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I've worked with a form of social media since 1995. It wasn't until 2004, though, that I was taking an active role in writing and sharing information via social media (before that I was usually working in the background coordinating projects and coding stuff). In the past five years I've had more experience with project management as a stay-at-home-mom who blogs than I did as a web developer who had multi-million-dollar clients. At one point I was writing for three blogs I owned personally, contributing to BlogHer and another network, and driving carpool. I only had about four hours to spend writing for or managing those blogs and I thought I was going to lose my mind. Then I had a brilliant idea: I needed to start keeping an editorial calendar.
For a long while (before my brilliant calendar idea) I simply wrote on my whims about whatever came to mind at that moment. Rarely did I think about what was coming up or where I needed to be in a week. Needless to say, that wasn’t working consistently for me. I missed deadlines, wrote uninteresting posts, and wasn’t meeting the goals I had set for myself. As I reflected on my goals and my personal standards, I wasn't happy with what I saw. I was determined to turn my work habits around and be more positively productive. To that end, I began using an editorial calendar and I can't recommend it enough. (Just a quick side note: Although I no longer write for that many different blogs or have myself going in so many directions, I still try to keep my editorial calendar going.)
An editorial calendar is simply a schedule of where you are writing, what topics you plan to cover, and when you plan to write about those topics. I use my editorial calendar to help me remember daily and weekly writing tasks and assign myself topics and deadlines. This is crucial when I am being pulled in many directions. Each one of my blogs demands a different strength, but they all demand my time. My editorial calendar helps me see where my time needs to be allocated and when. It also helps me keep track of what topics I've covered at which blog so I don't duplicate.
Before I started keeping my editorial calendar, I didn't keep track of the topics I covered each week and I was doomed to never know what I was writing about or whether I'd already covered it. And organizing all the daily and weekly tasks for my blogs without a calendar was a nightmare. I forgot ideas or simply ignored them. I became overwhelmed and ended up sitting at my computer reading celebrity gossip online or fiddling with iTunes--anything to avoid starting because I didn’t know where to start.
Once I determined my editorial calendar and stuck to it, writing became a pleasure again. I felt as though my posts were better, I was more organized, and I actually liked my job.
If I can swing it, I try to look at my editorial calendar (which has ideas assigned to specific days up to a month out) and write posts at least a week ahead of schedule. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you I do that all the time, but it sure helps when I can. I find that writing ahead gives me a little more ease if I have a day where I just can’t write due to family duties or anything else that may come up.
Writing posts in advance also allows me to focus on what is coming up and not be pressured to finish my post immediately. I can write, walk away, come back, edit, re-write, etc. I can take my time and ensure that my posts are interesting and well-written.
Having a calendar telling me which topics I’m going to be covering keeps me thinking about them in the back of my mind. As I consider new ideas and angles for each topic, I write them down in my journal or on the calendar itself (Google Calendar has a place for notes! How you can you not love that?).
One thing to note about an editorial calendar: include wiggle room. There are topics that will pop up and demand your attention or a post immediately. Or, you just may not feel like writing about that topic at that moment. A writer’s muse is a fickle thing. It’s OK to switch things up; sometime our writing flow just goes
