BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR

IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS
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Your blogging life is about to get a whole lot easier.

Want to know why?

Because I’m going to show you a simple trick you can use
to ramp up the frequency and quality of your blog posts,
big-time.

Think of this like an assembly line for your blog.

Right now, you’re probably assembling each blog post one

at a time—gathering the various components and putting
them together by hand. That’s certainly one way to do it,
and it can work for one-off blog posts…

But it’s NOT the most efficient or sustainable method for

growing a blog, and it doesn’t scale well when you decide
to ramp up your content production.

So what should you do instead?

Well, if your goal is to create a blog consisting of high-

quality content that’s updated on a regular basis, then you
need a system for creating that content. An assembly line,
if you will.

Here in the content marketing business, we call that

your editorial calendar.

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 3

Here is a sneak peek at DigitalMarketer’s Editorial
Calendar.

And if you don’t know how to create an editorial calendar,

don’t worry. I’m about to show you the method I use to
create one in mere minutes.

This method is fast, simple, and very powerful. Don’t

be fooled by its simplicity, though. In fact, this system is
effective because it’s so simple.

See, complex processes have a tendency to fall apart at

the first sign of adversity. But simple methods like the ones
I’m about to teach you are easy and flexible enough to
adapt and change along with your needs.

Before we dive into it, though, let me explain a little more

about why having an editorial calendar is so important for
the long-term success of your blog.

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Why Having an Editorial Calendar is
So Important
An Editorial Calendar is a key component of a successful
blog. In a nutshell, it’s what enables you to strategically
schedule, systematize, and outsource all the components
of your content creation.

When you can see all the upcoming posts in your queue at
a glance, along with the most important details of each—
like the publication date, the writer, the type of post, the
topic, and so on—you’ll find it much easier to make sure
your content is covering an appropriately diverse range of
subjects in a variety of different formats.

(It also helps to focus your attention on some of the most

important aspects of each post, like the headline.)

And the good news is, an editorial calendar doesn’t have

to be difficult to create. In its simplest form, it can just be
a list of the blog posts you have planned along with a few
key details.

Next, I’m going to go through some of the most important

dimensions of your online content. These are some of the
things that I recommend keeping track of in your editorial
calendar.

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The 4 Dimensions of All Blog Content
Pro bloggers know that blog posts come in all shapes and
sizes. Here are the 4 most important ways to differentiate
between different blog types.

Dimension 1: Blog Posts Vary by Medium or Vehicle.

• Text—Most blog posts are text-based, so this will

probably make up the majority of your posts. Keep in
mind, we always recommend including related images
to break up the text and keep the content visually
interesting. Example: What is Digital Marketing?

• Video—Video is becoming more and more important

every year. Of course you should be posting videos to
YouTube and Facebook, but your blog is an equally

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 6

 important place to embed your videos for users to see.
Example: Answering 11 Hard-Hitting Questions About
Organic and Paid Facebook: An Interview with Dennis
Yu

• Audio—Most audio content takes the form of a

podcast. Podcasts can be a terrific way to increase
your reach and grow your audience! Example: Any
of our Perpetual Traffic or DigitalMarketer
Podcast episodes

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 7

• Image—Some posts consist primarily of an infographic.
Infographics can be a little more time-consuming to
create than text posts, but they’re usually worth it due
to the high shares they tend to generate. Example: How
to Have the Ultimate Content & Commerce Summit
2017 Experience

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 8

Dimension 2: Blog Posts Vary by Length.

• In-depth, Info-heavy Posts—These are longer, more

detailed posts. They can either be a deep dive into a
subject, an explanation of a case study, or a Pillar Post.
Pillar Posts are often lengthy, detailed posts that explain
one of the core messages or subject matters of your
blog. These posts are often “evergreen” (which means

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 9

 they don’t age quickly) and are referenced back to
frequently. Example: DigitalMarketer’s 101 Best Email
Subject Lines of 2018 (…And 7 Top-Notch Subject Lines
Pulled from the Vault)

• Casual Posts—These are typically shorter, more

informal posts. They don’t go as in-depth into a topic,
but might cover important news or developments in
your industry, or a tertiary matter that your audience
would be interested in. As a result, they might be less
evergreen, but they can also be very timely. Example: 7
PowerPoint Tips to Banish Boring Presentations

A good rule of thumb ratio is to publish 1 pillar post or in-

depth, info-heavy post for every 5 to 10 casual posts.

Dimension 3: Blog Posts Vary by Source.

