How to Create a Content Calendar You'll Implement

Studies show businesses that have a documented content plan are more successful with their content than those that don't. A content calendar will ensure you follow your content plan.

This post is not about content plans; I’ll write that post another time. Instead, this post is about content calendars, a critical part of an overall content plan. The reason it’s critical is that, without a solid yet easy-to-implement content calendar, your content plan doesn’t matter.

A content calendar is your roadmap or guide. Its sole purpose is to help you produce and publish content that works for you while educating, informing or entertaining your target audience. It helps keep you and your team focused, on the same page and consistent with your content.

And at the same time, a content calendar ensures you are following your content plan.

Before we go on…

Real quick - a content plan provides the overarching direction of your content, while your content calendar spells out specifically what types of content you will produce.

OK, back to the regularly scheduled programming.

What does the content calendar do?

A content calendar ensures your content stays aligned with your goals and your customers’ needs, which helps ensure you create content with intention.

A content calendar also helps you stay consistent with your content, which is critical. Your audience can’t get to know, like and trust you if they only see your content from time to time. By mapping out what and when you publish content, you are more likely to stick with it.

And finally, a content calendar also honors or commemorates any seasonality to your business as well as holidays, which can be good fodder for content topics. And finally, a content calendar helps with collaboration with other teams while keeping everyone on the content team aligned about what’s happening.

How to create a content calendar

You can create your content calendar a number of ways. The key is to find the way that works best for you. A content calendar that’s difficult to use or inaccessible is just as bad as not having one.

You can use an Excel spreadsheet, calendar app, word document, Trello board or other software or application. Don’t get too caught up in the design of your calendar but rather in the execution of it.

Once you determine the platform, determine what length of calendar you want to create. I caution against going any longer than three months because it’s difficult to plan beyond that. So, plan for a week, month or quarter.

Why?

When you plan for a shorter period of time, you have more control over the content you create. You ensure the content really is aligned with your audience and goals, and it also gives you the opportunity to better see what content is resonating and what isn’t. Then you can tweak and adjust as needed.

Which brings up a good point: your content calendar is not written in stone. It’s a guide that’s fluid and can be amended or updated as need be. It’s a starting point meant to help you succeed with your content.

Quality over quantity

Gone are the days of posting 100 times a week to get traction and attention. These days, quality counts, so as you plan your content, shoot for high-value information your audience can use.

With everything you create, you want to ask yourself these two questions regardless of what you’re creating:

What do I want this to do for me/my business?
What’s in it for my audience?

When you have the answers to those two questions, you are ready to create your content calendar. Here’s the information to include:

Format – is this a blog, social media post, case study, email etc?
Objective – why are you publishing it? What does it do for your business?
Business Tie-in – What business goal is it aligned with?
Topic – what is it about?
Potential title
Keywords
Call to action – what do you want the reader to do next?
Distribution – where will it be distributed?
Deadlines – for each round of drafts
Owner – who owns it in the organization
Notes – anything else to note about it

Gathering this information will keep you focused and on track with your content.

As you go through the exercise and discover you have questions, please reach out.

And if you’d like a free one-month content calendar template, I have one for you. It’s a Google Sheet; send me a message and I’ll get you the link.