Whether you’re a business owner looking to drive sales, or a freelancer searching for a new income stream, you know one thing—blogging can be an extremely effective tool.
However, the key is this: you must keep your blog and content marketing consistent. This is crucial in order to connect with your audience.
Of course, starting a blog is easier said than done—especially if writing and editing aren’t your strong points. Between understanding what your audience will want to read, and, of course, the actual writing portion, blogging can involve a steep learning curve.
Setting yourself up for blogging success starts with careful planning. No matter whether you’re looking to start blogging full-time or simply adding a weekly blog into your overall marketing strategy, the key is to stay organized.
Having an editorial calendar means you’ve taken the time to thoughtfully plan out your blog posts on your overall strategy. It’s a way to keep up with your blog posts at each stage of the blog writing process, from ideation to hitting the “publish” button.
Here are 5 editorial calendar tools that are lifesavers in streamlining the blogging process.
Google Drive
A simple spreadsheet is a great way to ease yourself into using a content calendar, and there’s nothing simpler than using spreadsheets on Google Drive.
This is a complimentary service that comes with setting up a free Google account. You can use an existing template for a content calendar spreadsheet, or come up with your own and include whatever sections you need such as title, date to be published, keywords to target, author, etc.
Once you have the calendar set up, you can simply update it with new blog post ideas and fill in the necessary fields as you go. (If you’re looking for a great starter template, check out this free download from Hubspot.)
This is also a great tool if you have several members on your team, thanks to the easy sharing function.
Of course, a Google Doc won’t update automatically to get rid of old posts or mark them as completed—you will have (or will have to delegate someone) to make sure the calendar is continually up-to-date.
WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin
WordPress is an excellent CMS that many bloggers find success with.
Luckily, this simple-to-use plugin is free. You can see each post you’ve already scheduled ahead of you in an intuitive calendar layout. And, if something comes up and you need to change the schedule, you can simply drag and drop a post to a different date.
Additionally, this plugin lets you go in and edit your posts directly from the calendar—no need to waste time going back and forth between the calendar and your WordPress dashboard.
Trello
If you often find yourself working on multiple blog posts at once—Trello is a must. Thanks to its intuitive column format, it’s an excellent tool for project management.
Once you’ve set up your dashboard, you can easily add projects and drag and drop them as you make progress. Whether you have a lot of members on your team to coordinate, or if you are used to juggling a lot of projects at once, Trello makes it easy to break down large tasks into smaller, more manageable steps.
This app lets you break your workflow process into however many steps you need, assign tasks, set permissions for different users, track the progress of a project in real-time, and much more.
It’s great for collaborating, as you and your team members can easily see exactly where exactly each project stands and what’s coming down the pipeline at any moment.
Content DJ
On top of keeping track of an editorial calendar, you’ll also need to work out your social media calendar.
Content DJ is just that: an all-in-one marketing tool that takes care of any organization a blogger would need. In addition to full editorial calendar capabilities, this app helps you curate content to share on your social media channels.
It also analyzes your shared content about performance and gives you insights into what resonates with your followers the most.
This app also lets you track your social media growth over time so you can see what kind of content works, and what doesn’t.
CoSchedule
Your editorial calendar is not just about making the process of blogging easier on yourself; it’s about incorporating your blog into an overall marketing strategy.
CoSchedule is an excellent calendar tool that streamlines your blogging process by keeping everything in one place. You can add multiple team members, easily assign tasks and due dates, as well as automatically schedule your social media sharing from the same place as your content schedule.
CoSchedule also offers powerful analytics to help you make your blog content even better.
No matter what you’re looking for in an editorial calendar, the right tool is out there. Start small with a free app like Google Drive before you decide to upgrade to something more automated. You’ll quickly see how much simpler blogging is when you put effort into staying organized.
What other tools have you found helpful?
Ryan Gould is the Vice President of Strategy and Marketing Services at Elevation Marketing, a B2B marketing agency. Ryan helps medium and large brands improve sales and market share by developing integrated marketing experiences distinguished by research, storytelling, engagement, and conversion.
Hi Ryan,
Great list of editorial calendar tools for blogger. I've been using Google Drive for as long as I can remember – for both personal and clients projects.
This free tool works wonders. However, I recently tried Google Calendar tool to manage my writing workflow.
This tool helps you schedule posts for multiple blogs, draft your content, research your projects, including delivery and publication.
If you use events as tasks, you can set reminders and invite people so you can create a good workflow. And you can easily move content around via drag and drop.
Thanks for sharing this insightful article. Keep up the good work!
I just tweeted it on Twitter and share on Facebook.
Hey Ryan!
Planning and scheduling your blogging is the smartest thing you can do to accomplish your goals.
This is something that I do myself to be consistently growing and expanding my blog. It is so important to plan and execute.
