There are two types of people in this world, those who blog and those who don’t. The former are further sorted into two kinds, those that keep an editorial calendar, and those that sit down to write while they are inspired.
Nothing wrong with the occasional sip of inspiration and penning down a post.
Problem is, you could occasionally end up staring in front of a blank document, on your designated blogging day, trying to figure out a good topic. For professional and business bloggers, this is wasting time and potential.
This is where you could use an editorial calendar — which is, essentially, a list of blog posts that you are going to write and when you are going to write them. Here are the benefits:
You get a nice balance of posts
Regularly churning out content means that it is all too easy to write the same type of content week in week out, without even noticing. A calendar lets you plan things out in advance, while at the same time produce more variety in content.
You stay on top of blogging
Perhaps the biggest advantage is that instead of rushing through a post at the last minute, or worse, skipping blog posts, you get to stay in control. Come up with a bunch of different ideas for a month, and plan your days around it. If you have a big, important post, you can give it more research time too.
You collaborate with others better
Others in this case being either guest bloggers, or people that help you with your company blog. Using a calendar means that people will be aware of when you are posting and what you are posting about, and this helps keep things running much more smoothly.
A point worth noting here is you do not need anything fancy to maintain an editorial calendar. Sure, there are WordPress plugins that help, like the aptly named Editorial Calendar, but you can just as easily use a document, spreadsheet, even a physical calendar or a diary.
Do you use a calendar? How long ahead do you plan? A week or a month? Let it be known below!