How to Manage Your Editorial Calendar with Project Management Tool
We are well aware of the fact that you need good quality content for marketing and in return generating leads. But generating Good content once in a while is not enough. To progress in your Content Marketing, you need consistency in posting updated articles on a regular basis. The term regular does not imply on publishing content each week, but to produce one article per week comes along with other thoughts as what is it your audience is looking for, what do they like to read, topic to talk about, authors, However, producing great content each week can be overwhelming without an editorial calendar.
Be it small or large organizations, everyone needs an Editorial Calendar in their Content Marketing plan.
A lot of advertisers still struggle with setting up and using an Editorial Calendar to accomplish their goals.
If you’re here wondering does your organization even need an editorial calendar?
If so, how exactly is it going to help?
If any of those things baffle you, it’s time to understand what journalists have learned for decades: editorial calendars are essential to keeping busy, productive publication schedules.
So here I’m to give you some tips on managing your Editorial Calendar.
What is an Editorial Calendar?
The editorial calendar is just like a social media scheduler: a timetable of content to be created and distributed to your audiences via a number of platforms, including your forum, social media networks, email updates, etc., over a specified timeframe.
How does the Editorial Calendar help?
An editorial calendar will help you keep track of the Content you’ve published and are going to publish. It will help you schedule posts or stories, figure out your plans, and keep you on track by encouraging you to set regular and weekly goals. Also if you don’t have any marketing issues, you might continue to be sure about the topics you’re thinking about, what you’ve talked about in the past, and what you’re planning to explore in the future.
Now since I have answered a few basic queries regarding Editorial Calendar, let’s dig into a few tips to manage your Editorial Calendar through project management tool.
- Find Your Right Tool
There are a ton of Editorial Calendar tools out there each claiming to be the best, however before running into the best tool, you might also want to consider which one is best for your company. The gateway to that is taking free trials! Yes, this might take time but once you find your Mr. Right tool, you are good to plan further without having the doubt of changing it in the future.
I personally use ContentStudio for my Content planning because it gives me everything I need in the time span of seconds. I get to learn what’s hot in my company’s market which helps me come up with new topics easily, plus it’s so easy to keep the team managed there. It’s so much better than spending hours at quora finding what people are asking about and come up with a topic in two days!
You can also simply use Google and Outlook Calendar for the purpose but I would recommend you try out Project Management tools.
However, your tool might vary according to your needs:
- Frequency of Content Publishing
Well If you’re using a calendar, your frequency of publishing content must be large for sure, But still frequency matters. The blog going live every week has a large frequency for sure but not as much as the one that goes live every day.
Right?
The more frequent your need is to check the calendar and keep track of it, it can tell you how best to visualize your calendar on a daily basis.
- Number of Team Members
The best ones allow several entities to collaborate, coordinate, and offer real-time input on activities — directly on the calendar. But in case your team comprises 2 people, then you don’t need that!
- Complexity of Content Pipeline
If you’re an independent blogger who doesn’t need the approval of work then probably you don’t need the stages category in your calendar but in case your blog passes three approval stages before it goes online, then make sure your calendar understands the category division. - The free tool you have been using till today, did it fulfill all your demands?
Let’s say you’ve been trying some forever free features of tools and they are just not enough for your content marketing plan. If that’s the case with you, then it’s time to try the free trials rather than free features! And If the tool works for you, then invest in it.
Look through the features and budget of each editorial calendar that offers a free trial. And whatever works for you, sign up!
Let’s list out some must-have features in a cool Editorial Calendar: This will help you select your tool!
- Content Discovery: List of all the blogs published over the internet according to your content strategy
- Team Management: Have roles assigned to each team member like who gets to publish the article and designer etc.
- Content publishing dates: Gives out the suitable content creation and posting schedule
- Call-to-Action: To increase engagement with the brand
- Channels for social and blog sharing: You can deliver your blog post to all your blog channels and social channels through one share option.
The calendar will also include content owners and delegate assignments to each team member responsible for content publishing. Production measures (in progress, editing, accepted, etc.) with associated timelines would ensure consistency of the materials to come as well as explain contact if a delay is expected.
- Choose Topics and Authors wisely
Before setting a publication timetable, think about your audience and future activities that can impact or influence your acts, your company, or your choice of material. And then come up with a title, remember you need to write what people want to read!
Sometimes, maybe you get extra creative and think of a very trendy topic that no one has many blogs written on already, and they’ll probably follow your writing to produce theirs. For this, you need someone who occupies the knowledge about it and therefore you can’t handover Marketing Title to someone who is a coder.
Remember: your audience is looking for fresh news, ideas, and tips and that can only come from someone with good knowledge on the subject already.
- Schedule your entire month!
Decide on a fair timeline and start adding dates to your blog entries. Assign a deadline to be released with ample time in advance to write, edit, and correct for impediments.
- Organize
Your whole content marketing department should have access to your editorial calendar, but only a single person should oversee the production and publication of content. That will remove uncertainty as to what is to be done and who is to do it.
Keep these elements up-to-date to stay organized:
- Important dates (events, seasonality, etc.)
- Topics (More organized with subtopics)
- Posting cadence (daily, weekly, and so on.)
- Blog and social channels (Blog channels, social media channels, etc.)
It’s also helpful to arrange your calendar with color-coding styles, posting sites, and months, as well as main dates.
- Set Deadlines
When you have a list of ideas and some written goals, it’s time to set your own deadlines. If, for instance, you are going to post one blog a week, review your blog list, and set everyone’s due date. It will help you set small targets, such as writing every day for a certain number of times. It may also be beneficial to provide your approach to any topic with as many specifics as possible. If you have a company running It is going to benefit you a lot because Nobody likes red lines over their Calendar!
How does an Editorial Calendar look like?
Your editorial calendar can be as basic as an Excel sheet or as sophisticated as a paid-in device.
There is no correct way to construct an editorial calendar. You have to know what the team wants, so you’ll be able to follow and use it on a daily basis.
Difference between an editorial calendar and a content calendar?
Note: an editorial calendar is not the same as a calendar of content, although the words are sometimes used interchangeably. Although they can sound the same, they serve different purposes.
Below are the two examples of two types of Calendars:
Content Studio being the Content Calendar where you plan and manage your Content,
Whereas ProofHub gives you the Editorial Calendar which directs the material by long time setting of high-level themes. This is used to prepare the content ahead and to give teams time to build, repurpose, or curate materials that fit in with the publication schedule.
ProofHub:
Divide tasks in your preference of workflow and determine who should work.
Stay focused with automated reminders, and numerous calendar views. Combine your ProofHub calendar with those that you currently use and stop using ProofHub to refer to a variety of calendars.Other features like Gantt Chart of ProofHub is a smarter way to work!
ContentStudio:
An interactive calendar that helps you to easily review (approve, dismiss) and edit articles before publishing them. Be more regulated by getting a view of the contents of the entire week or month
Find and share the best content with your team quickly. Let customers or managers analyze, accept, or deny messages in the list or calendar view. Hold everybody coordinated, up-to-date, and accountable with no deadlines missed.
The other features such as social sharing, filtering of content, visually convenient, and other factors make it worthwhile.
Author Bio: Hi, my name is Farwa, I write SEO optimized Content on absolutely any niche! I write unique blogs and creative content on topics of my interest. My passion is to write on what’s new and trendy while sipping my cup of tea.
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