Having an editorial calendar is a fabulous way to keep your ideas alive for your blog’s content. Laying out what you want to blog about over the next few days or months will help yourself not only generate consistent content but you also keep your ideas on paper and relieve the stress of keeping everything in your head!
Grab your planner – here we go!
Here are 5 Ways to Use Your Editorial Calendar to Increase Your Productivity!
Using a Monthly Calendar
You can highlight all of the events or holidays that are happening in that month. You can colour code the events to help you distinguish holidays from your own upcoming events. For instance, Fathers Day is in June. If you have a product or service that will help Dads out in a great way, make sure that your content is published far enough ahead to give you audience time to act on your offer!
Decide on your blogging schedule.
Consistency is king when planning great content. If you decide to blog three times a week, you need to ensure you have the time to create informational, shareable content. Half-ass posts or worse, third party content full of grammar and spelling errors, will NEVER get you any traction with your audience!
Brainstorm!
Using your calendar with events/holidays marked, it’s time to brainstorm ideas to fit around those events or holidays! Brainstorming doesn’t mean finding the perfect idea on the first go. Brainstorming is about generating as many ideas as you can, regardless of their quality! Grab a blank piece of paper – I find brainstorming most effective with pencil and paper – and go to town. Write down all the crazy ideas that pop into your head. Go for about 10-15 minutes and once you’re done, take a br
Create Your Content
Now that you know what holidays/events are coming up, and what your schedule will be, it’s time to go through that list of ideas you wrote down during your brainstorming session and pick a few that you think you can create some great content around.
Schedule Your Posts
One of the great things about using WordPress for your website is that within the blog module,you can schedule your content. Using the schedule you created in step 2, create your drafts and schedule them accordingly. To schedule your content, simply create a post and then on the right, click on the “Edit” button next to “Publish Immediately” and choose your date. Then hit the bit old “Schedule” button.
And that’s it – five ways to use your editorial calendar to increase productivity!