How to Create an Editorial Calendar (+Free Template!)

Now, think about a system that retains monitor of all of the content material you need to create, all of the steps you’ve to take when creating it, and the place every bit of content material is at in its creation course of.

Sound like a distant dream? Well, it’s not. It’s known as an editorial calendar and on this publish, I’m going to present you precisely how to create one, with a free template too!

If you’re searching for a means to streamline and velocity up your work circulation, learn on.

What is an editorial calendar?

An editorial calendar is greater than only a schedule of your content material. It’s a visible software that lets one individual or an whole group to plan, create, schedule, and promote content material—for the following week, month, and even 12 months. It consists of the duties, group members, and due dates concerned at each stage.

Why use an editorial calendar?

The advantages of utilizing an editorial calendar are many, however listed here are a number of:

More cohesive content material. When you propose out your content material prematurely, you possibly can set up it into themes and create items that help each other every month.
Save time. You at all times know precisely what content material to work on subsequent, taking writers block out of the equation. Plus, your whole duties are prioritized and streamlined. Some editorial calendar instruments even have integrations the place you possibly can publish and promote throughout a number of platforms directly.
Stay on monitor. An editorial calendar ensures that you simply and each group member can progress together with the timeline of a challenge, and ensure no job is left undone or delayed.
Store concepts. Combining an thought financial institution along with your content material calendar may be very efficient thought capturing on the go, particularly if you happen to can entry your calendar on cell.

In my expertise, utilizing an editorial calendar has made an amazing distinction in the way in which I work and I’ve by no means regarded again. Procrastination typically happens after we don’t know what to do subsequent, and so we delay the work at hand.

But for me at the very least, once I know that every one I would like to do is conduct the totally different duties listed in my particular checklists, I’m extra productive and I procrastinate a lot much less. Now, I hope it will possibly do the identical for you!

Keep studying and I’ll present you ways you need to use a free template of a Trello-based editorial calendar.

How to create an editorial calendar

Here are some foundational rules to information you within the course of.

1. Establish a free content material technique

While an editorial calendar might help you to refine your content material technique, you do want to have an preliminary framework to start with. You can use our guide to creating a content strategy for a deeper dive, but here are some basic questions to start with.

What are your goals? Are you looking to increase organic traffic with blog posts, generate leads with gated content, produce sales enablement materials? This will help you answer the next question…
What type(s) of content are you making? For organic traffic, you’ll need SEO blog posts. For gated content, you’ll need to produce PDF ebooks. For sales enablement, you’ll need to create one-sheets and slide decks. For brand awareness and link building, you’ll likely need to write guest posts.
How much content do you want to publish? Based on the content type and team size, you should have some realistic goals and objectives for how much content you want to publish each week, month, and year.

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2. Lay out your work circulation

Once you’ve an thought of what content material you need to produce and the way a lot of it, you possibly can lay out your workflow. This consists of:

Your ideation course of. How do you discover, retailer, and handle your content material concepts?
web optimization optimizations. You’ll need to embrace key phrase analysis and on-site and off-site duties.
Lay out the totally different phases and particular actions of your workflow, and assign any tags, colour codes, or labels which are essential to visualize and keep manufacturing timelines.

3. Choose an editorial calendar software program

With an understanding of your technique, workflow, and group measurement, now you’ll want to discover out which software program is best suited for you and/or your group. Which is what this subsequent part will cowl.

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Editorial calendar instruments

There are a number of totally different approaches and instruments you need to use to create your personal editorial calendar free of charge.

Project administration software program

Project administration software program like Asana and Trello are sometimes the go-to for editorial calendars. My coworkers and I take advantage of the free model of Trello and we find it irresistible! With Trello, you’ve a workspace and inside your workspace you possibly can create boards. Within boards are playing cards the place you possibly can add descriptions, checklists, labels, due dates, attachments, and extra. This makes it easy to maintain monitor of varied elements of the content material creation course of.

You may invite others to work in your boards. This is nice for collaboration, however not the most effective for giant groups since it will possibly grow to be fairly messy with too many playing cards and labels.

You can improve to the paid model for extra power-ups and highly effective integration options.

Keep studying to obtain our Trello editorial calendar template.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheet software program like Excel and Google Sheets can be utilized for editorial calendars if you happen to don’t have the time to study new software program, however they’re extra handbook and never as visible. I’ve made an instance in a spreadsheet to exhibit what an editorial calendar in Excel/Google docs would possibly appear like. Feel free to make your personal based mostly on this suggestion.

Regular calendars

Regular calendars like Outlook or Google Calendar will be good selections for visualizing and scheduling duties quick and simple—plus you’ll get built-in reminders. Furthermore, you possibly can create guidelines templates with particular duties throughout the totally different phases of the workflow, and paste them into the calendar be aware discipline to maintain monitor of what you’ve accomplished and what’s remaining.

Nevertheless, common calendars won’t be the most effective in order for you to maintain monitor of standing in an orderly method and see every little thing in a single look. Here’s a easy overview of how a month’s value of deliberate content material would possibly appear like in Google Calendar, with colour codes used to determine the kind of content material and standing.

Free Trello editorial calendar template

Ok! Let me share with you my Trello editorial calendar template. It works wonders for me in constructing out my content material advertising funnel, so I need to share it with you!

Here’s the hyperlink:

Trello editorial calendar template

Here’s what it seems to be like:

And listed here are its three parts:

Lists: The lists are used to signify the totally different phases of content material, from ideation to promotion.
Checklists: The checklists are used to add duties to playing cards.
Labels: Colored labels signify statuses, for instance “Pending review”.

