Most of my life has been spent meeting deadlines by the skin of my teeth. Planning things in advance might be an option, but procrastination kept them in the planning stage. I have always been a very good procrastinator. These last several months have helped me to understand the value of following the plan if I want my website to be all that it can be.

5 Easy Steps for Planning and Writing Content

1. Review your website. Start your content calendar session by reviewing the content that already exists on your website. It is always a good idea to link back to your own articles whenever possible and relevant. Knowing what you have already been writing will help make that possible. Reviewing past content will also give you an idea of the topics that you tend to make the focus of your content.

2. Discover the purpose and direction of your website. Reviewing what you have written is one of the best ways to determine what you want to be writing. Knowing the vision and mission of your website will help you develop the right content for your site.

3. Create content blocks. Break up the content that has already been written into specific topics or subjects. Also consider any topics that have been raised in comments or emails to you that you have not covered. These new topics may be opportunities for you to invite in some guest bloggers.

4. Brainstorm ideas. Spend a few hours or a few days coming up with potential content titles for your different topics. Use this time to visit other blogs, forums and websites in your niche to see what are on the minds of people in the industry.

5. Work the content into your work schedule. Set aside time every day or every week to produce some of the content for your site. You can pre-post the content or keep it in a folder to be posted as needed.

Organization may not be the easiest thing for you, but it is essential to your content writing success. Not only will a content and editorial calendar organize you materials, but it will also help you get the writing done. Knowing what you are going to write and when you are going to write can be a great deterrent to writer’s block. Creating an editorial calendar may be that new step you need to make all the difference on your website.

What is An Editorial Calendar?

Quite simply, it’s a list of the content you’re going to publish with corresponding publication dates. You can find samples of what an editorial calendar can look like here:

Notice that this particular calendar from PC World has a schedule for print and online content.  While your calendar doesn’t need to be presentable to the public, you will likely have numerous categories listed.

For example, online, autoresponder, article marketing, reports and so on.

Why Use an Editorial Calendar?

Planning your content in advance offers a number of benefits:

• It makes it easy to outsource your content.
  
• It makes creating content a breeze because you don’t have to worry about what you’re going to write about.
• It helps you plan your marketing and advertising promotions.
• It reduces stress.
• You’re less likely to miss blog posts if it’s scheduled in advance.
• You’re able to focus your attention on other profitable tasks.

How To Create an Editorial Calendar?

The easiest approach is to grab a notebook and a desktop calendar and to plan your content.  It’s recommended to plan a year in advance, however you’d prefer, you can plan three or six months in advance.

Once you have a plan on notebook paper, then consider taking two steps. The first is to create your plan in an easy to access manner. That may be printed out and tacked to your bulletin board or saved as a document on your computer.

Additionally, consider adding the content to your daily/weekly planner, Outlook for example. That way when you’re busy you’ll be notified automatically when you have content scheduled.

If you’re not using an editorial calendar, consider adopting the tool. It’s tremendously useful and it’ll help you stay on top of your content and ahead of your competition.