How an editorial calendar drives communication success

In the fast-paced world of content creation, having a well-thought-out editorial calendar is like having a roadmap for success. It helps you stay organised and ensures your content is aligned with your organisation’s goals and objectives. Planning your editorial calendar will help you communicate your objectives with authority.

What is an editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar is a schedule outlining the content you plan to create and publish over a specific period, typically monthly, quarterly or yearly. It helps you keep track of important dates, themes and deadlines, ensuring your content is timely, relevant and consistent. You can use your editorial calendar to plan your daily blog and social media posts, weekly articles, monthly newsletter, and quarterly or annual social impact reports.

Why you need an editorial calendar
Consistency
Planning your editorial calendar ensures you have a consistent flow of content. This is crucial for maintaining audience engagement and building a loyal following.

Organisation
An editorial calendar helps you stay organised by providing a clear overview of your content schedule. This makes it easier to manage deadlines and allocate resources effectively.

Alignment with objectives
By planning your content in advance, you ensure it aligns with your organisation’s objectives and messaging. This is particularly important for social impact reports and social media posts, where the message needs to be consistent and authoritative.

Time-saving
Planning your editorial calendar in advance saves you time in the long run. You can batch similar tasks together, such as writing multiple blog posts on the same topic, to help you work more efficiently.

Flexibility
While an editorial calendar provides a framework for your content, it also allows for flexibility. You can easily make adjustments to accommodate new developments or respond to current events.

How to plan your editorial calendar
Define your goals
Start by defining your content marketing goals. What do you want to achieve with your content? This will help you determine the type of content you need to create and the messaging you want to convey.

Identify your audience
Organisations such as yours work with more than just the immediate community you serve. There are the donors/funders, investors, suppliers, employees and volunteers. Understand which audience you are aiming for, the communication preferences they have, and the media that will work to get them to interact with your content. This allows you to create content that resonates with them and drives engagement.

Choose your platforms
When you do generate your communication materials, how do you ensure they reach your community, supporters and the general public for maximum impact? As you identify your audience, you also need to determine which platforms you will use to publish your content. Remember, all your stakeholders have different communication needs. Therefore, pick a platform that ensures you communicate effectively, within your budget and time constraints. There is no limit to print or online media that you can use. However, the essence of doing an editorial calendar is to also find out whether you can sustain developing and publishing content for more than one platform.

Brainstorm content ideas
Generate a list of potential topics and themes for your content. As a non-profit, some of your best content such as case studies and social impact stories will be generated over time as you collect your stories from project participants and the community you serve. In the meantime, you could research reports and research done in your chosen areas of impact or theory of change to generate ideas.

Create a schedule
An Excel sheet or Word document table usually works if you are starting out on your editorial calendar. As you advance in your communication frequency, a calendar tool or spreadsheet will be ideal to create a schedule for your content. Include important dates, themes, and deadlines and use colour highlights to differentiate each content type.

Assign responsibilities
If you are working with a team, assign responsibilities for creating and publishing content. Make sure everyone is clear about their roles and deadlines.

Monitor and evaluate
Regularly monitor the performance of your content and evaluate its impact. Use this feedback to refine your calendar and improve your content strategy over time.

Just as your organisation’s theory of change is a roadmap on strategy, programme design, and evaluation efforts your company needs to achieve its mission, an editorial calendar is a valuable guide for your communication efforts. By planning your communication strategy in advance, you ensure a semblance of consistent, timely and relevant communication effort. Allow for flexibility and adaptability in your content as you monitor and evaluate its effectiveness and watch your content strategy and engagement soar.