Welcome to the thrilling world of content marketing, where deadlines approach faster than a sprinting cheetah on an energy drink.

Imagine navigating this high-octane environment without a guide, a sense of direction, or even a vague idea of your end goal. Sounds daunting, doesn't it?

That's exactly what it feels like to curate and manage content without a content schedule. 

A content schedule is a visual timeline detailing what you're going to post, where it's going to be posted, and the precise timeline for its release.

But it's more than just a sophisticated organizer. It's the heartbeat of your content strategy, ensuring your marketing objectives stay on course and your audience stays engaged.

Stay tuned as we share our top tips, and how to create a content schedule in Google Sheets, that’ll keep your team on task and on time!

Benefits of a Content Calendar

Here are some reasons why you should plan ahead with an organized schedule:

Streamline Your Team’s Process

A content schedule consolidates all crucial information for your creative team and any external contributors.

It outlines: 

• What needs to be achieved, 
• Deadlines, 
• Other important details (such as references and keywords)
• And the person responsible for each task.

This clarity can significantly reduce confusion, last-minute rushes, and miscommunications.

With everyone crystal clear on their roles, they can concentrate on delivering their best work. Now, that's a perfect formula for efficiency!

Strategically Organized Content

With a content schedule, you're not just throwing content out there and hoping for the best. Every piece of content serves a purpose and contributes to your broader content strategy.

It ensures that your content has a purpose, sticks to themes, and is consistent to with your brand’s messaging. You can also ensure that each content type and topic gets its fair share of attention, ensuring nothing gets overlooked.

Schedule Content Ahead of Time

You're up late, the deadline is looming, and you're frantically trying to put together a blog post or come up with a clever caption for your social media post. If this sounds familiar, you need a content calendar!

With a content schedule, these stress-inducing situations can be avoided.

You can plan your content weeks or even months ahead, giving you ample time to gather resources, conduct research, and create more engaging, dynamic content.

Additionally, it allows you to coordinate content around important dates or events relevant to your business or industry.

Diversify Content

A content schedule provides a clear overview of your content landscape.

You can easily check if you're maintaining a good mix of different content types, whether it's blog posts, social media updates, podcasts, or videos. Colors are a great way to check this visually.

This ensures your content stays varied and engaging, so your audience doesn't get bored with repetitive content.

Those are just a few of the advantages of taking the time to schedule your content in advance.

Building an Efficient Content Schedule

Let’s break down a step-by-step guide to help you propel your strategy to success.

Step 1: Understand Your Content Marketing Goals

There’s no point in creating content just for the sake of it. If you truly want to maximize your content's potential, you need to identify your goals and the direction you're headed.

Identify “Why” and “Who”

Why?

What's the reason behind your content creation?

Are you trying to drive more traffic to your website? Maybe you're focusing on boosting brand awareness or building a stronger connection with your audience. Or perhaps you're primarily about promoting product sales or generating leads.

Who?

Once your goals are clear, it's time to get intimately familiar with another crucial player in your content game – your target audience.

These are the individuals you're aiming to connect with through your content. The more you understand their needs, interests, and challenges, the better your chances of creating content that genuinely resonates.

Use This Information Each Time You Create Content

Your content marketing goals and your target audience should be top of mind each time you conceive or create new content.

These elements will dictate the kind of content, the topics you'll tackle, and even which channels to distribute your content.

Step 2: Planning Your Content Strategy

Now that we've nailed down the foundations with your objectives and target audience, let's dive into the fun part: planning your content strategy.

This is where strategy and creativity merge, and where your content schedule begins to take shape. So, grab your favorite drink, put on your creative hat, and let's get started!

Generating Ideas for Content

Get brainstorming your content ideas. And when we say content, we mean all types of content.

• Blog posts,
• Social media posts,
• Newsletters,
• Targeted emails,
• Podcasts,
• Webinars,
• Videos,
• Infographics
• Quotes
• Customer testimonials
• Demos

Don’t hold back! Think about every media type your customers consume, and what motivates them to purchase.

For example, imagine you're an online learning platform targeting professionals seeking career advancement and your goal might be to empower them with new skills and knowledge despite their busy schedules.

Your content schedule could include quick tutorial videos, easy-to-follow learning guides, and inspiring success stories to be shared on platforms where career-focused individuals are most likely to engage, like LinkedIn and Twitter.

TIP I: Use ChatGPT for Content Ideas

Everyone is looking for ways to incorporate ChatGPT to streamline their processes, and this is a great example of how you can do just that.

Leveraging the power of ChatGPT is great for brainstorming ideas. As an AI language model, it's adept at providing diverse and creative suggestions that you might not think of. 

Start by outlining the content goals and target audience (as you did in step 1), then engage with ChatGPT as if in a conversation.

