Planning for content production needs

- [Instructor] How many of you have ever used a compass to find your way? Well, an editorial calendar is fairly similar, as it can be used to guide you towards the goals you want to achieve. For instance, it can help you plan out your content, your campaigns, and programs, so you can take your organization in the right direction. The editorial calendar can also be used to ensure that your content production needs are always organized, strategic, and consistent. Let's dive into these three benefits. First, it allows for greater organization. So how does it do this? Well, by jotting down each step involved with producing a piece of content, like a press release, report, or infographic, and then setting a due date for each part of that process. It helps with remembering each important task and also sets out a time to complete each step thoroughly. For example, if we look at this Google Sheets calendar from H+ Sport, you'll see that each step in producing a podcast episode is listed as a task with a due date and an assigned team member. The first step is creating an outline to structure what'll be discussed in the episode, labeled as Episode Outline, and the next is the recording of the episode, labeled as Record Episode. So as you can see, an organized calendar ensures there's a record of your progress in producing an asset, and each team member knows what they're responsible for. And in the process, this clarity increases the chances of your content getting published as planned. Next, an editorial calendar allows you to be strategic with the content you're producing, as it provides an overview of what's in the works. In my experience, most organizations have different content programs in production at once, so a calendar ensures you're not overcommitting, duplicating efforts, or missing opportunities to coordinate campaigns. On the H+ Sport calendar, we can see both their podcast episodes and blog posts scheduled throughout the month. Looking at this content might reveal that they overcommitted one week and need to reduce the workload for their team's benefit. On the other hand, seeing which assets are listed and when could highlight opportunities to reuse relevant information from a podcast in an upcoming blog post. And lastly, an editorial calendar allows you to be consistent. It provides insight on how often you're reaching out to customers and allows for adjusting the frequency of your publishing efforts. Setting deadlines for when each article or social media post is going live is important, as you want to make sure you're communicating with your customers frequently enough. I recommend aiming to reach your audience with content a few times a month, but the best approach is to use your calendar to discover what your own publishing cadence should be. As you determine what direction to take your content production needs, use your calendar to ensure you're staying organized, strategic, and consistent with your approach.