to have a content strategy, to successfully marketize your products or service.

“Pushing out content you want to publish is a lot different than executing a successful content marketing program that connects with customers by delivering meaningful experiences that are contextually relevant.” – Ardath Albee

So, here are four content strategies that will result in success.

Work backward and create the list – Using Content Template, you can schedule for common content types.

You can break down every step included in the process and then create the schedule.

Note down everything on the editorial calendar: It is important to note down all the necessary processes, due dates, and everything on the calendar.

This will provide a clear idea about the one who is responsible for the task and all the processes.

Whether you are responsible for creating content or managing the strategy, with the editorial calendar you can gather all the important information and understand the team workload.

Adjust deadlines and responsibility – The calendar templates allow you to have a view of the broader strategy and roadmap.

As everything gets centralized, this makes it easier to adjust things in need. It allows you to create a cohesive experience for the audience.

Establish a Schedule Time – As you start creating the content you need to focus on the time.

Follow the time schedule, to get more engagement. You can update the time on the template.

(Source: CoSchedule)

Communicate to the team – It is important to communicate with the content creators, distributors, and designers.

This will help in executing a successful strategy for content.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to create a social media calendar that saves your time?

To develop an easy-to-use calendar without the need to setting-up. Using our Calendar template you can easily set up the Calendar.

It is easy to use, it gives an update regarding the content. The custom fields help to track the type of content, strategy, and progress.

So to create a simple social media calendar you need to follow these steps:

The first thing to create a social media calendar is to choose the format. You can choose the traditional format or the spreadsheets.

An Editorial Calendar tool is effective to mark all the progress in your content.

Once the format is decided. Start preparing a separate taskbar for each social media platform.

This will help you to identify the content for various social media.

It is important to set deadlines, so you can complete the task before the due date.

How can I plan my editorial calendar?

To get an effective editorial calendar, you can track all your work at the same place. It provides clarity on the content; you’re creating, when it is done.

You get updates about the due date, upcoming tasks. Using the editorial calendar template helps your team to stay on the same page.

However, to get an effective Calendar Template, You need to follow these simple steps

1. Identify the Content Types: The first step to planning the editorial calendar is to identify the content types.

As content is available in various forms such as blogs, podcasts, Webinars, and more. Therefore choose the content that is suitable for you.

2. Break down the process: Once you decide the types of content, you need to break down the process into various steps.

This will help in the effective growth of the content. Successful delivery of content follows effective planning.

3. Accessible to all: Once you planned the process. You need to put the plan at a place where everyone can get access.

This will help the team to know the content steps and also helps to identify the person working on the content.

What is the benefit of the Editorial calendar?

As we know the uses of the Content Calendar template, you can effectively use the calendar. It provides numerous benefits such as:

1. I will increase the rate of productivity: You and your team can identify the needs to be done and at what stage.

2. Access to every member of the team: It will help you to access the calendar template.

This will give you an idea of who is working on what content and when it is to be published.

3. Adjust deadlines: You can adjust the deadlines according to your need.

So these are the few benefits you can get from the Editorial calendar template.

What is the information required in a Content Calendar Template?

The content calendar is planned, looking at the specific needs of the team. But the content needs to have the following information:

The channel where your content is to be published.

• Content Topic
• Type of Content
• The In-Charge Person
• The publishing Date

So all this information needs to be included in the Editorial Template.

What is Content Strategy?

Content strategy refers to the planning, creation, delivery, and governance of the content. Content doesn’t refer to the words, but it refers to the multimedia and images used.

The Content strategy focuses on building meaningful, sustainable, and engaging content. With strategy, you can get what already exists, why it needs to be created and what content needs to be developed

What is a social media calendar?

A social media calendar is used to overview the upcoming social media posts.

These calendars are mostly organized in the form of spreadsheets, interactive dashboards, and Google calendars.

Using Social media calendar you can track what’s trending, this will help you to keep an update regarding the content consistency and quality.

This also helps you to prevent low-quality content from posting. It keeps all the necessary updates of the date and time posts.

How to organize a social Media Content Calendar template?

As you focus on publishing your content on various social media platforms. It is important to stay organized and utilize time effectively. It’s important to stay at the top of social media trends. This helps to get a larger audience.

So here are the steps you can follow to organize the Social Media Content calendar:

1. Social Media Audit: The first thing you need to focus on before filling the content calendar is, you need to evaluate your present Social Media. Point out the areas where you need to focus on for improvement.
2. Choose the social media channels: It is important to stay at the top, of your social media platform. Hence, you need to carry out a social media audit. You should find more about the audience and demographics.
3. Focus on the important things you need to track: Once you figure out how your Content Calendar will be. The next thing you need to do is note the data type that your calendar needs to track.
4. Create a content library: As visual content is important for social media posts. It needs to be combined at a particular place that can be reached by every member of your team.
5. Set up a calendar and develop the workflow: As you gather all the information, you need to set up the content calendar. Post your workflow, starting from ideas to publishing posts. Each stage needs to be updated.

Why is it important to use editorial calendars for social media?

Content Calendars act as the framework of your business. It plans out what content needs to share and promote across all the marketing channels.

Using a well-planned and organized social media calendar helps you to define the posting cadences, themes that match each social media platform’s audience and meet their objectives.

Why do PR pros need to know editorial calendars?

Public Relations Professionals use the editorial calendar as it helps them to outline the content that can grab the attention of the media outlets for the whole year.

The editorial calendar provides the outline, which helps the PR Pros to develop a creative concept and story angles that are correlated to the planned seasonal themes for the client.

It makes the jobs of PR much easier. The Editorial Calendar helps the PR to generate great future coverage.

Conclusion

With a content calendar template, you can manage the content schedule effectively. Once you create your editorial calendar template, you can establish it in your next editorial meeting.

With the Orangescrum Editorial Calendar template, you can plan your content and keep a record of your content.

It makes you ever-ready to shoot out your content planning to your amazing team members.