Benjamin Franklin supposedly said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” When it comes to your blog, that’s certainly true! Planning leads to success.

The best way to plan? With an editorial calendar!

An editorial calendar is simply a method for tracking what content you’re creating and when you’re posting it. It can be as basic or complex as you would like.

Track what type of post (like, evergreen vs sponsored) you’re creating when so that you spread out similar types of posts. Plus, for posts that take longer to create–like a DIY cat Halloween costume–your editorial calendar can help you map out the amount of time to devote to a specific post. Some influencers take their editorial calendar further and integrate social sharing. It can be as streamlined or as robust as you need.

For paper-and-pen planners, a printed calendar or a spiral-bound notebook can do the trick. For digital planners, a tool like Trello can keep you organized. To learn more, or to see how we plan at BlogPaws, check out How to Use Trello as a Blogging Editorial Calendar.

Another option is to install a calendar plugin like WordPress Editorial Calendar.

Be sure to dedicate a section of your editorial calendar to capturing ideas. A simple list in a digital notepad or the last section of a notebook works well. Then, when you see blanks in your schedule, you can pull from your list of ideas.

Action Plan

Check out this Blogging 101 post on how to find ideas. Make a list of all those blog post ideas. Once you have them, put them into an editorial calendar — it will make your blogging life so much simpler.