Why you need an editorial calendar for your blog

Maybe the next situation will ring a bell.

At last you have made the leap to the online world, you are very excited about your new project and you know that having a blog on your website will be very useful to move faster towards your goals.

And it’s time for the truth. You have to start writing on it.

But what’s going on?

You’re in front of the dreaded blank page of Word or Google Docs.

Hopefully, you get some inspiration and you start writing things. But you see that the minutes pass and you are simply writing, deleting, modifying words… You don’t move forward as you would like because you’re also not very clear about what to write, what purpose that particular article has, etc.

And at worst, you’ve been paralyzed. You don’t know what to put. You have some ideas, but all confusing and you don’t know which one you should prioritize to achieve your goals faster.

In short: writing in a blog is no easy task. Without good pre-planning and the development of a strategy for those contents, in the end you can end up fed up with the blog without even having really started writing.

Sad, isn’t it? With the illusion you had at the beginning!

But don’t worry. We’re here to give you a hand. 😉

If what we’ve discussed before has resonated with you in any way, it’s clear that then you need an editorial calendar for your blog.

Throughout this article we will tell you the keys so that you know exactly what the editorial calendar is,reasons why it will be a must for your blog and a mini guide so you know how to create one.

And how could not be less, in Kiwop we want to help you as much as possible. For this reason, at the end you will find a downloadable PDF with the editorial calendar model that we use at the agency to plan our articles.

We hope you like it!

What is an editorial calendar for a blog

The editorial calendar is one of those elements that, when you discover them, you regret that you have not known of their existence before.

Basically, it is a document that reflects the planning of the contents of a blog.

There are other types of calendars, for example, for social media, but that’s more work from community managers and social media.

The calendar of a blog helps us clarify the ideas and put them on paper (or, in this case, on screen) to know:

• What we want to post on our blog
• Who we are targeting (our target)
• When do we want to publish
• What goal do we want to achieve with this content
• How we want to position on Google

It’s not a place where you just put the title of the article and a brief description. An editorial calendar collects all the information necessary to write a post that really adds value (later we reveal what information this 😉 is).

Why the editorial calendar is a must for your blog

Now that you’re starting to get a little idea about what the editorial calendar is like for a blog, let’s give you more reasons why you need to spend some of your time.

• Say goodbye to crashes for lack of inspiration: with the editorial calendar you will always have content ready and you can pull it. If, on the other hand, you go day by day, the safest time will come when you don’t know what else to write.

• You hit the nail on the head with your audience: since you’ll spend time searching for keywords that best fit your target audience, you’ll do an investigation of what content adds the most value, etc., you’ll be much clearer about who your ideal audience is and you won’t write for writing. They’re all advantages 😉

• You’re much more productive: you’ll be clear about what it’s like to write that day, and you’ll be focused on it. We assure you that you will make the most of your time!

• You define the goals for each post: this way you know what you want to achieve with each item. The blog can serve to generate brand, end up leading to a sale, gain subscribers for the newsletter, etc.

• Editorial order:Say goodbye to chaos on the blog. It’s over-published for publication. Ordering in a blog is essential for good results.
  
• Avoid cannibalizers:this is part of SEO positioning. It happens when two or more articles compete for the same keyword. In this case Google does not know which post to position. If you plan your keywords in the calendar well, this issue goes away.
  
• You develop a strategy with the long term in mind: most people who start with a blog only have today and tomorrow in mind. They publish content without ton and are not, and do not take into account that they have to check how the content is working to make changes and that they improve in the future.
  
• You are covered in unforeseen events: If you are clear about which articles/themes you want to publish and it ends up some unforeseen event and you can’t post a post on a given day (for example, you’ve failed a guest blogger’s article), it will be easier for you to rearrange your articles if you already have them previously organized.

What elements to include in an editorial calendar

Well, once you mention some of the reasons why you need it, let’s go to the most important thing: what elements to include in an editorial calendar for your blog. We rely on the calendar format below.

Search for keywords or keyword research

This is to search for words that can appear in your calendar to optimize them later in each of the articles so that they position and end up attracting visits from Google.

The fields within the calendar

• Keywords: the section that is first populated. Once you have defined which keywords or keywords you want to use in your article, you can create the title of the post, the page, etc.

• Post title (or H1): Try to make the title quite striking and attract the reader, as it will be the first thing you see next to the image when you open the post or share it. Very important to add in this title the keyword (hereinafter “KW”).

• URL:It is also essential to add the KW here, as Google pays attention to it. The URL is the address of the post page that you see in Google search results.

• Title: This is the title of the page that the user sees when they search on Google. It’s what catches your eye and makes you choose your post over another.
  
  Here the main thing is to put the KW as far left as possible, and put the company name on the right. Not too long, so that it does not cut: maximum 65 characters.
  
• Meta description: This is the user’s brief description of the post on the Google search page. Here you can also include some KW, although it is also not 100 necessary since Google does not pay as much attention as for example to the title. However, don’t exceed 156 characters by counting the spaces because otherwise it’s cut off.

• Categories: Having your blog categories defined helps you organize articles in your calendar.

• Post description: In this section, briefly write what approach you want to give that article. So, when it’s your turn to write it, you’ll know where the shots go and they won’t have to start from scratch.

• Post’s goal: Not all blog articles have the same goal. In this field of the calendar you should define why you are doing X item: getting traffic (what is always usually), generating brand, increasing subscriptions to the newsletter, taking the purchase of a product or service, etc.

Get to work!

We hope that with this article you have seen the importance of prior content planning by making an editorial calendar for your blog.

We hope that with the tips we give you and with this template that you can download right now you can start making yours.

And remember that you can always end up delegleging this work to third parties. In this way, you can take care of the most important ones: your online business.

At Kiwop we are specialists in the writing of blog content and we will be happy to help you with that.

Ask us and we’ll see what we can do for you 😉