How to Create a Content Calendar in 11 Steps

Whether you’re a content creator, content marketer, or web publisher it’s important to stay organized. 

You could be managing blog posts, updating social media, or drafting email campaigns. 

To stay on track and on-topic, a content calendar is a must, but how do you create a content calendar? 

In this guide, we’ll provide a step-by-step guide on how to create a content calendar from planning themes to setting publishing frequency and reviewing content.

Short on Time? Here’s What’s In This Article

• How to set goals for your content calendar.
• How to improve your content workflow to get more done.
• How to plan out content themes and categories.
• How to choose the right tools to help you manage your new content calendar.

Step 1: Set and Define Content Goals

One of the biggest challenges in setting up a content calendar is clearly defining what goals you want to achieve with it.

That means taking a step back from the spreadsheet (or whichever tool you ultimately choose to use) and considering content strategy goals. 

For example, consider these possible content goals:

• Increase traffic.
• Build brand awareness.
• Improve social media engagement.
• Generate leads or sales.

According to your customer journey, it’s best practice to have content in place that does all of these things.

However, creating overarching goals for various pieces of content will provide better clarity on what needs to go where in your content calendar. 

This is also a good time to define your target audience. After all, they’re the primary audience you want your writing to reach. Noting this in your content calendar will help you keep your audience in mind.

Step 2: Choose the Right Tools

The next stage in creating a content calendar is choosing the right tools to help you. The tool(s) you choose need to work alongside the goals you set for your calendar. 

The good news is that your content calendar tools don’t have to be complicated. 

Your calendar could be as simple as a Google Sheet or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, which are both customizable and flexible. 

You could also choose a content management tool like Trello or Asana to encourage collaboration with your team while tracking updates on content progress. 

Alternatively, you could incorporate a dedicated calendar app like HootSuite or CoSchedule to manage content across different platforms. 

Choose something you’re likely to stick with now and that you can continue to use as your content plan grows in the future. 

Step 3: Set Up Content Categories

The next step is to set up your content categories. 

This should include all of the different types of content you plan on creating, including: 

• Blog posts, ranging from articles to case studies.
• Social media posts, from Instagram reels to TikToks.
• Email campaigns including both newsletters and promotional emails.
• Videos such as live streams and YouTube tutorials.
• Any other content formats like infographics or webinars.

Step 4: Plan Content Themes

Next, to help you stay organized, plan out various content themes across months — the most relevant topics to focus on typically vary across industries. 

For example, if you’re running a content calendar tailored to fitness topics, then January, is a great time to focus on New Year’s resolutions, goal-setting plans, and tips. However, a home lifestyle niche may find that March sees more of a jump in seasonal traffic with readers searching for spring cleaning topics. 

Tailoring your themes or topics to your audience and their seasonal interests will help your team stay on track with creating engaging content throughout the year. 

Always be sure to check your analytics as well to see what your target audience is searching for. This is also a great opportunity to incorporate predictive SEO or SEO forecasting strategies.

Tracking this data will help you align content to searches, and incorporate relevant long-tail keywords. 

Step 5: Audit Your Current Content

One of the steps many content professionals forget when creating a content calendar is taking stock of their current content “inventory.”

Take the time to look over your current content and evaluate how it's performing. 

Doing this regularly (and not just when creating a content calendar) can help you spot gaps in your content strategy and new opportunities.

It can also show you which of your posts is the most successful, or which pieces need to be optimized for better results. 

It’s a good idea to run your content through Originality.ai’s Content Optimizer to check factors like keyword density and stay ahead of the competition.

Step 6: Map Out Content Ideas

The next stage in the process is to map out your content ideas. That means using keyword research tools, surveying your audience to better understand their needs, seeing what your competition is doing, and checking trends to see how the market is shifting over time. 

You can start by defining content pillars or topic clusters and research seed keywords. Then, branch out into short-tail keywords, and next incorporate long-tail keywords. 