Especially with blogging. It can get hard to come up with new content every day or every week. So, what's the best way to approach this? Bulk up on your content!
I would suggest spending a weekend creating a few blog posts to publish for the week or even for weeks in advanced. If you get this content creation out of the way in just a day or two, you will be able to focus a lot more on the marketing of them. This is how you build a successful blog online, in my opinion. You actually PLAN your blogging in advanced and allow yourself to have more time and focus to promote the heck of that content. As simple as that!
Thank you for sharing this!
Best regards! 😀
Hello Ryan,
Good to see you here on Sue's space 🙂
This is of so much help, great calendar tools for the bloggers to watch out for.
We all need to plan and work accordingly for our blogging skills, its not just an instant process.
Things need to be wrapped up before they hit the roads and sometimes the work load is so hard that sometimes people are not
able to be present every where at the same time, that's where the blogging calendar comes into play.
These are seem great tools to watch out, I have never been into using this tools but since the year is to an end and
new year is next stop, these would be a great add up on my lists.
Thanks for the share.
Shantanu.
Nice list of calendar tools, thanks for sharing Ryan! But I would also like to recommend Socialpilot. It allows you to easily visualize what content is going out and exactly when. You can edit, re-share and re-schedule your post for multiple networks as well.
Nice List of tools.Will Try the other as well,before i was using the google drive.
Hey Sue
These tools are really helpful. It was all mess before using these tools (using Content DJ). At least, I have an organised content list. These tools also made things managed when you have plans for vacation and stuff. Thanks to Automation which makes such things practical.
Thank you Sue for sharing. It is good to be here on SB.
Thanks so much for your comment, Mike!
Sue
Hey Ryan,
When I started blogging, it was hard to maintain the time with my studies. There was no was I could handle my schedule.
But using the tools like Google Drive and Trello can be really helpful. We organized a WordCamp in August which was quite overwhelming.
Everything was scheduled using Trello. It's easy to use.
Thanks for mention other tools like the plugin.
Have a great one.
~Ravi
Hey Ryan good list! I have used Google drive and coschedule . will try trello. nice, keep up your great work.
Good Work…Keep going…Nice list of calender tools which helps in what content is going out and exactly when….
Thanks for your comment!
Sue
Hey Ryan,
That's a wonderful compilation and the timing is really perfect!
A blogging calendar is certainly a life saver and I couldn't imagine running a blog (in fact, multiple blogs) without a content calendar.
I use the Asana's calendar feature and find it handy. It is also easy for me to bring my VA into the mix to prepare images, adding links etc. before publishing.
Thanks for the post!
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Ryan,
Great tips and I am a huge believer in creating a calendar. I've been using Google Drive to help me stay organized on my blog. It's so easy to use and the best part is that whenever I come up with a new blog topic, I just write it down on Drive.
Just by doing this, I always have a huge list of topics that I can write on my blog. It's a lot easier than trying to come up with a new topic whenever I sit down.
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and comment.
Have a great day 🙂
Susan
Hello there Sue and Ryan,
This post shared some really great insights for us as bloggers how to maintain our routine, and keep with it…
I mostly used Google Drive and Keep (application on phone) to keep me organized but it seems that I can do better with tools like Trello and CosSchedule.
Greetings,
Darleen.
Hey Ryan,
A great list of calendars to maintain our routine. These calendars are very helpful to maintain our schedule and routine, mostly I use the google drive and trello which is a great tool to schedule your work.
Thank you for providing a good list of calendars
Ashutosh Singh
hi Ryan: Really your blog is awesome! I was searching over search engines and found your blog site. Well, I like your high-quality blog site design plus your posting abilities.
Cheers!
Hey Sue,
Blog calendars not only motivates us they make us focused and productive.
I've been managing my blog schedule on Google Sheets and they are really effective when you know how to use formulas and with little bit of creativity you can build a project management in Google sheet itself.
Don't you agree Sue?
I love Google Sheets and Docs, so I totally agree!
Thanks for your comment.
Sue
Moss,
So glad you enjoyed the read!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts as well!
Moss,
So glad you enjoyed the read!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts as well!
ContentDj and Trello are my favourite ones from the list. I am using both of them to achieve maximum productivity on my blog. But got to know about some more tools which can help me.
Will definitely try them.
Thanks Ryan.
Ryan,
This post was incredibly helpful! Thank you! I never heard of ANY of these. Very excited to start experimenting with them and to make a better blogging schedule.
Hi Sue,
Making a Blog calendar is an easy way to manage blogging work. I have used mos of the tools in this list but was not aware about contentdj.
Thanks for sharing.
I hadn't heard of that one either before this post!
Thanks, Gaurav.
Sue
Nice List of tools.Will Try the other as well,before i was using the google drive
Great article with some awesome tips!
I just started blogging and now starting to realise what a real skill it is!
Thanks for the info!
Nice tool I didnt had any idea before that.
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