Do you need what’s known as an “editorial calendar” even if you are a small business that writes only two to four blog posts each month?

The truth is that you do—everyone does! Nevertheless, yours doesn’t necessarily need to be overly sophisticated. Let’s discuss.

What is an Editorial Calendar?

Simply put, an editorial calendar is a plan of your content for the next few months. It includes items such as:

• Content titles
• Types of content (blog post, white paper, newsletter, etc.)
• The person responsible for writing
• Targeted keywords
• Content promotional strategies

You should construct this in the form of a spreadsheet and share that document with everyone responsible for content—perhaps using Google Drive or another cloud-based file sharing platform. Even if you’re the one solely responsible for writing content, you’ll still benefit from an editorial calendar.

Benefits of an Editorial Calendar

For smaller businesses, the calendar’s primary benefit is that it allows you to keep track of topics you write about. After all, you don’t want to blabber on about something you just wrote about 3 months ago (longer than a year is okay). You can also look back to learn what you said on a specific topic previously to then adopt a fresh angle in the future.

Another benefit is organization, as you’ll immediately know where to find everything related to your content (which is a big time-saver). If another person or two work on your content as well, this also centralizes communication.

Additionally, an editorial calendar allows your content to work together in a single “voice.” Let’s imagine you have a team of people who work together on content creation. Some of these folks generate social media posts reflecting a formal, factual voice while your blog writers talk casually about topics completely unrelated to your social content. This would confuse your customers who would immediately lose interest and—eek—maybe even stop buying from you.

You can also analyze what you’ve done in the past and assess your performance, knowing similar ideas may work again in the future. Or perhaps it might be time to try something new such as a different holiday promotion, for example.

Finally, an editorial calendar creates accountability. It’s so easy to become confused regarding who’s supposed to do what, but this tool leaves no room for excuses.

A Few Pointers:

1. Always create content you believe your audience will love (this will get easier over time).
2. Tie at least two to three marketing goals to your content (e.g., additional/more qualified leads, better engagement, additional sales, 200 new newsletter subscribers, higher search rankings, etc.).
3. Remember your plan is fluid and will thus evolve as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t.