Editorial Calendar Template

About the Editorial Calendar Template

Every content team needs an editorial calendar. From ideas to writing, editing, and publishing, use our editorial calendar template to make sure everyone knows what stage of the process something is in, and who's responsible for it. Assign writers and reviewers, and move each piece along the publication schedule to stay organized and aligned.

What is an Editorial Calendar?

If you’re like most organizations, then you’re constantly pushing content, marketing campaigns, ads, and more. To keep customers and prospects in the pipeline, many businesses have a regular cadence of blogs, newsletters, and social media campaigns. But how do you keep all that content straight? And how do you formulate a cohesive content marketing strategy?

Organizations use Editorial Calendars to build their content strategy. An Editorial Calendar is a schedule of content that you will produce and deliver to customers and prospects. Though Editorial Calendars vary by team and organization, most of them map out the content, stakeholders, persona targets, delivery methods, and dates.

What do you put in an Editorial Calendar?

You can adapt your editorial calendar template to meet the needs of your team. Many teams track title, topic, description, writer, and due date. You can also add target keywords, target persona, buying stage, and distribution channels.

Why use an Editorial Calendar?

Without an editorial calendar, content teams often struggle to plan strategically. When you have a calendar, you can proactively map your content to different marketing campaigns, company initiatives, and seasons.

Creating a structured production flow (such as in a Kanban board) also makes it easy to visually understand the stage of every article and content pieces, for better organization.

The 5 elements of an Editorial Calendar

1. A list of content. Start with the content you plan to produce. To keep a steady flow of content, it’s a good idea to list the pieces that are in development in addition to those that are scheduled. The list might include short-form content like blogs or long-form content like ebooks.

2. Stakeholders. Keep a running list of all stakeholders for each project, including writers, contractors, designers, editors, and social media associates. Stakeholders can then refer to the editorial calendar to keep abreast of projects that are coming down the pipeline.

3. Deadlines. By when should the content be created? Reviewed? Proofread? When should it be published? Posted to your content management system? Put all of these key dates into the editorial calendar.

4. Call to action. Each piece of content should have a call to action. Once someone consumes your content, what’s next for them? Is there a link at the bottom of the blog where they can go to learn more? Is there an ebook they can download?

5. A list of channels. Enumerate the channels you will use to deliver your content. Once you write an ebook, for example, what’s next? Will you break it up into blogs? Will you distribute the ebook on LinkedIn or through your newsletter?