Mastering your content calendar

I’ll be honest. The thought of creating a content calendar makes my jaw clenches and every hair on my body stand on end. Then, Bo Burnham's song Content starts playing in my head.

But look, I made you some content
Daddy made you your favorite, open wide
Here comes the content
It's a beautiful day to stay inside -Bo Burnham

Now, I love that song quite a bit, but only because it mocks the idea of creating random content for mass consumption. Yet, here we are, talking about how to create a content calendar because the cosmos has a sense of humor!

So why, if I find creating a content calendar so disagreeable, am I talking about creating one? Why oh why?!

Because my friends, life is insufferably long and you have to keep doing this work forever. After enough time, you just run out of things to talk about and it’s nice to have something to fall back on and say;

“Oh yeah, I am gonna write about that now because past me told me it would be a good idea.”

Thanks past Russell - you’re a true gem!!

I have been writing articles about building a creative business since 2008 and it’s so hard guys. It’s so hard to keep having things to say, but if you don’t have things to say then people will fade away and stop paying attention. Or maybe they won’t. I know the whole thing about subscriptions is that people are there to support you, but like…they do eventually want some decent content. 👀

People ask me all the time how I keep having things to say and the truth is that until this year it wasn’t much of a problem because I didn’t have a publication to feed. I could write when I wanted to write and not write when I didn’t want to write.

AI is homogeneity on steroids and I find it the perfect resource when I want to stop sabotaging myself and actually write something people want to read.

Additionally, I have a tendency to climb onto the same 4-5 hobby horses repeatedly and readers can only deal with so many essays on how hypercapitalism is destroying their creativity and making them miserable before their eyes glaze over.

So, a content calendar helps me talk about new things, give myself direction, and keep my focus on the rails.

I still hate it, though. I hate it so much that it’s taking everything in my power not to flip this computer over and light it on fire. If you’re like me and fight against your best interests until you’re beaten and bruised, then creating a content calendar is one of the benefits of using an AI program like ChatGPT to help you.

I actually used it to create this content calendar for 2024. I can’t say I will stick with it every week, but it is nice to have a structure to fall back on if I don’t have any ideas.

And here’s the BEST bit; it will keep me ahead of my own game! Who doesn’t want that? This is where I think AI can be seriously effective, at augmenting and enhancing us, instead of stealing our jobs.

You see, content calendars should be based on best practices to some degree, and AI is great at generating generic, bland, middle-of-the-road analyses culled from billions of (often stolen) sources.

AI is homogeneity on steroids and I find it the perfect resource when I want to stop sabotaging myself and actually write something people want to read.

It can’t force me to do it well or in a manner that won’t turn off people who read it, but at the very least it can compile best practices from across the internet.

CONFESSION: If you cannot tell, this is an article my AI editor told me to write because January is all about setting priorities and creating calendars we stick to for the better part of three weeks before our bad habits creep in and ruin our lives again.

If you’re like me and fight against your best interests until you’re beaten and bruised, then creating a content calendar is one of the benefits of using an AI program like ChatGPT to help you.

I’m not saying you should become a slave to an omniscient AI that hallucinates more than Keith Richards on LSD, but it is nice to have an arsenal of posts in your library that you can reference when people ask things like:

“How do I defeat writer’s block?” and
“How do you know what to write every week?”

This is me trying to stop self-sabotaging myself in 2024 by admitting to a bunch of (brilliant) writers that I used generative AI to help me plan my first article of the year.

This may have been ill-advised, but I am in it now…deep into it. When’s the next stop?

So… what is a ‘Content Calendar’?

A content calendar (also known as an “editorial calendar”) is a written schedule of when and where you plan to publish upcoming content. Content calendars typically include upcoming pieces, status updates, planned promotional activity, partnerships, and updates to existing content. - Brian Dean

At its most basic level, a content calendar organizes the basic unit of publishing (articles) and lays them out in a manner that makes sense across a certain period of time.

So, as I mentioned above, January usually sees a lot of traffic related to setting goals and focuses on prioritization. Because of that, it behooves us as creators to create content about those topics in January because traffic is at its peak during that time.

For instance, this is the Google Trend line for Halloween in the past year.

By this, you can see that if you start talking about Halloween before July, people are just not going to care. This is why if you are launching a Kickstarter for a Halloween book, you should launch it close to Halloween.

