Editorial vs Content Calendar: Which One Should You Choose?

Content continues to play a vital role in educating and converting customers. It’s no wonder that 76 percent of B2B marketers say it generates demand and leads.

However, knowing what type of content to create, and who will create it, can be tricky.

That’s where a good content calendar or editorial calendar come in. The question is, which type of calendar is right for your needs? 

In this article we’ll explain the differences, show you how to create a content calendar and editorial calendar, and help you choose which calendar is ideal for your business.

Key Takeaways

• Editorial calendars focus on long-term strategic planning, while content calendars handle the day-to-day scheduling and production of individual content pieces.
• Editorial calendars ensure content aligns with broader business goals and marketing campaigns, providing a cohesive direction for all content efforts.
• Content calendars excel in managing the specifics of content creation, publication, and deadlines, ensuring timely and consistent content delivery.
• Use editorial calendars for overarching strategy and long-term planning and content calendars for managing short-term tasks and daily content needs.
• Evaluate your business needs to decide whether an editorial calendar, content calendar, or a combination of both will best support your content strategy and workflow. 

What Is an Editorial Calendar?

An editorial calendar is a strategic document that identifies what type of content you will create, what themes you will cover, and which keywords you’ll optimize your content for.

Editorial calendars focus on long-term strategy and how your content will help you achieve your overall marketing goals.

What Are the Benefits of Editorial Calendars?

Whether you’re a freelancer or creative director, an editorial calendar can help you stay on track, align with long and short-term business goals, and ensure a steady flow of content.

Here are some additional benefits of an editorial calendar:

• It provides consistency. Editorial calendars ensure that all your content covers the same themes and shares the same tone of voice.
• It saves time. Editorial calendars streamline the content planning process, meaning you can create content faster and more efficiently.
• It encourages collaboration. Editorial calendars identify who is responsible for creating content, eliminating silos, ensuring accountability, and making sure different departments and teams know what they’re doing.
• It helps you to plan. Editorial calendars reduce the risk of writer’s block and allow you to identify potential content opportunities ahead of time.
• It provides valuable insights. You can use your editorial calendar to identify themes, trends, and make data-driven business decisions.

When to Use an Editorial Calendar

You might not need an editorial calendar if content marketing is not an integral part of your marketing strategy. 

However, an editorial calendar is well worth it in the following situations:

• You need long-term foresight. An editorial calendar provides structure and insight, allowing you to see which content works well and leads to conversions.
• You need to align your content marketing with your overall business objectives. If you have overarching business goals to achieve, an editorial calendar can ensure everything is closely connected.
• You work with a large team or with third-party organizations. An editorial calendar keeps everyone aligned, ensures deadlines are met, and that the right people work on the right tasks. It’s especially important if you work with freelancers or digital marketing agencies, as it helps them understand your goals.

How to Create an Editorial Calendar

Creating an editorial calendar is a lot easier than you might think. Here’s how to get started.

1. Determine which tools to use. It’s essential to choose something that’s easy to share and meets all your needs. Google Docs and Trello are free, while good paid-for platforms include Asana, Monday, and Airtable.
2. Create a content backlog. This is a list of content ideas you can refer to if you need inspiration. Google Sheets or Excel are ideal.
3. Develop your content strategy. This should include your target audience, how much content you want to produce a month, and what topics you want to cover.
4. Schedule the first month. Scheduling your content in advance means less stress. A month is usually enough, but you could schedule up to six weeks. You can use Google Calendar for this.
5. Move articles into production. You need to set aside time for research, writing, editing, and publishing. Trello is great for knowing which stage each article is at, as well as who is responsible. 
6. Build your content queue. If you’re starting with an editorial calendar, you need to get a few articles ready for publication. A forward-looking schedule of 4-6 weeks works well for most teams.
7. Continually optimize your process. Regularly review your editorial calendar, tools, and procedures to make sure they work for you and your team. 

What Is a Content Calendar?

While an editorial calendar focuses on your long-term goals, a content calendar focuses on how you plan, create, and publicize individual pieces of content over a specific period of time. For example, a month or a quarter.

