Before coming to blogging, I had a fairly successful career as a journalist—a food writer and assistant editor for a hyper-local magazine in Boulder, Colorado. No, it wasn’t exactly hard-hitting journalism, but I did get to play out my His Girl Friday fantasies (without Cary Grant or the fabulous hats, sadly), and I learned a lot about how to convey information concisely, how to write quickly, and how to plan and use an editorial calendar.
Turns out, those were all fantastic skills that I took with me when I left the magazine for building a successful blog that supports a small business.
But let’s step back for a second.
Why do I need an editorial calendar?
Every newspaper, magazine—and yes, major blog—that you read has an editorial calendar. It can be simple or very complex, but it’s basically just a tool to help you plan and keep track of your content.
Your blog is the nexus of your social media strategy, so you need to have a great plan for what you’re going to blog about so that you can translate that into a great plan for marketing your business and selling your stuff. If you want to use your blog to help turn your readers into raving fans and customers, you’ve got to have a PLAN for how you’re going to achieve that.
Use the 5 Ws to build your editorial calendar.
What you can steal from journalists here are the 5 Ws—who, what, when,where, why, and how. That’s like Journalism 101 for covering a story. (In fact, you probably learned that writing reports back in grade school.)
But it’s also Blog Editorial Calendar 101. You have to be able to answer the five Ws for your blog and all the posts you plan to write if you want your blog to be an effective marketing and selling tool for your business.
When I build an editorial calendar, I like to do it in a spreadsheet, with a column for each of these categories:
Who are you writing for? Who is your ideal reader? (Here’s a hint: your ideal reader is the one who converts into a customer!) If you only have one ideal reader profile, you probably don’t need a column for this, but if you have more than one, be sure you know which reader each post will appeal to.
What are you going to write about? This is where you answer that age-old question that plagues writers everywhere. But if you’ve got a bigger overall plan, it shouldn’t be too hard to answer.
When are you going to write each post? In the most basic sense, this is the calendar part of the editorial calendar. But it also refers to that bigger plan that takes into account your sales cycles, your product launches, discounts and coupons, guest blogs, and the like. Start with the stuff that’s already written in your calendar (a product launch, for example, or a holiday you want to promote for) and work backwards.
Where are you going to promote it? Derek Halpern over at Social Triggers says that writing the blog post is only 20 percent of the work, and promoting it is the other 80 percent. If you’re not thinking about where you’re going to promote your work, you’re wasting a lot of your effort.
Why are you writing this post? You shouldn’t write anything unless you can answer this question, because the answer tells you where each post fits into your overall blog strategy.
Thinking about each of these components will help you plan to make your blog work as hard for your business as you do!
And if you’re thinking right now, “But what about creativity! What about inspiration! I can’t work with every little blog post planned out like that!”—don’t fret!
The editorial calendar is just a tool. You’re still the boss. If inspiration strikes and something new comes up that you want to write about it, go for it! Your editorial calendar is a living document, that changes as your business needs do.
When the inspiration is flowing, flow with it. When it’s not, your calendar is your backup plan.
Got questions about this? I’d love to answer them in the comments!
Lacy Boggs is a Featured Speaker in the Heart Centered Business Bootcamp. Hear Lacy’s interview, and 20 other experts, talk about how you can take YOUR business to the next level in 2014. CLICK HERE for more information.
Lacy Boggs has been telling stories since she first learned to talk, and knew from childhood that she would turn her lifelong love of writing into a career. In 2011, she gave up her 60-hour-per-week job as a food writer and magazine editor to become a full-time mom and part-time work at home freelancer, and knew she had to figure out how to tell her story. After growing her personal food blog more than 800 percent in a single year, Lacy realized she could help other small business owners do the same and launched Ghostblogger.co—a service to help small business owners build their business with a brilliant blog. Lacy lives like a foodie in gorgeous Colorado with her husband and daughter.
I’m a mom, I have four kids. For years my life consisted of running all over the place. I ran from work to baseball fields, to football fields, to ballet schools, and to assorted schools all over my town.
I know many of you can relate to this, you’ve likely either been the driver or the drivee.
I was BUSY for sure! I wouldn’t trade those days for anything. My kids made friends and learned so much about winning, losing, hard work, and life. I made friends, and learned how to LET my kids learn about winning, losing, hard work, and life! Not always easy, that letting your kids learn about losing part. But I digress.
Often I find myself in charge of things I get involved in. Happily, but because I can be bossy I’m sure. One of the things I ended up in charge of for many years was the snack stand at the Little League field. I went into labor with my fourth child at that snack stand! I spent a LOT of time there. It taught me a lot of business lessons, lessons I still use in my business today.
Lesson One: Be dependable. If a parent shows up at the snack stand to feed their kids during a game, and the stand is closed, they will not show up with their wallet next time. In order to make money, we had to be open when we said we would be open.
In my business, that’s an important concept. I am BUSY, I typically have four or five projects going all at once. I have to-do lists that sometimes seem endless. BUT, when someone is depending on me, I need to deliver. Each and every time. As a business coach, I take that very seriously. My clients are as busy as I am, our time together is precious. I’ll be there when they need me, each and every time. That’s why they come back.
Lesson Two: Set your price and stick to it. At the Little League field we sold all kinds of goodies, from burgers and french fries to Big League Chew bubble gum and ring pops. I’m the biggest sucker on earth when it comes to little kids with a handful of pennies, I gave away my share of ring pops! BUT, if you”re an adult and you want cheese on your burger, it’s another dollar. We put a lot of time and effort into fund-raising at that snack stand, and if you didn’t want to pay extra for the cheese, you could bring it from home. I was AMAZED at the number of people who tried to bargain us for a discount on their food. The price was the price was the price.