Even though people won’t get the book until after Halloween, you still want to launch as close to Halloween as possible because that is when traffic, attention, and excitement will be at their peak.

By contrast, this is the trend line for Christmas.

Again, this tells us that we probably shouldn’t talk about Christmas in March. In the same way, we can use Google Trends to find trend lines for all sorts of things.

You are more than welcome to tune out and do your own thing. Maybe it will work. However, if you release a Christmas book in March, it’s probably not going to do well because nobody cares about Christmas in March.

Or we can just Google “What should I write about in March?” And there’s probably a billion of these articles out there because we’re all trying to get that good good SEO which means creating homogenous articles meant to scale.

What is SEO?

SEO means Search Engine Optimization and is the process used to optimize a website's technical configuration, content relevance and link popularity so its pages can become easily findable, more relevant and popular towards user search queries, and as a consequence, search engines rank them better.

Search engines recommend SEO efforts that benefit both the user search experience and page’s ranking, by featuring content that fulfills user search needs. This includes the use of relevant keywords in titles, meta descriptions, and headlines (H1), featuring descriptive URLs with keywords rather than strings of numbers, and schema markup to specify the page's content meaning, among other SEO best practices. -Mailchimp

For a long time, SEO was how you won the internet. If you could rank high for relevant terms in your industry, people would find your website more than your competitors, which would lead to you being found more, widening the gaps between yourself and everyone else.

That gap between yourself and others is how you build attention arbitrage.

What's Attention Arbitrage? It's the practice of people selling your attention to other people. The attention sellers (in the online world examples are platforms like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.) sell the opportunity to gain the attention of their community members or subscribers. -AOK Marketing

I searched the internet for a good 20 minutes to find a definition of attention arbitrage, and the above was the one that came up again and again on search, meaning it is highly optimized for that search term.

It so happens, though, that I hate that definition even if it is the best one that I found. That is one of the downsides of SEO. It often surfaces middle-of-the-road but easily shareable articles to the top.

In short, arbitrage results from a gap between demand and supply. If there is more demand than supply, the delta, or difference, between the two is arbitrage.

For attention arbitrage, we are trying to create a gap between ourselves and others in the industry. The wider the gap, the more we will create a self-propagating cycle where the gap widens. I tell clients “the wider the gap, the wider the gap.”

That gap between yourself and others is how you build attention arbitrage.

It’s very hard to wedge yourself into a topic and create a gap. One of the ways we can do that is by leveraging attention around a topic to bring traffic to your publication. It’s why you see lots of think pieces about similar topics when they are in the news.

That traffic drives more traffic. By talking about a topic, people are increasing the arbitrage for that topic as more and more people talk about it. That is what I mean when I say “the wider the gap the wider the gap”.

Once something goes viral and more people talk about it, more people start talking about it, causing more people to talk about it, until it burns itself out.

If you hate this with every bone in your body, I do, too. I want the world to work differently, but it doesn’t. I want human psychology to work differently, but it doesn’t.

Identifying Your Content Goals

What's your aim for developing a content marketing plan? Why do you want to produce content and create a content marketing plan?

It may seem obvious, but these questions are the core of a useful content strategy. Look at high-level business goals, notes from meetings, and notes from your team, then do some solo research to make sure your goals have staying power. -Hubspot

“What you measure you manage” as they say, so before we create a content calendar, we should identify our goals. I think in general most goals should be smart goals, and the best way to make smart goals is to make SMART goals.

The SMART in SMART goals stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound.

Defining these parameters as they pertain to your goal helps ensure that your objectives are attainable within a certain time frame. This approach eliminates generalities and guesswork, sets a clear timeline, and makes it easier to track progress and identify missed milestones. -Kat Boogaard

Most writers “want more traffic” or “to make more money”, which is like…well, I won’t lie, it’s not a great goal.

Is $1 more money? It sure is. Will it satiate you? Unlikely.
Is 10 more website visitors more traffic? Yup. Will it move the needle? Not very much.

Setting smart SMART goals allows us to create achievable goals and then set a plan in order to make them a reality. Maybe you don’t care about traffic, and possibly you are fine talking about the same thing every week even if you’ve beaten that dead horse unrecognizable.

If you hate this with every bone in your body, I do, too. I want the world to work differently, but it doesn’t. I want human psychology to work differently, but it doesn’t.

If that’s you, then you probably haven’t read this far. However, if somehow you are still reading, then you should do your own thing.

