How To Create a Blogging Editorial Calendar on a Spreadsheet

Today I've been working on setting up my blogging editorial calendar for the final four months of this year. Blogging, especially blogging on multiple sites, as I do, requires the same kind of pre-planning that goes into creating a magazine that will be published monthly. I need to keep my blogs up-to-date and filled with useful content that will really help my readers.

I created my blogging editorial calendar using Excel. I once used a WordPress editorial calendar plugin however found it to be too simplistic for my needs. It doesn't allow for pre-planning on multiple blogs; I had to access the calendar on each individual blog, so I found it confusing. I need everything represented on one page.

Each year I start a new Excel file for blog organization, and the editorial calendar is one page of that file. Other pages are for notes on various blogs and aspects of my blogging work. I create a new file annually because I've had Excel files cease working in the past, due to being overly used. It can be a huge challenge when the file that stops working contains a record of your annual business expenses for the last five years!

Here's the page for my blogging editorial calendar. If you would like to have a copy of this to help create or design your own editorial calendar, just click on the image. Below this, you'll find explanations of the sections I use.



Date Posted: The day this project is completed.

Platform: What blog (or YouTube channel, for vlogging)

Post Type: See the "Types" page in the spreadsheet.

Category: What category in your blog will this fit into? Blogger.com blogs refer to categories as "labels."

Proposed Title: Suggest a possible title. Change later if need be.

Sources: Where will you get your information for the post? ie: research, experience, etc.

Graphics: Where will you get your images?

Multimedia Needed: What do you need?

Request: At the end of the article, will you ask your reader for something?

The rest, in small font, are the social media platforms you plan to use to let people know about your new article or video. ...

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