Blogging Editorial Calendar: Tutorial and Download

During the blog party, I want to make sure I share all of my favorite tips and tricks to save money, time and effort when it comes to being a blogger or handmade business owner. And if there was one thing that I could recommend any blogger who wants to have a consistent blogging schedule or even a blogger who wants to save time planning/writing posts, it’s to use a Blogging Editorial Calendar.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what an editorial calendar is, it’s generally used by magazines to showcase their upcoming features in future issues plus other articles they intend to write. Transferring it over to the blogging community, it’s fairly similar – it’s a way for a blogger to plan out future posts and ensure that they’ve written, scheduled, or posted their ideas.

I created my own months ago and absolutely LOVE it. Whenever I forget to update it or stop using it, I’m scrambling to finish posts last minute and end up royally sucking at my time management. So today I thought I’d give you a glimpse of what I do, explain how I use it, and offer it to you for free so you can manage your posts and time easier.

{click to enlarge}

If you look at the image above, there are six columns. From left to right: Category, Title, Status, Author, Due Date, and Notes. Below I talk about how I use each of the columns to stay organized with it.

• Category: This is the main Category I assign it to in WordPress. Sometimes I include more than one, sometimes I don’t. It’s just used as a quick glance to see what kind of upcoming posts I have scheduled so I can ensure that my blog stays diverse. This could be the Tags you use as well.
• Title: Self-explanatory. Title of the post.
• Status: I use five different status labels for my posts, depending on where they are at in the writing stage.
  • Need To Write: Haven’t started writing it yet.
  • Started: Somewhat written, but not complete.
  • Pending: Written by someone else and needing to be scheduled by me.
  • Scheduled: Written and scheduled to post on the due date a few columns over.
  • Posted: Written, schedule, and then posted to the blog already.
• Author: Who is writing/has written the post. If you don’t have Contributors, this could be guest blogger names as well. Can be removed if you don’t have other people write posts for your blog.
• Due Date: The date that it is scheduled to be posted or when I would like to post it.
• Notes: Any information regarding the post, such as if I’m waiting on information.

That’s it! Super easy, simple and quick to use. It’s a no-frills way to track everything and just keep it easy to read + easy to update. If you’d like your own, just click on the link below to download the template from Excel that I created. It includes a 2012 + 2013 calendar tab to easily reference the dates when you’re planning out your posts.

Download The Excel Workbook