An Effective Blog Content Calendar – a Sure Way to Master Productivity
Are you looking for a tool to increase your productivity when it comes to writing blog posts? And more specifically, writing blog posts consistently?
We all have situations or times in our life where staying consistent is hard. When creating blog posts and building your blog is one of your goals, you need this consistency to publish a blog post once a week, twice a week or whatever frequency you set for yourself.
A blog content calendar is a fantastic tool to help you plan, organize, and manage publishing your blog posts over a specific period of time, for example a quarter, half a year or even a full year.
I was never really good at knowing what to post when, I just had a long list of blog post ideas. When it was time to write another blog post, I just went to my list and picked an idea. It worked fine in the beginning, I guess, but it also gave me some sense of anxiety because I never really knew what lay ahead.
I was always too late with seasonal content, posting my Christmas-related posts just before the holiday, so I missed my window of my posts being picked up by Google or shared on social media.
That’s when I realized I needed something to better organize my blog posts because I was losing precious time and it also hurt my productivity. I needed a blog content calendar!
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What Is a Blog Content Calendar?
As I said before, a content calendar is a tool that can help you plan, organize and schedule your content creation (writing your blog post) and publishing process (sharing your blog post).
Some people call it a content planner, content schedule, or content plan. It can be a simple spreadsheet (Airtable or Google Sheets), a document (Google Docs), a calendar app (Google Calendar), or a project management tool (Trello, Asana, or Airtable).
The main idea is to have a visual representation of your content strategy and workflow, where you can see what content you need to create, when you need to create it, and where you need to publish and share it.
Why Do I Need a Blog Content Calendar?
You might wonder how having a content calendar might increase your productivity. Imagine this scenario, you come into your office to create another blog post. You sit down behind your desk, you open up your laptop, and click through to the list of topic ideas you have stored in a big list (that is if you even have them written them down in a list).
But what topic to write about today? Which idea to pick? You’re not completely sure which content pillar needs to be addressed next and you click through to your website.
This is taking you precious time. Time you could have used to do some keyword research for example, or start writing that draft already.
Or worse, you’re sitting behind your desk, staring at a blinking cursor and your mind goes totally blank. You’re experiencing writer’s block!
As a blogger, you know that creating and publishing quality content is essential to attract readers to your blog and website, right? But creating these quality blog posts is not a simple or easy task. It requires a lot of time, effort, creativity, and coordination. You don’t want to constantly have to figure out what to write about for your blog.
That’s why you need a blog content calendar. It is great for:
How Do You Create a Blog Content Calendar?
Building your blog content calendar may initially seem time-consuming. You need to figure out where to write your blog posts, choose what metrics to track, and how often to write them.
But taking this time is important, because it helps you create a good solid plan for your blog. In the end, it will help save time and increase your productivity.
Now that you know exactly what a content calendar is and why you should have one, let’s take a look at how to create your own blog content calendar, shall we?
Step 1: Choose your platform to build your calendar
I explained that a content calendar can be a simple spreadsheet, a calendar app, or a project management tool like Trello, Asana, or Airtable. And it doesn’t really matter where you build your calendar as long as you are comfortable using it. Pick something you are familiar with or take the time to learn to use a new tool.
Step 2: Decide what you want to track
It’s important to create a list with what you want to keep track of in your blog calendar. I’m talking about, post title, URL, due date, publishing date, category, keywords, images, social media content, notes, links, and other relevant details. Start with the basics like these and you can always add metrics later on.
Step 3: create a list of ideas for blog posts
Always keep track of ideas for blog posts you could create. Write them in a separate list in your content calendar and categorize them, so you have a good view for when you need to create your actual calendar for the month, quarter or year.
With a list like this, it’s easy to build your content calendar and to vary among your blogging pillars. Keep adding to the list at all times so you never run out of ideas of what to write.
Step 4: create the actual blog content calendar
It is time to put everything together. Create the columns and put in your tracking items. Now go into your ideas-list and schedule out the blog posts you want to write.
Make sure to balance out the categories of your blog, so that you don’t write and post for example 5 blog posts in the same category. An easy tool for this is color coding. Give every category its own color. When you color code the post ideas already, it’ll be easier to pick out blog posts evenly balanced and put them on your calendar. Make sure to keep in mind seasonal content, events throughout the year, and your product launches.
As a side note, make sure when planning your content, you keep an eye on your goals. You should have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your blog and who you want to reach. If you want to read more about setting goals for your blog and specifically SMARTER goals, read my blog post: 8 Easy Steps to Set Goals for Your Blogging Business.
How to Use Your Blog Content Calendar?
Once you’ve built your handy-dandy content calendar, it’s time to put it to use.
To store ideas
As I mentioned before, your blog content calendar is perfect for keeping a list with relevant ideas for blog posts. There is always that moment when you come up with a perfect idea for a blog post and scribbling it down on a post-it note isn’t the best idea. Because before you know it, you have a bunch of post-it notes everywhere or you can’t find the darn note anymore once time has come to create a new blog post.
Most project management tools have an app version for your phone, so wherever that light bulb switches on, you have the perfect place to put down your idea for later use.
Schedule your content
It goes without saying that a calendar is for scheduling your blog content. Do this by assigning dates and deadlines for the different tasks of each blog post and repurposed content piece.
Make sure you mix it up between seasonal content, evergreen pieces, and articles around your products towards a launch to educate your readers about them.
By doing keyword research you can determine when a topic is “hot”. Think about setting goals for the new year or organizing your blogging business toward summer break. Plan ahead accordingly to prepare your readers and keep your business going during breaks.
Tracking and evaluating your content
I love to have an overview of all my blog posts, their URLs, what keywords I used, and whether I share it on social media yet. It makes it so much easier to know where I’m at in the process.
Having the URLs front and center also makes it easy to link to in a new post. I also know exactly which blog posts I need to make pins for and schedule for Pinterest.
You can create a column for blog post performance to know which posts are doing better than others. That way you know what your readers are looking for and engage with most.
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Final Thoughts
I hope I showed you why creating and using a blog content calendar is a good idea. It is a great tool to keep you productive in your blogging business. It will keep you on track with creating a balanced blog for your readers to enjoy.
When you have an organized calendar, your days will be so much more productive. It’ll be a joy to keep creating fantastic content consistently!
If you are interested in more tips to up your productivity, fill in your name and email below. You will get a list with my most helpful tips to tackle time management. Little secret? Tip #4 is my favorite, but I couldn’t do without tip #7!
