Hi friends! I am so thrilled to have Bri of Simply Savvy on the blog today talking about editorial calendars! This is something I’ve talked about in the past but a lot of you mentioned in the survey that you’d love help with this area, and honestly, y’all: Bri is the woman to go to! So without further ado, here she is!
1. Sanity. If your blog is more than just a hobby you need an editorial calendar. You can’t expect to churn out post after post without a proper plan in place. Especially if you’re posting more than 3 times a week. But even then, knowing where you’re going and where you’ve been is so incredibly helpful when planning blog posts. If you don’t have a plan, you’ll forget your past posts, what you were planning for next month, and you’ll start to lose your awesome ideas. Keep track of everything in an editorial calendar and you’ll thank yourself later.
2. Traffic. Readers crave consistency. Consistency creates trust. Trust leads to loyal blog readers. Loyal readers share content. Shares lead to more pageviews.
Having an editorial calendar in place will create that consistency for you and lead to more pageviews. If your readers know that on Mondays you post recipes and on Wednesdays you post free wallpaper download and on Fridays you post a weekly round-up of links around the web, they’re going to trust you more because they know what to expect. Readers want to like you, trust you, want to feel comfortable when they come to your blog. If you’re posting willy-nilly about anything and everything they’re going to get confused. Confusion can lead to fewer pageviews which, for us bloggers, is kind of bad. Keep your readers happy by staying consistent and watch your pageviews grow!
3. Streamline. You can streamline your blogging process by creating a killer editorial calendar. Similar to #2, knowing what kind of post you always do on Monday, Tuesday, etc is going to help you plan you entire calendar and alleviate some stress of planning blog posts. Coming up with ideas can be hard but if you know on what days you post what kind of material, it’s a lot easier to nail down.
4. Organize. Have you ever been to a blog and seen that they have 50 different categories? It’s confusing and pretty difficult to navigate. You are obviously welcome to blog about anything you like, that’s the beauty of blogging, but if you have well organized categories it’ll be a lot easier for your readers to navigate. And again, this will create more comfort and lead to more pageviews. Your editorial calendar should reflect your blog categories. Take your categories and place them on your calendar and then fill in specific posts. Think to yourself: Mondays are for blogging tips so this Monday is ‘how to create pinterest-friendly photos’ . It makes your blog more reader-friendly and keeps your categories from getting out of hand.
5. Free time. Do you feel like you’re freaking out over your blog posts and your planning? Having a well thought out editorial calendar will free up so much time in your day. Instead of sitting there trying to think about what to post for tomorrow or next week, you’ll just look at your calendar and get to work! Not only will this give you loads of extra free-time but it’ll make your content better because that’s all you’re focusing on. I know your content is already amazing, but think of how much better it could be if you weren’t worrying about planning and coming up with ideas, just writing and taking photos and creating! Awesome, right?
[Tweet “Use an editorial calendar to help free up time spent trying to come up with ideas for posts”]
So do it. Sit down right now and plan out your next month of blog posts. Remember to organize it by category and stay consistent. Then take all your free time and create something new and fantastic! Or go out for ice cream! Or do some yoga! Or call a friend! Enjoy your newfound free time. And if you’re still having trouble creating a well-functioning calendar for yourself, I’m always here to help!
(worksheets in the image are by Amber Burns!)
About Bri Towne
Bri is the mother of two gorgeous children, and the genius behind the new business Simply Savvy, where she helps create custom editorial calendars for the savvy blogger! You can also find her blogging over at Mamages, where she talks about all sorts of fun things related to being a mama!