For some of my corporate clients, I am in charge of not only writing blog posts but developing and maintaining the editorial calendar. Once I explained to them the benefits of having such an item in the marketing arsenal, they understood its value.
For one thing, it allowed them to take advantage of already scheduled events or special occasions (think World Fair Trade Day, National Literacy Action Week or Breast Cancer Awareness Month) and, if appropriate, tie it to whatever goods or services they offered. And it allowed me to easily fill in spots on the calendar, so I could quickly see where we had copy “holes” and plan ahead to fill them.
But like the shoemaker’s kids who went shoeless, my own editorial calendar was sadly out of date and full of empty spaces. This was bad enough before when all I wanted to do was keep my presence alive on the Internet, but even worse when my latest book, Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories, was released and it was up to me to do my part to keep the book front and center in an ever more crowded Web world.
And if I had any doubts as to the reason why I needed an editorial calendar, Jesse Wisnewski’s post, “9 Reasons Why Every Author Needs an Editorial Calendar,” detailed a slew of reasons. From increasing your creativity to expanding your reach, Jesse explains how having an editorial calendar can translate to more followers and potentially more sales.
Now that he had me convinced, the next step was developing an editorial calendar that would promote my current book and my “Celebrate Short Fiction” Day event, while keeping a steady stream of interesting blog content that related in one way or another to writing.
I started with the obvious holidays—Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Thanksgiving—and focused on developing writing-related content that fit the occasion. (For example, one of my ideas is to draft a Valentine’s Day post with tips on writing love letters.) Then I looked at other, lesser known holidays—for instance, Time Management Month—that could spark writer-related content.
Great—the wheels were churning and ideas were coming fast and furious. So how would I keep them organized? Fortunately, there are a host of websites out there with tips on how to create the calendar itself. Bob Angus offers a Free Editorial Calendar Template, while Amy Porterfield has tips on How to Use Google Calendar to Create an Editorial Calendar. (For those who need screenshots to follow, check out Corey Eridon’s How to Create a Robust Editorial Calendar for Free Using Google Calendar—complete with pictures!)
With Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of the social media sites key elements of any authors’ marketing strategy, I found some great ideas in Lisa Buyer’s post on How to Create a Social Media Editorial Calendar and Identity PR’s Social Media Editorial Calendar – Tips For Creating One. (Also look at Constant Contact’s cheat sheet for social media posting frequency.)
With all this information, I’m feeling pretty confident that my 2015 editorial calendar will look much better than my 2014 one! If you have tips to share on creating editorial calendars or resources you have found helpful, post them here!