You have the content, but you have no idea how to keep track of it … Until now! Let me show you behind the scenes of how I organize my own content calendar and teach you how easy (and free!) it is!
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“I have a million ideas, but I just don’t know how to organize them.”
“When it comes to creating content, I just can’t seem to get in a rhythm.”
“I have no idea how to get the mess in my head into coherent and cohesive blog posts.”
Do any of those sound like you? It was me for about the first two years of running our home renovation site.
Not only could I not figure out what to write about, but if I did have a great idea, and wasn’t right in front of my computer at the time, I would forget it in minutes. Okay, seconds. Fine, don’t judge.
Even though I was very specific about my niche, I felt like I was always fumbling around until I actually started using my planner and then ultimately, a content calendar!
Spoiler alert: I don’t have a giant marketing team or some convoluted content marketing strategy that I’m having to work through handed down to me. I have created this system that I’ve been working on for well over 2 years and it’s proven effective to me in both my sites. It helps keep my thoughts organized and planned out so I don’t feel overwhelmed trying to work in two totally different markets and also keep up with my client load.
What is a content calendar anyway?
You may hear it called en editorial calendar as a different term. It means the same thing. In its simplest form, it is a schedule of your posts organized in a way that make sense for your niche, the time of year, or a combination of both.
Creating a content calendar can help relieve a sense of overwhelm, help tease your content to your readers, and ultimately give you a sense of relief and allow you to take control of your own time!
What should be included in a content calendar?
First, you’ll include important dates depending on your niche.
If you’re a blogger like me (which I assume you are if you’re reading this) you’ll want to plan out your posts on a monthly basis to begin. Once you’ve gotten into a good rhythm, you can almost stretch this to 6 weeks or even 8 depending on the time of year.
Regardless of your niche, there are certain topics that are more popular certain times of the year.
For home bloggers, Christmas is huge so November/December content is usually all surrounded around that.
For fitness bloggers, things like special competitions (Iron Man, Boston Marathon, etc) are important.
For mom bloggers and parenting bloggers, summertime is huge since most people are looking for ideas of things to do with their kids when they’re home so they don’t get super bored.
Depending on the type of your business and where your audience is, you could also include your social media content calendar within this as well to make sure that you’re promoting on all your social channels.
My step-by-step guide to create content
When I’m looking at my calendar to plan posts, I actually start offline in my Erin Condren Life Planner. I use this thing all the time and this is how I actually begin my planning.
I make a dot by each day that I want to post, making note of any deadlines that I may have for sponsored work either on social or on the site.
Start with a reasonable goal. 5 days a week is unreasonable for me (and quite frankly, for most people). 1-2 days a week is where I feel most comfortable and 3 a week maybe if I’m trying to get a lot of content out for a certain time period.
There is a calendar view within Trello, so just in case you’re not wanting to use a paper planner, you can also see your calendar view in here and start your planning that way.
Organizing Content In Trello
My favorite content calendar tool I love to use to organize my own calendar is through a free tool called Trello! If you haven’t ever used Trello, this will serve as a crash course, how to guide for that too!
(PS. If you need more free tool ideas, you should check out my post on the best 8 free tools I use to run my business!)
Regardless of the type of content that you create, this content creation method will work for anyone! Think of Trello as digital sticky notes. You can make cards, add info to each card, drag and drop them, remove them, all kinds of fun nerdy things!
This is a screenshot of my content planning board for my VA site that you’re on right now. I redacted a lot of the information because it includes a lot of top secret things I’m planning for you fine people 😉
Each section of a board is called a list. I have 5 lists here – Blog post ideas, To do, Up Next for blog, Done, and VIP info.
If you’re scrolling Pinterest or reading an email from a blog or someone that you subscribe to and you get an idea, this is where you’d add it to the ‘Blog Post Ideas’ section of your board.
For me, sometimes I actually have sentences flowing around in my head or the flow of the post and I’ll write that in the description box.
Need to make sure you have certain items included in your post? Make a checklist on your Trello board. As I was thinking about the best free tools I use for my business, I came in and added them to a checklist until I had them all there.
There may be times you will write down a blog post idea to be used as a piece of content, but as you’re writing it, it turns into two pieces of content.
Take this very post for example!
On my content calendar I wrote, “How to never run out of content”. My plan was to teach you my tricks of how I never run out of content. But that turned into two different posts I’m planning.
The actual post on how to never run out of content, and this one that you’re reading on how to organize the content that you’re creating!
Lucky for you, I’ve actually created a content calendar template for you to use FOR TOTALLY FREE in Trello. This is a done for you template that you can have set up in one click and use in your own Trello account if you’re one of those who doesn’t want to spend time creating it from scratch on your own!
Once you have started the process and have planned out your content for a few months or so, my hope is that the ideas keep on rolling in!
And if you’re having trouble coming up with content ideas, make sure you’re on our email list to get updated when that post goes live!
What is the biggest hurdle you have of creating or organizing content? I would love to help!