Here is how to create the perfect prompt:

1. Explain your company and target audience

“We're a start-up specializing in organic skincare products targeting health-conscious consumers aged 20-35. 

2. Explain your goal

We're launching a new line of vegan, cruelty-free face serums and our goal is to boost our online sales by promoting the unique benefits of our products. 

3. Ask ChatGPT what content ideas you’d like it to produce

Can you help generate some persuasive content ideas or strategies to highlight the advantages of our serums and convince our target audience to make a purchase?.”

Here’s what GPT-4 generated with this prompt:

From there, you can ask it to give you blog title suggestions, blog outlines, or suggest questions for your interactive quizzes.

The key is interaction – the more specific your prompts, the more focused and useful the responses.

Tip II: Find Keywords for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Keywords are the actual key to SEO for online content. Including powerful keywords is the difference between getting lost in a sea of online content and appearing in the search results of your desired customers.

It’s also a neat insight into how your audience searches for products like yours online. With the help of keyword research, you have the power to create content that addresses their queries or meets their desires.

SEMrush or Google Keyword Planner are great tools for discovering these invaluable gems. Embed these keywords into your content to boost your SEO and push your pages further up the search engine results ladder.

Step 3: Create a Master Content Calendar In Google Sheets

After you've got a clear idea of the kind of content you'll be delivering, the next step is figuring out when and where to unleash it. 

Perhaps you've got a real-time video lined up for your website, an email newsletter queued up, a product presentation, and a social gathering all scheduled for the same month. 

Not to mention, your regular blog posts and everyday social media engagements. 

 Your posting timeline is entirely up to you, but remember, consistency is key for each of your content channels to truly thrive. 

 That's when a master calendar becomes indispensable. The goal of a master calendar is to have a bird's eye view of your content strategy and establish a timeline for the publication of each bit of content. 

And this it how to do it:

From your Google Drive account, click New towards the top left of your screen, then hover over the arrow next to Google Sheets, and click on From a template

Scroll down and select Annual Calendar. This will produce an annual calendar in the current year. 

Click on the Customize your calendar tab to choose from different styles. Once you’re done, you can delete that tab to make more room for useful information.

Then click on the tab for the month you want to edit. 

Enter the type of content you want to deliver on that day, and color code it to make it clear at a glance what type of content is scheduled for that day. This will ensure you have a healthy mix of content.

Individual Content Calendars

Once your overarching monthly schedule is established, it’s time so figure out the finer details: 

Who's the author? How much lead time do you need to edit and format the post? Who's taking care of social media posts and what exactly will they be posting? No stress—we've got a schedule for these things as well!

First, a quick shout out to Strive Content Calendar, which is what we use at WishList Member to schedule our blogs. We’ve written at length about why we love using Strive for WordPress. 

 However, this is how to create a blog schedule in Google Sheets:

• Click the (+) icon at the bottom left of your Google Sheet to add a new tab.
• Drag the new tab next to the corresponding month.
• Create a Blog Schedule sections with columns for
  • Publication Date
  • Blog Post Topic/Title
  • Writer
  • Deadline (give yourself plenty of lead time to edit and format the blog post before the publication date)
  • Keywords
  • Additional information

• Depending on the style of your blog, you could introduce extra columns such as “Blog Category” (long-form, short, infographic, etc.).

• Copy and paste the information from your master calendar. 
• Assign the task to another content writer by right-clicking on the cell and hitting Comment. 
• @ tag the team member or write in the full email address of the assignee
• Ensure all contributors have access to the calendar.

Now, onto social media schedules.

You can either create a new tab or, to keep things centralized, enter the information below your blog schedule. 

For all social media schedules, you should include:

• Social Media Platform
• Post Time
• Day
• Content

For a more comprehensive schedule, consider incorporating relevant hashtags, links, images, photographs, and even the actual text for your post. 

As with your blog schedule, you could also assign the author and have a column indicating if it's been queued up in your social media management tool (like Hootsuite or Buffer).

In Conclusion

From enabling you to map out your content strategy, to ensuring that all your marketing goals align, a content schedule serves as your trusty companion in the dynamic world of content marketing.

With Google Sheets as your platform, creating a content schedule is as easy as it is effective. 

From master calendars to detailed blog and social media schedules, you've got all the tools at your fingertips to streamline your process, diversify your content, and stay on top of your game.

So why wait? Start harnessing the power of a well-planned content schedule today and watch your content marketing efforts thrive. 

Remember, success in content marketing is not about who shouts the loudest, but who plans the smartest. And with your new content schedule, you're already on the right track. Now, let's get planning!

With six distinct blogs on different websites, each catering to a unique product, staying on top of things can get pretty intense. And let's not forget about the talented group of writers who contribute their brilliance to our blogs, there are a lot of cooks in the kitchen, spinning a whole load of plates.

At least that's how it used to feel until we discovered a game-changing WordPress editorial calendar. And let me tell you, it's completely transformed our content management experience.