In my business, many of my clients become my friends. I get to know so much about them, I’m their biggest cheerleader. I struggle WITH them when they’re developing programs and social media campaigns around those programs, and we work hard to leverage all of the free social media tools available to them. It’s hard, sometimes, to keep from saying “call me in a few days and we’ll go over it again”, especially when I know they’re struggling to make something profitable. I can’t. They are my clients, and I run a business. The price for my service is the price for my service.
Lesson Three: If you need help, ask for it! As you can imagine, coordinating volunteers to work at the snack stand was no small task. It was so easy to fall into complaining that the few regulars were doing everything! You know what? Each and every time I asked someone to volunteer, they said yes. I truly can’t remember a single person telling me no, that they wouldn’t do it. But I had to ASK them! No one was coming up to me and saying “Oh let me stand over that hot grill instead of watching my kids game”. If I asked, though, they would come back the NEXT night when their kid wasn’t playing, and flip burgers for hours. All I had to do was ask.
In my business, there is a LOT to do. I think I mentioned the massive to-do list earlier? There are people who are willing to help me with that list! Often it’s other entrepreneurs, people who have strengths where I don’t, and we can help each other and save time all the way around. Sometimes it’s my friends and family, I have a deadline or a client and the dog needs walking. My business is more successful when I STOP thinking I have to do everything alone. When I remember that there are people around me that are willing to help me, if I ask. None of them have those shiny crystal balls that tell them what I need. I have to ask for help, and they are happy to oblige.
So tell me, what are you passionate about in your life? What do you do in your “free” time?
I’ve met many many people over the years in my volunteer world that can go nose to nose with the CEOs I work with. I’ve seen women who think they have no business sense negotiate deals with book clubs for fund-raisers that would make Donald Trump step back. And let me tell you, if you can corral 100 little boys at a Pinewood Derby, you can organize a high end convention! Pay attention to the lessons you’re learning when you think you’re NOT working, and see if maybe those lessons can help you craft your offerings for your business. In 2013, you can get that business off the ground, and marketed regularly, practically FREE. Look to your passions to find your Rockstar Talent. I can help!
Comment below and let me know what Rockstar Talent you learned in an unconventional way. I want to hear all about it!
I’ve been meaning to talk about this book for awhile now.
I read this book a few years ago, and it literally rocked my world. You see, sometimes I think I’m a left brained robot. I can calculate complex logic problems in two seconds. I always could. I remember being at a high school boyfriends house for a holiday with his whole family, and they were doing a thing with a deck of cards that was taking each of them forever. Some couldn’t do it at all. I made mistakes on purpose, I knew exactly what to do and was EMBARRASSED that I was going to look like a “know it all”. I was a girl, girls didn’t know this stuff better than boys! But I did. And I pretended I didn’t.
I was born in 1960, before PC’s, before video games. When computers started to become commercially available, I was a total PC WannaBe. My career took off, along with the Information Age
But I’m also great at sales and marketing. I love the psychology of sales, and in my spare time, I was doing all this right brained stuff for fun. I’m a natural born geek, but I study dreams and chakras for fun. Talk about psychology! I am a living dichotomy, I have very balanced right and left brains.
So back to the book. And why YOU should read it. A few years ago, before Oprah had him on her show and promoted his book to the entire free world, I came across Daniel Pink and his book “A Whole New Mind – Why Right-Brainers will Rule the Future”. WOW! He was saying what I’ve known for years but couldn’t explain nearly as well. We live in a left-brained, “you must be a doctor or lawyer when you grow up” world, but life is different now. Consumers can now go to WebMd for medical advice, use TurboTax instead of an accountant, and Google every freaking legal matter known to man. If you want to be successful at a left-brained career, you need to be CREATIVE.
YOU are creative. It’s 2013, and while it’s more acceptable for girls to be geeks and boys to be creative than it has in the past, you creatives still sometimes hide in the closet.
It’s time to be LOUD and PROUD that you are a creative, heart-centered entrepreneur! –> Click to tweet
The accountants, lawyers, and doctors of the world NEED you, need you to add some creativity to their businesses! They’re starting to know it, you’re seeing more and more mainstream media talk about intuition, about connecting emotionally with clients. Your yoga studio is filling up with left-brained executives, people who would NEVER have thought they would be in a yoga class 10 years ago. Professional football players are talking about meditation. I heard a guy in an elevator the other day talking about his throat chakra! It’s a whole new world, and the right-brained creatives are ruling it!
Daniel Pink tells a lot of stories in this book. He talks about how an MFA, Master of Fine Arts, is becoming more valuable to businesses than an MBA. He talks about how it’s harder to get into UCLA’s Fine Arts Graduate School than it is to get into Harvard Business School. How crazy is that? Are you surprised? I’m not!
Read this book! It might just be the validation you need to realize that YOU, the right-brained, creative entrepreneur, are ruling the world. Don’t you just LOVE that? I know I do.
Do you have a creative passion that you want to spend more time doing? Click here for a free online workshop, learn how to make money doing what you love! (Note: the free online worksop is no longer available.)
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Before coming to blogging, I had a fairly successful career as a journalist—a food writer and assistant editor for a hyper-local magazine in Boulder, Colorado. No, it wasn’t exactly hard-hitting journalism, but I did get to play out my His Girl Friday fantasies (without Cary Grant or the fabulous hats, sadly), and I learned a lot about how to convey information concisely, how to write quickly, and how to plan and use an editorial calendar.