Step 7: Set Publishing Frequency

It’s common when you first create a content calendar, to want to publish as much as possible, as fast as possible. The most important thing, however, is to set a publishing frequency you can stick with both in the short and long term.

Remember, you may not just be publishing on one platform, but several. 

An example of a good starting frequency to establish consistency could be:

• Blog posts: Two to three times a week.
• Social media: Daily or several times per week.
• Emails: Weekly, every two weeks, or monthly.

The frequencies noted above are general suggestions as the best publishing frequency can vary substantially across content platforms and industries.

To find the right frequency for your content calendar, conduct industry research, monitor the data, traffic, and engagement of your posts or emails, and collaborate with your team to choose a publishing frequency that’s sustainable. 

In time your content calendar will become an anchor point on which you and your team continue to build trust, authority, and meaningful interactions with your audience. 

Step 8: Build Out the Calendar Framework

Next, it’s time to build out the actual calendar framework. 

Again, how you approach this depends on your specific content goals and the tools you wish to use. In general, you should include columns or sections for: 

• The date and time the content will be published.
• The platform the content will be published on (such as the blog, email newsletter, social media and so forth).
• The title and topic of the content.
• The format of the content.
• Any associated keywords or hashtags.
• The goal or objective of the content.
• Who is responsible for creating, editing, and publishing content.
• The status of the content — drafted, in review, or published.

Step 9: Create a Workflow You Can Stick With

Set up a workable system that manages content from idea to publication. 

Determine who’s responsible for:

• Coming up with the ideas.
• Writing the content.
• Editing the content before publication.
• Publishing the content on your website, social media, or emails. 

Once everything is decided, set about creating processes (SOPs) and deadlines while thinking ahead to possible promotional strategies and how the content will be shared across different channels and formats. 

Step 10: Populate the Calendar

Once the publishing frequency and columns are set up, it’s time to fill in the calendar with your ideas or themes. Assign dates to each content piece and be sure to balance between evergreen content and seasonal or trending content. 

Step 11: Review and Optimize the Calendar

Creating a content calendar, like most other content strategies, is not a once-and-done task. 

Periodically review content to make sure it’s still in line with goals, optimize it for various stages of the content marketing funnel, and update it as needed to keep it relevant to industry trends or shifts. 

It’s also a good idea to review the calendar regularly to address any gaps or bottlenecks. Use analytics and social media insights to determine how well the published content is performing.

This is also an excellent opportunity to test different content formats with different customer segments. Use data to inform your next moves. Over time, continuing to test and review content will help you create a content calendar that evolves with your brand. 

Plus, by keeping your content calendar flexible, you can adapt it to stay relevant without impacting the overall flow and system you’ve built. 

Final Thoughts: Getting Started With Content Calendars

Creating, managing, and maintaining a content calendar is no small task.

However, when done well, you have a powerful tool that takes content marketing efforts to the next level by publishing consistently.

By mapping out content ideas through audience questioning, analytics, and audits, you can make sure that your content is resonating with the right people at the right stage of the customer journey, keeping your topics on point and relevant across the board. 

Combining this with a publishing frequency that works for you and your team also helps support publishing consistency.

Over time, readers will come to appreciate the regularity with which you publish. They’ll know they can always expect the latest industry trend insights, news, or advice, which further boosts customer retention. 

By creating a content calendar, you’ll go beyond organizing content to establish your brand as a key resource, paving the way for thought leadership in your niche.

Originality.ai’s best-in-class tools are here to help you every step of the way. From optimizing content to tackling readability, avoiding plagiarism and detecting AI you’ll find the tools you need to publish with integrity and help your content calendar thrive. 

Read more tips on building an effective and engaging content strategy:

• How Does Content Marketing Attract Potential Customers?
• 4 Tips for Repurposing Content Across the Content Marketing Funnel
• 9 Content Types to Add to Your Content Marketing Strategy