It's called the Strive Content Calendar, and I couldn't wait to share its magic with fellow content creators and blog managers like you.

After using Strive for the past few months, I've come to realize just how invaluable it is for streamlining the content management process.

Ready to rev up your content game? Let's go!

Here's why you probably need Strive

If you're immersed in the world of content creation or blog management, you understand the vital role played by blog content calendars. These invaluable tools serve as the backbone of your operations, enabling you to:

• Track and organize topics
• Structure ideas
• Assign tasks
• Schedule posts
• …and so much more!

Now, if you're as organized as we are, you know that your blog content calendar is just a piece of the puzzle. Enter the mighty main content calendar, where you manage not only blog posts but also a myriad of other content types, such as guides, infographics, ads, and PDFs, all neatly organized by topic.

At WishList Member, we rely on Asana to construct and maintain our colossal main content calendar, which effectively captures the bigger picture. However, we encountered a couple of challenges along the way:

1. The sheer size of our main calendar made it too cumbersome for a practical working blog content calendar.
2. Not all our esteemed writers are housed in our office premises, granting them easy access to Asana. This led to a time-consuming cycle of back-and-forth emails and Google Docs exchanges when assigning topics to external writers.

Thankfully, our salvation arrived in the form of the Strive Content Calendar, which swiftly resolved these hurdles and presented us with a seamless solution. Allow us to shed light on how Strive effectively transformed our content management woes.

Now onto the best part: the Strive Content Calendar

The Strive Content Calendar is a remarkable WordPress plugin, just like WishList Member. This means it seamlessly integrates into the WordPress backend, creating your very own blog content calendar right where you need it most.

This ingenious solution directly tackles my two primary concerns:

1. By housing the blog content calendar within the WordPress backend, each of our six blogs has its own dedicated calendar, distinct from our main calendar. This streamlined approach simplifies the management and organization of topics, ensuring an efficient workflow. (Curious about how we amalgamate all the blog calendars into our Asana main calendar? Keep reading, we'll reveal our secret!)
2. Each of our writers has access to the WordPress backend. With Strive, our blog content calendars are now nestled within WordPress itself. As a result, it's now a cinch to assign, review, and process posts for all involved! No more back-and-forth Google Doc sharing. (We'll delve into more details about this later on!)

Plus, Strive's drag-and-drop functionality just adds to its overall incredible ease of use:

Want to change the date of your post? No problemo! Strive lets you effortlessly rearrange posts to your heart's content, swiftly moving them between scheduled slots and the unscheduled drafts sidebar. Each relocation instantly triggers automatic scheduling within the WordPress editor for seamless organization.

This feature stands out as a personal favorite, but the Strive plugin boasts a whole array of other impressive offerings. Let's take a look at some more.

More of Strive's great features

In addition to its user-friendly setup and seamless integration, Strive is tooled up with impressive features designed to save you valuable time. Such as…

Effortless content revisions

Getting your blog to rank highly and stay there requires regular content revisions. However, the revision process can be a real headache. You certainly don't want to disrupt the SEO performance of a live post that already has substantial value.

Enter Strive's Revisions feature, the ultimate solution to streamline your revision workflow. Upon installing the plugin, you'll notice a “revision” option linked to each published post. Accessible via the frontend admin bar in WordPress or your list of posts in the backend.

This feature works its magic in two simple steps:

• Clicking the “revision” link generates a new draft of the post, separate from the published version.
• As you make updates and hit “Publish,” Strive seamlessly merges the revised version with the original. The result? An optimized article without the hassle of confusing redirects. Your SEO juice remains intact, while you save precious time.

Notably, the Strive calendar view prominently labels revisions, allowing you to easily track the ratio of new-to-updated content.

Alternative Pipeline view

While the Calendar view serves as my primary workspace, the Pipeline view gives you a big-picture perspective. By clicking the Pipeline tab, you get visibility into the statuses of all your posts in a single, organized space.

This prevents any posts from slipping through the cracks, providing a holistic snapshot of their progress. Whether they are scheduled, in progress, ready for editing, or not yet started, you can easily identify and manage each post's status. Additionally, you have the flexibility to toggle between row and column layouts based on your preferred workflow.

Customizable Checklists

Crafting a well-structured blog post involves juggling numerous details, from grammar and style to meta-data and image settings. This challenge becomes even more pronounced when working with new writers.

Strive's Checklists feature comes to the rescue, eliminating any guesswork and ensuring consistency. Simply compile your list of essential details under the Checklist tab, and you're ready to go.

Whenever someone works on a post, they can access the checklist directly from the WordPress editor, and check off items as they progress. This not only streamlines practical writing tasks but also serves as a valuable tool for your process.

