Whether you’re a writer, YouTuber, or podcaster, building a content calendar can help you consistently provide value to your audience. But if you’ve never created one before, the process can feel overwhelming. Fortunately, you can implement several strategies to stay on track.
Today, we’ll identify some of the top tips you can try to build the best content calendar. Regardless of the platform you use to organize your workflow and content, these tips are worth trying.
1. Be Honest With How Much Content You Can Post Per Week
One of themain reasons that many YouTube channels failis that people aren’t honest with how often they can post. This is also true for other creative fields, such as blogging. Before we even look at what you should consider adding to your content calendar, you must be honest about how frequently you’re able to post.
As a personal example, I began by experimenting with publishing once a week and once a fortnight on my blog. After realizing that I had a bigger capacity to share content with my audience, I increased that to twice per week. You might be different, as you could have a full-time job or kids.
The frequency doesn’t matter as much as consistently sticking to your schedule. Even if you can only share something once per month, that’s better than doing nothing at all.
2. Include Sections Where You Can Add Notes
Including the titles of content you want to post is only one part of the jigsaw. It can also be incredibly helpful to have a section where others can leave notes, especially if you’re assigning the task to someone else.
Within this section, you can write a brief outline for the topic you want to talk about. On top of that, you can include sections that are absolutely crucial—along with how you want your content to differ from similar posts that are already out there.
Notion is one tool that many creators use for their content calendars. If you want to follow in their footsteps, you can read this guide outlininghow to plan and organize your content with Notion.
3. Create Tags for Each Step of the Process
While your content calendar should be simple to manage, having some control over the entire process is a good idea. One of the best ways to ensure that everyone’s on the same page is to create tags for each step of your content creation, and that’s a good idea even if the calendar is only for your eyes.
Examples of tags you can use to organize your calendar:
If the program you use doesn’t let you use tags, you can either use color coding or write the term somewhere on the task. If Google Calendar is where you plan to have your content calendar, you can read this guide onhow to color-code your Google Calendar.
4. Use Different Tabs for Your Main Outlet and Social Media
In some cases, you might use social media to spread your message to a broader audience than might otherwise have been possible. But one mistake many content managers and creators make is keeping everything within one tab. This might seem like an effective way to organize things, but the opposite can often happen.
When you put the posts for your social media channels, blog, podcast, etc., in one place, you risk mixing everything up. A much better idea is to create two separate calendars or tabs.
How you do this depends on the program you use. For those who want tomaster the basics of Google Sheets, you can perform this action within the app. Likewise, you can make new pages in Notion.
5. Leave Some Room for Flexibility
Okay, sure—having a full content calendar for the next 6–12 months isn’t such a bad thing. However, sometimes you might want to shuffle your ideas around. This is especially true if you create content about a niche that is rapidly evolving, such as sports.
To facilitate these potential adjustments, it’s worth being flexible with your calendar. You can still make a list of short-term ideas that might arise, but another idea is to keep a note somewhere of topics that could be useful in the future.
6. Choose an App or Program That Works for You
The app that you use to design your content calendar doesn’t really matter. All that’s important is that you (and your team, if you have one) find it easy to use.
You have a huge number of options when picking an app or program that fits your needs. Notion, Google Calendar, and Google Sheets are all ideal options that we have mentioned so far. You can also try Apple Calendar oruse Microsoft Excel for day-to-day planning.
Another thing worth noting is that many tools for creating content calendars are free—so you shouldn’t need to worry about your budget.
7. Clearly Delegate Tasks if You Work in a Team
Imageby Jason Goodman via Unsplash. No attribution required.
Although creating content is a challenge on its own, things can become even more tricky if you work within a team. It’s essential that everyone knows their roles and responsibilities when you delegate tasks; if they don’t, you might fail to keep up-to-speed with your output requirements.
Many content planners will allow you to assign different tasks to other people within your team. And at the very least, you shouldn’t have any problems mentioning their username or email address to get their attention. Make sure that you also set clear deadlines.
8. Archive or Remove Old Content
As you begin to publish regularly, you’ll start to work through the topics already on your content calendar. Needless to say, if you don’t stay on top of this it can become quite confusing to see what you’ve got coming up next.
The easiest way to deal with this issue is to either archive or remove old content. How you do this will depend on the app you use, but it shouldn’t take too long.
Building an Effective Content Calendar Regardless of the Platform
Organizing your online content production can be challenging, especially if you’re the only person on your team. However, building a content calendar is a great way to help you stay on track. Whichever platform you use, there are numerous things that you can implement to ensure that you remain consistent.
Before you do anything else, it’s a good idea to understand how often you can post. Separating social media from your other channels, and leaving some room for flexibility, also helps to keep things smooth. There are many other things you can try as well, such as clearly delegating tasks if you’re part of a team.
