Get Started with Content Calendars

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Define a content calendar.
Start building a content calendar.
Explain the elements commonly tracked in a content calendar.
Maintain a content calendar.

Your Content Strategy Requires a Calendar

To succeed at content marketing, you need to publish quality content on a consistent basis. And your content should align with your overall content strategy.

But how do you make sure you’re taking into account key audiences, campaigns, or themes? How do you put your content strategy into action as you set and meet deadlines? With a content calendar.

What Is a Content Calendar?

A content calendar is a hub that documents, shares, and organizes your content planning, creation, publication, and distribution process. It gives you—and your team—visibility into what you plan to publish and for which audiences. Crucially, it ties your content strategy to tangible deliverables and deadlines.

You use a content calendar to monitor your content creation process as it happens. As you refine your strategy, you put plans into action by revising your calendar to reflect the changes.

Why to Use a Detailed Content Calendar

A content calendar is a definite content marketing strategy must-have. Without one, you lack a detailed view of the content you plan to create, when, and for what audiences. The calendar brings together your overall plan for content creation into one place—and lets you monitor progress as it happens.

With a content calendar, you can:

Proactively map out your marketing content and activities.
Spot and address content gaps.
Support your content strategy with consistent production across personas and themes.
Plan short- and long-term content creation strategy and production.
Increase collaboration and transparency across teams.

Get Started with a Content Calendar

There are several factors to consider when deciding how you’re going to build your calendar. Think about which stakeholders need access to the calendar. Also, consider what functions you need, such as editability, collaboration, or direct ties to the content assets themselves.

Next, think about the scale of content you plan to track. Will you need multiple calendars for many teams or a global operation? Or one calendar to manage a simple content marketing program?

With your needs in mind, explore your organization's current marketing and content technology. Do you already have content calendar capabilities? Many content operations systems have content calendar capabilities or components.

If you lack content calendar tools, consult with your marketing and content operations leaders to find an option. For companies with a simple content strategy and a low volume of planned content, you may want to start with a free or spreadsheet-based tool. You can implement a more robust tool as your needs change.

Tip: Be wary of trying to support a complex content strategy with a manual spreadsheet-based calendar. It takes more time to maintain than if you use a calendar with automatic features, and can quickly become overwhelming.

Large organizations may need multiple content calendars to support different products, personas, and types of assets. You can use an editorial calendar to gain a big-picture view across calendars. (Find more about editorial calendars in the next unit.)

Decide What to Track

What details will you track in your content calendar? Will you focus on a specific persona or theme? Will you track all types of content assets, including podcasts, blog posts, emails, videos, and social posts? Or just a few formats? Consider using separate calendars or tabs for different types of content or personas.

Here’s a list of items commonly tracked in content calendars.

Item	Purpose
Topic or working title	Document the topic and the proposed title for each piece of content. Link this field to the draft of the asset.
Campaigns/ initiatives	Map your content to the larger campaigns and initiatives in your overall marketing strategy.
Theme	Note the themes that the content aligns with. (You capture high-level themes in your editorial calendar, which we cover in the next unit.)
Publish date	Ensure a target publish date is tied to each content piece. This helps you keep projects on track even if the dates change.
Final draft date	Note when a draft needs to be complete to meet the publication deadline.
Status	Track progress through stages in the content development process. Stages differ based on the content type.
New or optimized	Note whether the content is new, or older content that needs a refresh.
Format	Identify whether content is external (podcasts, blog articles, emails, videos, social media posts, and so forth) or internal (Customer Story Slides, internal blogs, and so on).
Owner	Identify the person responsible for overseeing the creation and distribution of the content. Depending on your organization, the owner might be a marketing manager, a content strategist, or another role. There also can be several owners depending on the type of content or channel owned.
Writer/Creator	Note the lead content creator. For more complex pieces of content, you might also list the designer, videographer, or editor.
Approver(s)	Decide who needs to review the content. Too many reviewers can slow production and increase costs, but too few can reduce organizational buy-in for the content.
Channel	List where you plan to publish the content.
Persona	Note the target audience(s). Keeping track of this in the content calendar can help you see whether you’re addressing all your target personas.
Buyer journey stage	Ensure your content drives awareness, furthers consideration, or aids in decision-making.

Track More Items (But Not Everything)

You can track any number of additional points in your content calendar. But you may find that tracking everything in one calendar makes for an unwieldy tool. Add items that make sense for your organization to those listed above; remove any that aren’t relevant. It’s not necessary to show all of the data you use to categorize content on a calendar.

Here are a few additional items that some organizations track within their content calendars:

Call to action (CTA): What’s the suggested next step after consuming the content? This could be anything from signing up for a newsletter to starting a free trial or learning about a product.
Localization: Will the content need to be translated and localized before publication in specific markets?
Promotion plans: Are you using paid media, campaigns, or multiple channels to promote the content? List planned social media posts you plan to develop for the content.
Supporting assets: Who’s responsible for creating any email promos, social posts, or landing pages for the content?
Videos/Images: Who’s in charge of videos/images for content that requires them?
Success measures: What are the specific KPIs and metrics used to measure success?
Subject matter expert (SME): Who are the subject matter experts working with the lead content creators?

Start with a Content Audit

Your calendar gives you a view of all your planned content. As you complete content, your calendar helps you see past assets, too. But what about all the content you created before you gained a calendar view? Consider a content audit.

With a content audit, you review existing content and record the relevant data tracked in the content calendar. That includes items like target persona, format, theme, buyer journey stage, and success measures. And while you’re doing the audit, note items to consider for removal—and top performers that can benefit from a refresh.

Keep Your Calendar and Content Fresh

Creating a content calendar is only the beginning. Success comes with proactive calendar management. Make it clear who’s responsible for maintaining the content calendar. Will one person be responsible for the calendar or will individual content owners keep their items updated?

Include these items in your management plan.

Input from leaders and stakeholders
Updates from content meetings for planning and content ideation
Links to drafts and completed content, including source files
Regular updates of success measures

Content calendars track the details of your content. But what about the big picture? See how editorial calendars deliver a high-level view in the next unit.

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