Online marketing can be tiring! That’s where UpCity comes in. As a trusted advocate for small businesses, we’re here to navigate you through the piles of confusing and suspicious offers. UpCity will lead you in the right direction by providing easy insights and simple solutions for your business marketing plan. Members receive an in-depth, personalized action plan to help optimize their site, and our team is here to help you along the way. Each week, we’re featuring a comprehensive look at one of the recommended tasks built into the UpCity software.
Background
Your blog is one of the driving forces behind the traffic that comes to your website. Having content in the queue is what allows you to focus on producing top quality information for your readers, rather than trying to come up with ideas on the spot. As a result, having an editorial calendar allows you the flexibility to choose how you want your blog to be portrayed and how you plan to use content topics to increase traffic. Perhaps most importantly, content calendars keep you organized and on track.
In this guide, we’ll show the exact process we use to make our editorial calendar easily accessible, useful and efficient, so that we get our content out on time of publishing.
How to Create an Editorial Calendar
Step 1. Get a spreadsheet out using Excel or Google Sheets.
Step 2. Create a simple spreadsheet with the basic information. This is a guide only, so you can add columns as needed.
Step 3. Add text in each cell and create at least one-month at a time. Working with deadlines one week ahead of planned post dates allows time for last-minute changes.
Step 4. Creating categories and developing titles for proposed posts helps you stay focused.
Here are some columns to think about including on your spreadsheet:
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Publish Date
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Due Date
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Author (if multiple contributors)
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Title of Post (title can change once post is complete, but basic titles help you remember planned content)
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Category
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Type of content: blog, video, article, images, etc.
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Targeted Keywords
Step 5. Try to publish weekly but at a minimum, at least twice a month.
In our editorial calendar, we have 6-7 columns that give us a great overhead view of all of our blog content.
UpCity members, please follow the pathway to complete this task in your UpCity account: Become an Authority > Become an Authority Basics > Blog 101: Basic Blog Writing.