5 Powerful Reasons You Need an Editorial Calendar, Even As a Solopreneur

All the best publications use an editorial calendar. They help plan the work to be done, and keep the content and marketing departments on track.

Guess what? Solopreneurs need editorial calendars, too. Just because you don’t have a team, don’t assume an editorial calendar isn’t for you.

Here are just five of the many reasons you should start using an editorial calendar for your WordPress site. You’ll be able to:

Always know what to write about — bye, bye writer’s block!
Schedule your own time more efficiently
Plan your writing around special events
Plan a content theme for the week or the month
If you accept direct advertising on your site, you can contact advertisers to let them know how their message will fit with upcoming content you have planned

If you’ve not used one, here’s how to quickly get your content planning organized.

#1. Plan Around Holidays and Events

Sit down with a regular calendar and note upcoming holidays and special events that you can tie in with your content.

#2. Come Up With Some Themes and Ideas

Generate ideas for ways to capitalize on relevant business themes. Some are obvious — if you’re a chocolatier, you probably already know you get a lot of business around February 14th and late March – early April (Valentine’s Day and Easter).

What if your business isn’t so obvious, though? Brainstorm ideas that work in your industry or niche, and put them on the editorial calendar. Does one of your advertisers have an enormous Christmas in July sale every year? Plan some supporting content.

#3. Fill in the Empty Spaces

Now brainstorm ideas to fill the gaps. Is there a business theme you can focus on during a month that doesn’t include holidays or events? Write it down.

Is your editorial calendar taking shape now? Great! Now it’s time to transfer all that hard work to an editorial calendar. But what should you use? Common choices include a:

Paper calendar or whiteboard
Spreadsheet
Online calendar
WordPress plugin

I prefer to use a WordPress plugin. Fortunately, there are some good choices available.

Editorial Calendar

There’s an excellent basic editorial calendar, called simply, Editorial Calendar. It lets you:

See when all your posts are scheduled
Drag and drop to reschedule
Manage drafts, even with multiple authors

CoSchedule

If you want a bit more, though, check out CoSchedule. It’s the one I use.

It’s not free, although you can start with a free trial. But for what it offers, it’s a bargain.

It has all the usual editorial calendar features — all your posts show up on the calendar, you can drag and drop to reschedule, and you can manage each step of the writing and publishing process, for an individual or a team.

And then… you can schedule social media posts directly from CoSchedule.

This is an enormous time savings. It’s so much faster and easier to create your social media content at the same time as you’re creating your site content.

CoSchedule can post to:

Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Pinterest

They offer calendars for solopreneurs, small teams and large companies. Depending on which plan you choose, use CoSchedule as a calendar for marketing, workflow management with a team, and social media. Some plans include integrations with other tools like Bit.ly, Google Docs, Trello, Evernote, and YouTube. They claim it’s an all-in-one publishing solution, and it pretty much is.

My favorite (and most used) feature is called ReQueue. It’s not available with the free plan, but is worth every penny of the monthly fee for the time it saves me. Basically, it lets me repost social posts on a schedule I determine, keeping my social media feed stocked with content.

But whichever editorial calendar you choose, having one will make your content creation easier.

Editorial Calendar

CoSchedule

Other articles you’ll like. . .

Explore Life. Create Anywhere.