NEWS & TREND
Ultimate Guide to a Successful Editorial Plan and Calendar
In today's dynamic and fast-paced digital environment, building an effective online presence requires planning and organization. Two basic tools for this purpose are the Editorial Plan and the Editorial Calendar. Let's find out what they are and how they can be used to maximize the impact of your online presence.
Editorial Plan and Editorial Calendar: what is the difference?
The Editorial Plan is the strategic roadmap that defines the goals, target audience, and types of content to be created. It is a general overview that guides content marketing activities. On the other hand, the Editorial Calendar is the operational tool that organizes and schedules the publication of content on different digital channels, such as blogs, social media, and websites, specifying their topic, format, and publication date. This enables effective and organized management of the company's or Brand's communication strategy.
The recommended steps and tools
- Audience analysis and targets setting: it is essential to establish the goals of the editorial strategy. These may include increasing site traffic, increasing newsletter subscribers or increasing engagement on social media. In addition, it is crucial to identify the target audience, understanding their needs, problems and desires. Understanding these will guide the type of content to be created.
- Searching for keywords and themes: use tools such as SEMrush, Google Trends or AnswerThePublic to identify keywords and topics relevant to your industry. To choose content topics to develop, evaluate metrics such as: search volume, competitiveness, trends, virality, brand consistency, etc.
- Diversified content creation: the calendar should include various types of content and formats that are responsive for different publishing channels, such as: blog posts, videos, reels, infographics, carousel posts, stories, newsletters, DEMs and more. For creative ideation, use tools such as Canva (if you are at a more basic level) or Photoshop, Lightroom, DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro, etc. and Grammarly for proofreading.
- Schedule of publications: uses scheduling tools such as Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social to plan and publish content to different social channels and monitor its progress over time.