How and Why to Create a Simple Editorial Calendar for Your Writing Business

You’re a writer, and writers write.

And one of the ways you may use your writing skills is to publish useful content to promote your business.

Or maybe you intend to publish, but you find yourself putting it off.

You wait for inspiration to strike, get clouded by too many ideas, or can’t seem to think of anything to talk about. Before you know it, it’s been two months, and you haven’t published any content to market your writing business.

Another challenge is the noise on social media. Whether you use LinkedIn or any other channel for your marketing, it can feel like your work gets lost in the chatter.

An editorial calendar can help you publish more consistently, and also ensure that what you publish is relevant to your ideal clients.

What’s an Editorial Calendar and Why Create One?

An editorial calendar tells you what topics you’ll cover in a given month or quarter, what formats you’ll use, and which channels you’ll publish on and promote to.

Having an editorial calendar helps you:

• Avoid guesswork. You’ll find the three or four topics that are most important to your target audience and stick to them, building brand recognition.
• Improve content quality. Planning your content means you can think deeply about the topics and add a lot of value for your target audience.
• Stay consistent. An editorial calendar brings a system to the madness of content publishing.
• Get intentional with content. Get a big-picture view of your content strategy. Align the services you promote each month or quarter with your business goals.

Create Your Content Editorial Calendar

By the end of this exercise, you’ll have three months of content ideas. So, grab a pen and paper or open up a Google Doc to work through the process as we go.

Who’s your audience?

Think about the types of industries you’d like to write for. For me, I’m a freelance technology writer in AI/ML, Web3, and cybersecurity niches.

My audience includes:

• Marketing managers at recently funded Web3 startups
• Content-marketing managers at AI/ML product companies
• Content-marketing managers at cybersecurity companies
• Marketing executives at agencies that create content for tech companies

Make your own list of target audiences, and if you can, go even more granular for each of those audiences.

For instance, AI/ML isn’t exactly a niche. I could further focus on AIOps product companies (AI in data operations), customer support portals with AI features, companies at the intersection of AI and Web3, cybersecurity companies using AI/ML in their products, cloud technology companies, and so on.

You can also narrow your audience by identifying a specific geographic region, company size, and revenue.

What pains/desires lead your audience to seek your services?

All the usual reasons why companies hire freelance writers apply to your business, too. But, the unique reasons why your clients hire you will tell you a lot about their desires and pain points.

For our example, my target audience’s pains are:

• Most content agencies don’t understand their complex tech product and struggle to create high-quality content as a result.
• Working with tech specialist content agencies means paying premium prices.
• They need a go-to person for content-marketing deliverables — someone who understands their complex tech product/service.

And their desires are to:

• Push out content consistently to get more visibility and brand awareness.
• Distinguish themselves from the competition.
• Establish why they’re the right choice for their customers without using jargon like “leading,” “pioneer,” “futuristic,” “industry-changing,” etc.

Think carefully about the reasons your clients work with you. Or, if you’re still in the process of building a client base, pay attention to the types of posts your target audience makes on social media. Often you can learn what they’re struggling with and see how you might be their solution.

What do they need to know about your services to feel confident in working with you?

Your services will become your content pillars, meaning most of what you publish will tie back to them. For me, this list consists of:

• Thought leadership content
• Whitepapers
• Case studies
• Interview-led blog posts

For each of these services, my ideal clients want to know:

• The process I use to create content.
• The results these services can deliver, preferably with testimonials and stories from my existing and previous clients.
• How I collaborate with my clients to produce the best result.
• My beliefs and opinions about these services.
• How much I charge, timelines, and whether I prefer long-term engagements or one-off projects.
• How I maintain client relationships and promote my client’s success.
• What the end results look like — for this I show samples and share my portfolio.
• How I ensure each content piece fits into the client’s content-marketing strategy.
• How I handle revisions and feedback.
• The modes of communication I prefer and what my availability looks like.
• How I handle situations such as the non-availability of an SME whose inputs I need for a blog post, scope creep, or any mid-project changes.

Make a list of things your ideal clients will want to know before hiring you. Then add to the list the things you want them to know about working with you, so the project is smooth sailing.

Now, if you combine one of these content topics with one of your target audience segments and connect it with your audience’s pain points or desires, you’ll have a pretty solid basis for a high-performing piece of content.

For example, I might write about how thought leadership content can distinguish newly launched Web3 companies from the competition.

Make as many such combinations as you can think of, and you’ll find you have a ton of content ideas.

What content formats will you use to publish your content?

You can create blog posts, images/infographics, videos, PDFs, slide shows, social media carousels, or simple text posts for social media.

Next to each topic, mention its format in your content editorial calendar.

What’s the status?

In your calendar, also note the current status of each topic. Is it in the idea, draft, editing, or review stage? Or, has it been published, and so it’s in the promotional stage?

When and where will you post?

Add in your editorial calendar when and where each piece of content you create will be published.

You can publish your content on your website, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or third-party sites like Medium and Substack.

How’s your content performing?

Create a field in your calendar to note Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) — things like social media likes, comments, and email subscriptions.

Find motivation in knowing you’re publishing needle-moving content for your business. You’ll soon notice improvements in the quality and quantity of leads you generate, which is the ultimate KPI.

How to maintain your editorial calendar

You can build your editorial calendar in Google Sheets or MS Excel or use a tool like Trello or Notion. This HubSpot article contains several templates you can use to set up your editorial calendar.

Fine-tune the templates for your business and follow the process laid out here. Also, know that your editorial calendar is a dynamic document. It will evolve and change as your business does.

You can do this for clients, too.

Going through this process will make you a more consistent and strategic publisher. That will help you grow your following, attract the right kinds of clients, and ultimately land more work you enjoy.

But knowing how to build an editorial calendar doesn’t stop there. You can also offer this as a service to your clients. You simply take them through the same steps you’ve gone through here, and then build out a quarter’s worth of content with deadlines, formats, and distribution plans.

You can charge $500 to $1,000 per quarter for editorial content planning, and, when you plan your client’s editorial calendar, you’ll be far more likely to end up as the writer on those projects.

That makes this a fun, lucrative project that can help you write your own ticket with your clients as far as the types of projects you get to work on.