Editorial calendar
What is an editorial calendar?
An editorial calendar is the plan of what gets published, where and when — articles, social posts, emails, campaigns. Its value is visibility rather than discipline for its own sake: which subjects repeat, which weeks are empty, and who owns each piece. A calendar without a name and a date against every line is a list of ideas, not a plan.
What goes in it
A working editorial calendar is a table, not a wish list. Every line has:
- A date and a channel: the site, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, the newsletter.
- A subject and a format: an article, a carousel, a short video, an email.
- An owner: the one person who writes it or gets it written.
- A goal: what the piece is for, such as visits to a service page, enquiries, or answering a question that keeps coming up.
- A status: idea, in progress, approved, published.
Around it sit the fixed points of the year: seasons, holidays, trade fairs, product launches, the weeks when customers buy most.
Example
A garden centre posts when someone has time. In a typical spring month that means nine posts in the first week and none in the last two, just when people buy seedlings. Half the posts are photos of the shop with no reason to click.
With a calendar the month is planned in one meeting: three posts a week, each tied to what customers do that week (what to plant now, how to look after it, what is in stock), one article a month answering the question asked most often in the shop, and one newsletter. The owner approves the month in advance. Posting time drops to two hours a week, and visits from social media to the site double over the season.
Why it matters for a business
A calendar turns publishing from an interruption into a routine. It shows which subjects repeat and which customer questions are never answered, it keeps the weeks before the busy season full instead of empty, and it lets the owner approve a month of content in one sitting instead of every post separately.
It also makes content measurable. When each line has a goal, the report at the end of the month can say which subjects and formats worked, and the next month is planned from that, not from scratch. Recurring content pillars keep the calendar consistent without making it repetitive.
What to ask
- Who owns the calendar, and who approves it before anything is published?
- Does every line have a goal, and do we check it at the end of the month?
- Are the busy weeks of our year planned weeks in advance?
- Which questions do customers ask that our content has never answered?
The editorial calendar is the basis of our social media management: subjects, dates and formats for the month, which you approve before anything is published.