Clear Post Statuses

Post statuses play a vital role in organizing your content workflow. How do you know if a post is in progress, ready to edit, or edited and ready to go? Strive's Post Statuses feature offers unparalleled clarity in this regard.

Unlike the default WordPress setup, where it's challenging to differentiate between posts requiring edits and those ready for publication, Strive introduces a crystal-clear solution.

The Strive plugin enriches your WordPress environment with the following intuitive post statuses:

• Not Started
• Writing
• Editing
• Complete
• Published

Each status is associated with a distinct color, providing a visual cue throughout the Strive Calendar. Updating a status in the WordPress editor triggers an immediate reflection in Strive, and vice versa. This feature enables efficient organization, ensuring that you never lose track of your posts' progress.

These are just a few of the remarkable features that make Strive an indispensable asset for optimizing your content process. Now, let's delve deeper into how Strive can revolutionize your blog workflow management.

Streamlining Your Blog Workflow with Strive

In this section, I'll walk you through how the WishList Member Content Team effectively uses Strive to manage our blog post workflow. With several writers contributing to our six distinct blogs, maintaining an organized and controlled workflow is super important.

Thankfully, Strive provides two great features that simplify the process and ensure seamless organization. Let's explore how we leverage these features:

New Drafts

Located on the right side of the Content Calendar page, the “Add New Draft” is your launchpad for your next blog.

When clicked, it opens a pop-up window where you can effortlessly input all the essential details required for a post.

We make use of the Title field to indicate the assigned writer by including their name before the post title.

The magic happens when you click the Add New Draft button at the bottom of the window.

Strive automatically creates a new draft in WordPress, populating all the entered information into the WordPress Editor. This integration between Strive and WordPress eliminates the need for time-consuming data transfer, ensuring a smooth and efficient workflow.

When you create a new draft, Strive auto-generates a dedicated box in the Unscheduled Drafts column, conveniently displaying all pending assignments for our writers. This feature enables clear visibility and easy access to ongoing tasks.

Streamlined Workflow with Color-Coded Progress

Strive's vibrant color system not only adds visual appeal but also serves as a powerful tool in our blog post process.

Each color represents a specific stage in the workflow, allowing us to effectively communicate the next steps and responsible individuals. Here's how we utilize these colors:

1. Not Started (Red): When I create a New Draft, it automatically adopts the Not Started status with a striking red color. This signals to the assigned writer that the blog post is ready to be written.
2. Writing (Orange): Once the writer begins working on the draft, they transition the post status to Writing, accompanied by an eye-catching orange hue. This change lets me know that the post is in progress.
3. Editing (Yellow): When the draft is completed and ready for review, the writer updates the post status to Editing, represented by a vibrant yellow shade. This notifies me that the post requires my attention for further review and revisions.
4. Complete (Green): After I finish the edits and consider the post ready for publication, I switch the status to Complete. The post box promptly transforms into a reassuring green color.

Green plays a vital role for us, as Strive offers an optional setting that automatically publishes any Complete (green) post according to its scheduled date and time in the WordPress Editor. This feature significantly saves time. However, it necessitates diligent checking of dates and times whenever we “go green.”

Finally, once a post is successfully published, it transitions to black, indicating that the entire process is complete.

By employing this color-coded system, we maintain an organized workflow, ensuring clear communication and seamless progression throughout the content creation process. Let's explore more valuable features and benefits that Strive brings to the table.

Seamless Integration with Your Main Content Calendar

Strive's individual blog content calendars simplify our blog workflow tremendously. However, what about our main Asana calendar, where we track all the deliverables associated with our topics?

Transcribing each WordPress post into Asana would be a tedious and time-consuming task. Luckily, our remarkable Dev Team devised an ingenious solution using Zapier.

Through a custom Zap, triggered whenever a new draft is created in WordPress, the draft seamlessly transfers into our Asana content calendar, specifically the “New Blogs” section I established.

The Zap automatically assigns the corresponding task to me, ensuring I receive an alert about the presence of the draft. From there, I simply navigate to Asana and effortlessly drag the post into the appropriate topic section.

It's an absolute triumph, streamlining our workflow and eliminating the need for duplicate efforts.

The Takeaway

The Strive Content Calendar is an invaluable asset for creators. It offers a wealth of features and benefits that can revolutionize your content management process all at a very reasonable price.

For only $7 per month, you gain access to all the remarkable features we've discussed and more. Not to mention, the first two weeks come free of charge.

Consider the value of your time, which is estimated at around $100 per hour. With Strive, you'll be paying less than half a cent per hour, making it an incredibly cost-effective solution. Factor in the time-saving advantages it provides, and it's an absolute steal.

Ready to experience the power of Strive firsthand? Click the button below and embark on a test drive that will transform the way you manage and organize your content.

Start optimizing your content process with Strive today!

TRY STRIVE CONTENT CALENDAR FOR FREE FOR 14 DAYS

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