Content calendars concentrate on the production process. When will you post your content, who will be responsible for creating it, and what channels will you promote it on?

What Are the Benefits of Content Calendars?

If you have a lot of content to generate, a content calendar can help you create and publish it as efficiently as possible. 

Here are some of the other benefits of using a content calendar:

• It helps with task management. A content calendar makes it easy to assign tasks to different people and specify deadlines.
• It ensures every part of the content creation process is covered. A content calendar covers research, writing, editing, image sourcing, publication, and promotion. It also helps with planning – making sure you always have the right resources in place for content creation.
• It provides consistency. A regular posting cadence is essential for building trust and familiarity. A content calendar allows you to keep on top of a regular posting schedule and identify any gaps.
• It allows you to stay flexible. By focusing on a month or three-month period at a time, you can quickly adapt if your circumstances change, for example, if there’s a breaking piece of industry news.

When to Use a Content Calendar

If you don’t regularly produce content, you might not see the benefits of creating and updating a content calendar.

However, a content calendar is perfect for your business if:

• You have multiple content channels. A content calendar can help you identify relationships between your different marketing channels and ensure you consistently post on all of them.
• You post content daily. A content calendar makes it easy to manage what you post and when, as well as ensure a mix of content to keep customers entertained.
• You need to involve multiple people. A content calendar lets you delegate tasks and assign deadlines so everyone knows what they are accountable for.
• You rely on reactive content. A content calendar ensures flexibility – you can move scheduled content around to accommodate last-minute content ideas.

How to Create a Content Calendar

The beauty of a content calendar is that it can be as straightforward or as detailed as you need it to be. Here’s how to create a content calendar in seven simple steps.

1. Choose which tools to use. Google Sheets and Trello are ideal for creating content calendars. A calendar app like Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook Calendar can help you plan your posting schedule. 
2. Identify your content channels. List all the platforms you want to use to post content on. For example, your different social media platforms, blog, and email newsletter. 
3. Plan for key dates and events. Mark important dates like holidays, industry events, and business milestones in your content calendar. This will ensure you plan content in good time.
4. Create content ideas. Define the content ideas you want to create for each channel, including the call-to-action you want to use, links, and visuals. If you’ve already created an editorial calendar, this will help.
5. Decide timescales. Identify the date and time you will post each piece of content.
6. Delegate responsibilities. Identify who in your team will be responsible for each element and when they need to complete it.
7. Track and review. Monitor each piece of content to identify what your target audience responds best to.

Content Calendar vs Editorial Calendar: How to Choose

So editorial calendar vs content calendar – which one should you use?

An editorial calendar is ideal if you only focus on a couple of types of content and want to ensure that every piece of content you create aligns with your marketing strategy.

A content calendar is best if you post on multiple marketing channels, work with a large team, and use a lot of reactive content in your content creation.

However, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a case of editorial vs content calendar. You can use both in your content creation strategy. 

Create an editorial calendar to determine your overall goals and the themes you’ll cover, and a content calendar to identify the content you’ll create that satisfies your editorial calendar.

This ensures your content production is streamlined and in line with your overall business objectives.

FAQs

Conclusion

Content marketing isn’t just about creating a post on Instagram and hoping it goes viral. There’s a lot of planning you need to do behind the scenes.

A good editorial calendar and content calendar can help you ensure that every piece of content you create is relevant, full of value, and contributes to your overarching marketing strategy.

The best thing is that creating a calendar doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Even a spreadsheet that you add your ideas to can simplify the content creation process.

See How My Agency Can Drive More Traffic to Your Website

• SEO - unlock more SEO traffic. See real results.
• Content Marketing - our team creates epic content that will get shared, get links, and attract traffic.
• Paid Media - effective paid strategies with clear ROI.

Book a Call

Are You Using Google Ads? Try Our FREE Ads Grader!

Stop wasting money and unlock the hidden potential of your advertising.

• Discover the power of intentional advertising.
• Reach your ideal target audience.
• Maximize ad spend efficiency.

Get your free Analysis