When you determine to make content material on one in all your concepts, merely transfer the cardboard into the “date assigned” record and set a date for it.

The lists

This Trello editorial calendar board consists of 6 lists:

Guest publish concepts: Stores all of your concepts for visitor content material

In-house publish concepts – Stores all of your concepts for personal content material

Date assigned – Content concepts that you’ve scheduled

In progress – Content which are within the making

Published – Published content material

Resources – Checklist templates and different assets.

As talked about above, every record consists of playing cards, that are your content material concepts. You can add checklists, labels, and dates to every card.

The checklists

This editorial calendar has a number of totally different checklists, every related to totally different phases of the content material creation course of. Alright, however what sort of guidelines am I speaking about right here? Well, the truth is, checklists for serving to you alongside each step of the method!

Keyword analysis – This is the very first guidelines you conduct when creating a chunk of content material. Here you possibly can select between the free strategy, or the paid strategy utilizing Ahrefs. I take advantage of each strategies. I’ve made a publish on how to do free keyword research.

Review draft guidelines: Title, content material construction, name to motion, pictures recognized.

Review guidelines. Relevant when modifying your first draft and getting it prepared for publication. It’s principally on-site web optimization stuff, optimizing for social media sharing, high quality verify and so on.

trello editorial calendar template - review checklist

Publishing and preliminary promotion guidelines. For publishing and selling your content material. It’s a listing of a number of totally different channels to promote your content material in.

Follow-up promo guidelines. Promotion actions one 12 months after publication.

Pinterest publishing guidelines: Step-by-step guidelines on how to make pins and schedule them for post promotion on Pinterest.

To import any of those checklists right into a card:

Go to the cardboard through which you need to import a guidelines

Click the “Checklist” choice on the cardboard’s right-hand aspect.

Choose “Copy items from…” and select your meant guidelines from the menu.

The labels

In this template, I take advantage of labels for content material sort in addition to standing. This is nice for staying organized and in charge of your schedule.

You can add new labels as properly to customise it as you would like. Here are the labels I take advantage of for content material varieties:

Blog publish
Video
Email publication
Guest publish
Freebie
Podcast episode
Passive earnings merchandise

Here are the labels I take advantage of for content material standing:

Draft in progress
Pending overview
Scheduled (publish date)
Published

How to get this free editorial calendar template

Here’s the way you get your copy of the board:

If you don’t have a Trello account already, go join Trello at Trello.com

Once signed up / logged in, click here

Now you have to be contained in the board. Click the icon with the three dots on it on the prime proper, and select “More”.

Click on the “copy board” choice

Now return to your workspace overview in Trello. You ought to have the option to entry your new editorial calendar from there!

Pro ideas for this editorial calendar

Now I’ll go away you with some closing ideas for getting essentially the most out of this template!

1. Customize to your liking

Note that this editorial calendar is a template, and you may edit it the way in which you need. The extra detailed customization is added to it, the higher. If it fits your wants as it’s, nice!

2. Get Trello for cell

Download the Trello app in your cell phone and use the widget to seize concepts rapidly while you’re out and about. Here’s how

First, obtain and set up the Trello app from Appstore or Google Play

Second, add the widget to your telephone’s widget space

Then, wait till you’re hit with a content material thought. Now, rapidly get your telephone out and click on the widget’s “Add card” button

Choose the Trello board and the record that you really want the cardboard to be added to. This could be one in all your thought lists. Like this:

trello editorial calendar template -card example

Finally, click on the “Add” button, and that’s it! Your new thought has been saved to your thought record.

3. Use the calendar power-up

When the calendar power-up is activated in Trello you will notice the scheduled posts within the Trello calendar making up to a month’s value of content material seen at a look. Simply click on the calendar power-up positioned on the prime of your board.

Now you’ll see a calendar with all of your playing cards seen on the assigned date, with its labels. I’ve accomplished some demo scheduling with playing cards in all of the totally different lists to present you the way it seems to be like within the Trello calendar

In the calendar view you might click on on the playing cards and think about them straight from the calendar interface. Notice that every one the standing labels are additionally exhibiting, which supplies you an excellent overview of standing of all of the scheduled posts. The labels are defined in additional element beneath along with the opposite options of the board.

4. Use Mammoth

If you’ve a WordPress website and write your content material in Microsoft Word or in Google Docs, you need to use a plugin known as Mammoth .docx converter to import a publish out of your writing shopper simply into WordPress!

5. Use Yoast

Now you possibly can simply do the duties on this guidelines and get the stuff accomplished! The YOAST web optimization plugin may be very useful when working by this record.

Start constructing out your editorial calendar

Using some type of an editorial calendar is a should for each content material creator. I hope you’ve loved studying this publish and that it has offered you with some constructive worth.

Enjoy this editorial calendar! I hope it makes a distinction in your workflow effectivity. Please go away a remark when you’ve got any questions and I’ll be glad to reply them the most effective I can!

Thank you!

About the writer

René Frydson is a 33-year-old passionate digital marketer, blogger, and productiveness fanatic from a small metropolis known as Forde in Western Norway. Alongside his formal schooling in advertising administration with a specialty in digital advertising, Renè has 6+ years of expertise from his personal ventures on-line. He has hands-on expertise from his employment within the advertising division of a big vitality firm in Norway. Join him over at themarketingonion.com the place he publishes fascinating and informative content material inside the digital advertising and productiveness area.