Why plan a year ahead?

Creating an editorial calendar for your blog – for the whole year – seems like overkill. It seems like it will take a lot of work and be too limiting, right? Wrong. It is the first step in freeing your voice up to hit all of the right notes and really impress your ideal readers.

Planning for a whole year is freeing?!? 

Yup! It is. I’ll tell you why. If you follow the steps on the worksheet I have for you today, you will find that it is a simple process and it shouldn’t take more than a half hour to fill in your calendar.

It isn’t permanent either. Mine is on an adorable white board in my office (stay tuned for a crafty Room-of-her-own post on it later…washi tape included), and I make changes to it whenever I think it needs a tweak.

The point isn’t to nail you down to exact posts at precise moments. If something amazing comes to you and it seems appropriate to the season you are in and the current vibe with your readers, WRITE IT! If you’re in the middle of a series that has some great steam behind it, keep going with that and save the new awesome idea for another time.

The point is for you to have an organized and effective arch of themes – like the chapters of a book – that your readers will want to read. These thematic units will save you serious time and serious headaches. I promise!

Let me spell it out for you

Perspective (it gives you a great birds-eye-view of your year, so you will know what to learn about and think about – and when to tell people)

Consistency (multiple projects that address different parts of the most important themes in the minds of your readers and the projection of your business will reinforce your key messages)

Efficiency (this will simplify your efforts to connect with your readers and make certain that you can both come up with appropriate content easily, and direct your readers to past posts easily)

and Scalability (you can set up the thematic units for your blog and allow your staff members or associates to add their voices to the theme, so that you don’t have to always be the writer but your voice will still remain constant).

It is also true that the most surefire way to ignite true creativity is to put yourself into a bit of a box. I know, it sounds counter-intuitive, but it’s true.

If I were to ask you to come up with an idea…what happens? Probably a lot of racing images and vague thoughts but not a whole lot of specific ideas – definitely no brilliant ones.

If I were to ask you – in contrast – to come up with an idea involving bubblegum, grey squirrels and hot air balloons…well that’s kind of a weird combination, but you know what I mean. If there are parameters to your brainstorm, you’ll get way more crazy, awesome, specific and fantastic ideas.

So! If you are ready to get planning, and get creative…

Click here to access this month’s Writing Tips With a K Writing Worksheet: Blog Editorial Content Calendar – With a K- Writing Services

Then comment below to share some themes you may use in your own Theme Calendar, or themes you’d like to see me add to mine – and of course – share with a friend if you know anyone else who could use some content creating strategies of their own.

See you next Week. Until then, One Bite at a Time!

K

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