All experts agree: when deciding on the optimal publishing pace, you should prioritize quality over quantity. That means that whether you follow a weekly or monthly editorial calendar, the most important things to consider are the time it takes to produce the type of content you need and the resources you need to create it.
“Getting deep, sustained engagement with your audience requires your team to deliver something of value that they can’t get anywhere else,” explains Brian Walker, chief content officer at Scale Venture Partners . “Getting there takes time — to come up with truly original ideas, to do the research and refinement, to really master that extra 10% that makes your content memorable. So your publishing cadence should be based on how long it takes your content team to come up with the right content. Sprucing up arbitrary goals like ‘we need to publish weekly’ distracts them from doing the best work they can.”
Rachel Serpa notes that while you need enough lead time to get good content armenia phone number data out there, you need to balance that with flexibility to adapt to evolving markets and events. “For me, the sweet spot has been to plan quarterly, but only schedule one month,” she says. “If nothing changes, I can fit the next month of planned content into the calendar. If there are big changes, I have more flexibility to rearrange things.”
Tool Selection: Calendars and Templates
When it comes time to create your editorial calendar, you'll need to choose a tool or template to design and share it with. Keep in mind that every relevant stakeholder needs to be able to access the calendar, so it should be shareable. There are many different options, you just need to find the one that works best for you.
Valdellon recommends selecting a calendar that has a drag-and-drop feature to make rearranging items easier and more manageable. Remember that some people are visual learners and work better on paper. In that case, consider printing out the calendar and hanging it where it can be seen or using a tool where each user can print out the calendar. Just remind them to check back frequently for any updates to the calendar so they don't work with outdated material.
Wrike calendars allow content teams to have individual, color-coded calendars for each type of content, such as ebooks or blogs. “The ability to layer these calendars creates a single view of all scheduled materials that really makes deadlines and dependencies clear. It makes it much easier to identify scheduling conflicts,” Rachel admits, adding that she uses Wrike’s monthly calendar template.
“The best thing is that each scheduled task is linked to the underlying work and all you have to do is click on it to see all the related information, files, and conversations. Changes to due dates made directly on tasks are automatically propagated to Wrike Calendars, and dragging and dropping a task onto the calendar also updates the task date,” he adds.
Walker notes that you may want to manage two versions of your editorial calendar:
A comprehensive version for the content team, detailing all production steps, assignments, and deadlines they need to know.
An enhanced version for the marketing team and other stakeholders, indicating delivery times. These external stakeholders want to know when the ebook will be ready, but are less concerned about the production process.
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