How To Make an Editorial Calendar For Your Blog

It’s 10 pm the night before your new blog post.
Staring at my Screen and waiting for those miraculous words, ideas for a tomorrow’s new post.
The head is empty, and there is no idea what to write about.
Familiarly?
 
It does not have to be like that every time. 🙂 With good organization – editorial calendar, you can skip this waiting and start writing. I usually spend 1h per month to prepare my calendar and save a lot of time later. Worth every minute!
 
I create my editorial calendar for a month in advance, usually at the end of each month. It is done in 3 steps: pre-preparation, preparation, execution.
 

 

Pre-preparation

It’s more or less the preparation of everything I need before I create my editorial calendar – and this usually takes me the most of the time. What do I need to prepare? Those are my steps I usually take and they are very effective:
 
1 | Review all ideas
For while now I have a list of blog post ideas and every time new idea pop in, I simply add it to the list. In the first step, I always check my list and mark those that I like the most.
 
2 | Checking the calendar
In a second step, I check my calendar (I have to admit that sometimes I don’t take this step, but it may be useful for a lot of bloggers). Is there any important event, a date that I am planning to go to and then publish it on my blog? If yes I add this to my list and mark it as a post I will publish next month.
 
3 | Checking how much content I need
My plan is to post every Sunday (main blog post) and every second Wednesday (WordPress tricks), this means I need about 4 main blog post and 2-3 WordPress tricks.
 
4 | Narrow selection
In this step, it’s time for me to make a shortlist and select those blog post I intend to publish in the next month. If I have more, great I will keep it as a reserve if I want to change the topic.
 

Preparation

When I have everything ready, it’s time to make an editorial calendar. With good pre-preparation, this step is quite easy. If you don’t have a calendar yet, first you should choose the one that will be the most convenient and effective for you. What do you prefer online or offline calendar on paper? I’m a mixture of both. I use Google Calendar to plan my posts – because it’s always and everywhere available and a variant on paper that I have in my workplace, so I can check what is the next post and the current status at any time.
 
Google koledar
In Google calendar first I write my chosen posts. Then I evenly arrange them (every Sunday, main post, every second Wednesday WordPress tip).
 
Printable calendar
In my printable calendar I write down all the planned posts. After completing eg draft of my next post I mark this in my printable calendar. More about this printable calendar you can check in this post. I like my printable version because I can always check the status of my next post.
 

Execution

When it’s time to start preparing a new post (usually on Monday), I’ll look at what I’m going to write about and then go prepare a new post. I mark each step I do in this calendar.
 
Often I want to write about something else. Then I simply replace the planned content with the new one and the planned content return to the list of ideas. The calendar is more than a guide to make my process easier.
 
So this is my process, how to make an editorial calendar for the blog. Now it’s time for you to share with us how you make it and if you use it at all. Do you make plans or do you write only when feel inspired (people are different and both variants are ok)?
 

*September calendar you can get here:

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