Prevent editorial calendar hate: four tips to make it easier

A little over a month ago, Amy wrote a great post with advice on how to create an editorial calendar. She offers guidance about planning, executing and making an editorial calendar work. One question was left unanswered: how do I get my team publishing regularly without making them hate it?

Unless you are fortunate enough to dedicate resources fully to publishing, your team is busy with other work the majority of the time and publishing or blogging may kick them out of their groove for a bit.

As someone with a full plate who is also scheduled to publish regularly, here are four tips.

1. Keep the schedule simple

Make editorial calendar publishing assignments easy to remember.

• I blog every other Thursday
• Bob blogs the first Monday of the month
• Jane publishes a new whitepaper on the 15th of every month

If that level of simplicity isn’t possible for your business, make it easy to physically see the schedule. Post it on the office fridge, dangle it from the ceiling like a disco ball, but let it be something employees cannot easily forget.

2. Create a writing template

Every time I start a blog post, I use our team’s blog post template that outlines all the key items I need to consider to maximize my post’s effectiveness.

• What are the targeted keywords for this post?
• What is the title of this post (as it appears to visitors)?
• What is the HTML page title (for the <title> tag as it appears to search engines)?
• What is the meta description for this post?
• What category tags will I assign to this post?
• What image will I use for this post? How will I name it and tag it?

3. Encourage a culture shift

Push hard to keep everyone on track for a few weeks or through a few scheduled cycles. Watch for and nurture a culture shift where publishing becomes second nature.

It may be peer pressure, professional competition or a sense of responsibility, but knowing that everyone published on time this week is a strong motivating factor to make sure I do too.

4. Share the results and success

Let the team know when a post generates a traffic boost, gets a ton of comment activity or shot up Google for its targeted keywords. It’s encouraging to know that sticking to the editorial calendar produces results.

[Image: David Vignoni]