That said, I have a rule. You can try to change things and then you can complain or you can refuse to change and then you have to shut up about it.

I honestly don’t care either way. That said, if you want more traffic and more satisfied subscribers, it behooves you to use traffic sources and trends to your advantage.

How many times have I seen writers talk about how Substack doesn’t have good SEO because they aren’t ranked on their topic? A number approaching infinity at this point.

Then, when I go look at their articles, I find they don’t utilize good keywords, the article is formatted like garbage, and it makes no sense as a coherent narrative. If you want things to rank, you have to create articles to rank.

I’m not saying you should follow the nonsense SEO experts talk about with keyword density or metadata, but in some ways I am saying you should at least be aware of that stuff and test it before dismissing it entirely. Some people just study this stuff all the time, and you can take advantage of what they say when advantageous.

Or you can go your own way and not care about this stuff. Honestly, if you do that you’ll probably be much happier.

If you do want to implement some of this into your strategy, then you don’t have to do it with every post, either.

This article is one that I plan to use to drive traffic and increase engagement with you all, but not all your posts have to be set up that way.

Posts like this used to be called epic blog posts or cornerstone content.

Cornerstone content is the core of your website. It consists of the best, most important articles on your site; the pages or posts you want to rank highest in the search engines. Cornerstone articles are usually relatively long, informative articles, combining insights from different blog posts and covering everything that’s important about a certain topic.

Their focus is to provide the best and most complete information on a particular topic, rather than to sell products. Still, they should reflect your business or communicate your mission perfectly. -Yoast

The recommendation was to have 5-10 posts like this when you launch your site and then put out another one every few months after that so you can expand your reach.

These pieces of content are also great ways to stop having to answer the same 10 questions over and over again because you can just send them to a piece you’ve already written.

Understanding your audience

Knowing your audience helps you figure out what content and messages people care about. Once you have an idea of what to say, knowing your audience also tells you the appropriate tone and voice for your message. -Benyamin Elias

If you don’t know it’s important to understand the people who will read your work, then I wrote a whole book on building your creative career with a section all about building an audience from scratch.

In short, you want to know your audience so you can make things they want, and then they will in turn purchase from you, providing you money that you can then exchange for goods and services.

Basically, the more you know your customers, the more you will be able to align with what they need to read!!

One of the most powerful chapters I’ve ever written in any of my books is about how to build an ideal customer (or client) avatar. Here’s a section from it;

An ideal client avatar represents the person who most resonates with your message and is thus incredibly likely to buy your product. It is the virtual representation of your perfect customer.

There are two factors that come into play that help determine your ideal client avatar. The first factor is somebody who has a very high customer lifetime value. The second factor is a person with a very low customer acquisition cost.

Customer lifetime value is the amount somebody will buy from you over the course of their life. Your ideal customer will be the type of person who spends at least a hundred dollars on your products every year. This is a concept made famous by Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired. Kelly wrote a piece on his blog in 2008 called “1,000 True Fans,” which became one of the definitive pieces on building an audience with its claim that if an artist can find one thousand people willing to spend one hundred dollars a year on their work, then they can successfully make a living on their art. I hope we can all agree that generating $100,000 in income would make a very successful year.

Conversely, customer acquisition cost is the amount of money it costs to find a new customer and make a sale. Between tabling at conventions, sending mailing list updates, advertising, and all of the other monetary outlays that come part and parcel with finding a client, the less we spend acquiring a client means we make more money at the end of the day.

Simply put, your ideal client avatar is the person most receptive to your message and the person with whom you most want to speak.

It has to be both.

There will be people you want to speak with who have no interest in your message, and people who want to hear your message that you don’t care about at all. The ideal client avatar is the beautiful merging of these two points.

So…how do we find our ideal client avatar?

First, we must find the type of people who inspire us to create. This will take some deep reflection, but you know there is a person in your life who will love your product more than anybody else. This doesn’t have to be your family. It can be a friend or even somebody you aren’t that close with, though I highly recommend staying inside your close friend circle at first.

Have you thought of somebody? Good. Then, let’s build an avatar.

To start forming our ideal client, we need to test whether that person will be the right fit to buy what you are trying to sell. Remember, just because you want to make products for somebody doesn’t mean your products will resonate with them.

To find out if somebody is a good fit, we have to stalk their Facebook feeds for a while to see what kinds of stuff they like. We need to make sure they are buying what you are selling. If you want to make death metal pins and they are buying fluffy bunny plushes, you are barking up the wrong tree and need to start over.

