Making {and Sticking to} an Editorial Calendar

I am trying my hand at sharing some of my blogging tips and tricks. I don’t claim to know all about the blogging world or pretend to be a blogging goddess on the internet. However, I have found a few things here and there that work really well for me.

It has taken me awhile to find an editorial calendar that worked for me. It started off as notes jotted down on scraps of paper to adding it to my Google Calendar to writing it all down into a notebook to having a separate planner. But none of it actually worked. I lost the scraps of paper. I dismissed the Google calendar alerts. I lost the notebooks. And I gave up on writing things over and over again.

Then I opened up my favorite thing in the whole wide world, Google Docs. I started a spreadsheet and went to town. And this is what I came up with.

Snag the blogging editorial calendar template for yourself!

Let me explain my thinking when setting up the template. I started this template when I wanted to really focus on SEO. I knew I needed to capitalize on my SEO plug-in but always struggled on what to put in those fields. This has helped A LOT!

Day and Date: These are pretty much self-explanatory. I decided to add the day of the week along with the date so I knew were to schedule my “Wordless Wednesday”.

Category: Is your post a sponsored post? Personal post? I try to only do one sponsored post a week so this column helps me see that.

Topic: This is just a short description which usually ends up being my SEO title.

Blog Title: Again, self-explanatory. This comes in handy when my Blog Title isn’t the same as my SEO title.

Description: This is what I will put in my SEO description and will come up as my “blurb” on Facebook and other share sites.

Keywords: With some sponsored posts, the sponsor will provide certain keywords they would like you to use in your post. This is one of the first fields I fill in after I confirm the post with sponsor so I won’t forget. I will also consult Google Keyword Tools for some other juicy SEO keywords for my post.

Published URL: Once my post is complete and scheduled, I grab the URL and put it in the spreadsheet. This acts as a reminder to myself that the post is completed and scheduled.

Tweets: I’ll plan out some tweets for the week and place them in the column before scheduling.

Confused? I was at first but now it has me knocking out the posts even faster! I have been consistently drafting out posts two weeks in advance with the help of the editorial calendar.

Like my editorial calendar? Grab the template and start planning!