A complete guide to creating an editorial calendar

The day-to-day reality of a content marketer is often a whirlwind of juggling multiple tasks and managing competing priorities. (Can’t you tell I’m projecting here 🤯).

Maintaining a steady stream of engaging, high-quality content that’s also relevant and valuable to your business’s target audience? That is no small feat, my friend. That’s why creating a content plan and maintaining a strategic, organized editorial calendar is so essential.

In this article, we’ll cover how to create an editorial calendar that will give you and your team visibility and structure so you're all more organized and successful for the year ahead.

We’ll also explore the benefits of using an editorial calendar, like streamlining cross-team collaboration and more effective planning for product launches and campaigns. And, for some bonus points 🌟💯🔖🥇, we’ll share some editorial calendar tools you can use, along with a template so you can get started on yours right away.

An editorial calendar is a visual, strategic, hyper-detailed plan of all the upcoming content you’ll be creating, when it will be published, and on which channels. It’s essentially a detailed timeline that helps you map out your content output over weeks, months, quarters, or even the entire year. It outlines:

In short? Scope. An editorial calendar focuses on the big picture whereas a content calendar gets into the finer details. Think of it like a zoomed out, long-term plan for executing your content strategy. In contrast, a content calendar zooms in, outlining a day-by-day plan for meeting the deadlines in the editorial calendar.

An editorial calendar generally includes things like:

The theme for each piece of content, like “editorial calendar template”.

This covers the format of the content. We’re talking blog posts, pillar pages, ebooks, infographics, video, checklists, podcasts, case studies — the list goes on.

The deadline for completing each piece of content.

The scheduled date for when the content will be published online.

The person who’ll be creating or managing the content piece.

Where you’re currently at in the content stage, e.g. ‘Write brief”, “First draft”, “With Design”, “Product marketing review” or “Ready to publish”. These are just examples, though, you can totally customize these fields to fit your specific content workflow.

An editorial calendar is a must-have for staying organized and keeping your content marketing strategy on track. By organizing content topics, deadlines, and responsibilities in one place, it can help you:

When it comes to tools to help you build out your editorial calendar, the world is your oyster. We’re talking:

Content marketing tools: Established content teams swear by Optimizely’s content marketing platform. It offers all the bells and whistles you need keep everything in check, including timeline and Gantt views, Kanban boards, project management capabilities, collaborative workflows, and analytics.

Spreadsheets: If your content team is more of a one-man band, you can totally rock it with a good old-fashioned spreadsheet template.

Calendar apps: Calendar apps help keep tabs on content deadlines and publishing dates. They’re typically free and easy to use. The real stumbling block here is that there’s a lot more to editorial calendars than just the key dates, so you’ll have to find a separate way to track that information.

Whiteboards: If you’re the hands-on type, whiteboards with colorful markers and sticky notes are a fun way to map out content ideas and make changes on the fly — plus, they add a little flair to your workspace. A good digital alternative would be something like Lucidchart.

Project management tools: General project management tools like Asana and Trello are great for planning out each step for all the blog posts, articles, videos, and assets you produce. But this route is often just another siloed solution — disconnected from your other marketing tools, calendars and communication methods.

In this section, we’ll walk you through nine essential steps to crafting a standout editorial calendar.

It’s mission-critical to know what you want to accomplish. What are your goals? Do you want to build brand awareness and boost loyalty among your current customer base? Or are you gearing up for a new product launch and looking to generate demand and capture leads?

Maybe you want to do a bit of everything — raise brand awareness, engage existing customers, and drive sales. (That’s totally fine, we love a bit of ambition!)

To make sure you build a successful editorial calendar that gets you to your end goal, take time to identify your objectives and set clear, measurable KPIs to track your progress. Whether it’s growing organic traffic, boosting engagement on social, or improving conversion rates, having specific metrics will help you see what’s working and what needs some changes.

Time to grab that pen (or your favorite content project planning tool) and start planning your content strategy. With clear goals and metrics, you’ll be well on your way to success. If you’re stuck, you can use the following popular content marketing goals as a quick steer:

You may end up with multiple goals for content, and that’s okay — in fact, it’s probably the most likely scenario. But it makes it even more important to clearly identify them now, so you take them into account when planning out your editorial calendar.

Select the top channels for sharing your content, such your blog, newsletter, email, and social media platforms. Aim for platforms your audience engages with most and where they’re likely to make buying choices.

For example, if you’re targeting B2B buyers, LinkedIn is going to be one of your best options. If you’re targeting B2C Gen Z buyers, on the other hand, platforms like TikTok and YouTube are typically a better bet.

Before diving into your editorial calendar, you’ll need to do some seriously thorough research to ensure your content aligns with your wider company initiatives and stands out in the crowded marketplace. You’ve already gotten off to a good start by clarifying your business objectives — whether it’s increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or fostering customer loyalty.

Next, you need to carefully analyze your competitors. Assess what types of content they’re producing and how often they publish. Look for gaps or opportunities in their existing content strategy that you can capitalize on.

We also recommend gathering insights about your target audience’s interests and pain points. All this upfront research will help you come up with an editorial calendar that not only meets your goals, but also resonates with your target audience.

Carefully consider your budget for content-related work, along with the resources you have available on the team. This will give you a better sense of how many quality content pieces you can realistically create (or outsource) on a monthly or quarterly basis.

Also, keep in mind any new tools or software you might need for content creation and management, as they can impact your overall budget.

Balancing quality with consistency is key. You should publish as frequently as possible, but make sure it’s only the good stuff. Whether you’re posting daily, weekly, or monthly, a predictable publishing schedule helps build trust with your audience and keep your business top-of-mind.

Plus, side benefit: it helps your team stay organized and focused — no more last-minute dash to hit deadlines.

The next thing to think about is your workflow for content creation. Specifically, how does a piece of content move from the first to the last draft in your organization? What steps does it go through before it’s ready to publish?

Here’s an example of what a workflow for a blog post could look like:

Now that you have a general idea of workflows and channels, you can begin setting deadlines and assigning tasks to the right team members. For example, the editor does the first round of edits, whereas the strategist is responsible for the first round of approval.

As the old saying goes, “the only constant is change”.

When unexpected opportunities or challenges come, you’ll need to pivot your content to stay on track. Whether it’s an emerging industry trend, a shift in business goals, or new priorities handed down from your leadership team, being able to tweak and rework your editorial calendar will keep your content strategy relevant and effective.

By staying adaptable, you can seize opportunities quickly, avoid wasting resources on content that’s no longer aligned with your business objectives, and ensure your content continues to resonate with your audience.

As content plays such a vital role in any go-to-market strategy, you’ll likely already collaborate quite closely with various teams in your organization. So be sure to share and proactively gather input from colleagues and stakeholders on how to refine and rework your editorial calendar. Involving teams outside of marketing can spark new ideas for content and help ensure your editorial calendar stays aligned with broader business priorities.

To keep everyone aligned, you need a clear way to manage your editorial calendar on an ongoing basis.

While we might be a bit biased, Optimizely’s tools really help content marketers. Using a dedicated content marketing platform like Optimizely improves visibility on what needs to be created and approved, making it easier for teams to collaborate. With built-in approval workflows, managing your editorial calendar is a breeze, freeing your content marketers up to focus on the really creative stuff. ✨