In other words, who actually writes the post? Most big

blogs get their posts from a diverse group of sources,
including…

• Yourself—These is content you create in-house

(whether it’s you or someone else at your company).
Example: Ryan Deiss on the End of Marketing As We
Know It (And I Feel Fine)

• Curation—This is content you have aggregated from

other sources. Often, but not always, you will provide an
analysis of the curated content. Example: How Digital
Marketing Will Change: 17 Predictions for 2019

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 10

• Guest—This is content someone else created for your
blog (paid or unpaid—learn more about finding guest
writers here). Example: Ecommerce + Paid Traffic: How
Ezra Firestone Turned $434,256.72 into $1,422,500.15
in 30 Days Using Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest,
Google, and Shopify

Dimension 4: Blog Posts Vary by Topic.

In other words, what category does each post fit into? Just
about every blog covers a variety of related topics. These
are the large, broad categories that describe your content.

As an example, a fitness blogger might have the following

broad categories:

• Cardio
• Weight Training
• Diet
• Stretching

Here is what one fitness blog uses as menu categories.

And that’s it! Those are the 4 main dimensions you’ll want
to track on your editorial calendar. At this point you’re
ready to put your blog planner together.

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 11

How to Create Your First Editorial
Calendar
The first thing you’ll want to do is to decide on a
publishing schedule.

If you publish content only intermittently—such as “when I

have time” or “when I feel inspired”—then odds are you’re
not going to publish very much at all. And infrequent
content tends to have little or no impact.

But if you decide on a schedule ahead of time, and

commit to it, you’ll find it’s much easier to churn out
content week after week after week—which will result in a
steady buildup of traffic and authority.

So decide how often you want to publish. The more

often you publish, the faster you’ll see success. However,
you definitely DON’T want to choose a schedule that’s
unrealistic (this can diminish the quality of content or lead
you to feel overwhelmed and possibly stop publishing
altogether).

I recommend starting with one of these schedules:

• Once every other week

• Once a week
• Twice a week

You can always increase your frequency once you get the
hang of it.

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Now Let’s Get Your Editorial Plan
Organized…
Staying organized is going to be your best bet when it
comes to creating and maintaining your editorial calendar.
And to make it even easier on you, we have created a
quick way to get started.

First, just download this Excel spreadsheet.

This spreadsheet is meant to help you quickly map out

outlines for your content, so you can actually get to writing
and publishing.

The first page of the sheet (the Editorial Calendar tab) is

where your calendar will show up. You will notice there is
already data there, but don’t worry; that’s just an example
to show you how to use this sheet.

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This page has a column for all the most important
dimensions of your upcoming blog posts, including:

• Day of week or month

• Author
• Medium (Vehicle)
• Source
• Category

You may also notice the “Offer” column. If you use calls to
action on your blog that go to an offer, this is where those
will live. You can also personalize this page to match what
you want to track on your own blog (i.e. Keywords, post
length, update date).

If you click on a cell, you will see a drop-down menu that

has the data you will need for that column. Certain things,
like writer, headline, and publish date, don’t have a drop
down because they will be different for each post.

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All the data that feeds into these drop-downs is in the
second page of the sheet under the Data tab.

It is this handy equation built into the sheet that makes

building your calendar so easy. We’ve already given you
a whole list of post type ideas, and all you have to do

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 15

is personalize the categories and offers (and any other
factors you want to track) to fit your blog, and then get to
planning.

(Check out our Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas for more

about the post ideas we gave you in this planner!)

Once you get all your category and offer information in

the Data tab, all you have to do is select and fill out the
information for each upcoming blog post. When you get a
single row completely filled out, congratulations—you’ve
just scheduled a blog post!

If you need to reschedule a post, just drag the row to the

new spot and change the date.

And that’s it! It really is simple once you get the hang of it.

Just follow this quick process and before you know it,
you’ll have a simple yet effective editorial calendar to help
guide your content strategy.

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 16

WHAT’S NEXT?

Now that you’ve gone through this resource, it’s time to

use it! But simply reading through this resource will only
get you so far. Effectively using this information requires
other skills–from copywriting to paid traffic.

You need systems and checklists to…

• Produce content that engages your customer avatar

• Write compelling copy that gets the user to convert
• Make a retargeting campaign so you can continue
to nurture your lead through the Customer Value
Journey

…not to mention, you need a compelling offer in the

first place for your landing page to be effective.

That’s where DigitalMarketer Lab+ comes in! Lab+

offers foundational digital marketing training that will
help you build compelling landing pages and create
digital marketing campaigns that drive results.

BUILD AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR IN 10 MINUTES OR LESS 17

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