Once you are relatively confident that they buy the same type of stuff that you want to make, it’s time to interview them. It doesn’t have to be anything formal, but you want feedback about why they buy what they buy. Do they like bright colors or are they more into texture? Does size matter? What is it that resonates with them when they buy something?

After you have that interview, it’s time to make some different products and show them to your ideal client. This is why using an immediate friend or family member is easiest, because they will be open and receptive to looking at your product. This is also why it’s best not to pick your mother or anybody who will automatically love anything that you do. You want real and honest feedback about whether you are doing something that resonates with your ideal client.

This interview isn’t about selling your product, but you need to know if they would buy what you are trying to sell. If you can’t tell whether or not they would buy your product, push harder. This is critical research and if you get it wrong then your business will suffer and you will have to start again. You don’t want to build the wrong customer avatar.

Once you’ve done your research, it’s time to rock and roll into mass production, right? Absolutely and unequivocally not.

You don’t want to go into mass production just yet. After you have a good idea that your work will resonate with the right person, you need to find other people who will also be perfect fits for your product. This is the beginning of the ideal client avatar.

Create a profile of your ideal client based on your initial research. This profile needs to be as complete as you can make it. Your ideal client avatar should feel like a real person who lives and breathes. Your profile of them should include name, age, ethnicity, interests, personality traits, favorite foods, favorite TV shows, favorite movies, favorite bands, favorite websites, and anything else you can think of to make your avatar feel like a real person.

Once you have the profile created, use it to find five to ten other people who fit your ideal client avatar. Replicate the same process you used before. Interview your potential customers and show them your product just you like did with the original person.

Some of the assumptions you made about your ideal client will be correct and some will be wildly misinformed. That’s okay. That’s how it should be. Use the new data you collected from these interviews to recreate your ideal client avatar and focus it more clearly. Your avatar will now become more complete and fleshed out, because you have five to ten times the research data.

After finding five to ten people who love your product, it’s time to test your ideal client avatar on people you don’t know.

To do this, you need to create a small batch of products. Then, find a craft fair, comic convention, or job fair where your ideal client avatar exists in the real world. Bring your products to this event. Find people who resemble your ideal client and see if they rabidly buy what you are selling.

If they do, use your new data to compile a more complete customer avatar. If they do not, analyze why they are not buying your product, make corrections to your avatar, and try again. The MORE people you speak with, the more complete and real your customer avatar will become.

The stronger your ideal client avatar, the more you will be able to focus on creating a product for the right kind of person, lowering your customer acquisition cost, and increasing your lifetime customer value. Then, you can use all that data to find more people who fit that profile, which is the key to scaling your creative business.

If you skim-read all of that I’ll summarize it. Basically, the more you know your customers, the more you will be able to align with what they need to read!!

While writing this article is absolute torture, I know it’s something you need to read and it will help you, so I am suffering through it as a mitzvah to you. It’s only because I know my readers so well that I can even hope to create a content calendar filled with stuff that resonates with them.

Which, of course, is the point. Just because you know that “goals” is a big topic in January doesn’t help establish what your audience wants and needs to hear about goal setting.

Remember, you’re creating, in many ways, a searchable archive of your thoughts on topics that your readers will resonate within their own practice.

Choosing the Right Tools…

There are so many options for creating a content calendar that it can get overwhelming. Have you tried some of them in the past? Do you start full of good intentions and then give up in a tantrum halfway through because it’s overwhelming? Then here are some tools that might help.

I use Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel to keep things straight, but I am only one person with an editorial assistant. Were I to scale, we would then have no choice but to expand into some of the more comprehensive options, which I would likely never, ever use.

Google Calendar - Cost: Free

Google Calendar is a user-friendly, free option that allows you to create events and set reminders for content publication dates. It's accessible on various devices and can be easily shared with collaborators.

Trello - Cost: Free with premium options

Trello is a visual project management tool that uses cards and boards to organize tasks. Writers can create a content calendar board, add cards for each piece of content, and move them through different stages of the writing and publishing process.

Asana - Cost: Free with premium options

Asana is a project management tool that allows you to create tasks and set due dates. It's useful for managing not only content but also other aspects of your writing business.

CoSchedule - Cost: Paid

CoSchedule is a specialized content marketing calendar tool. It offers features like social media integration, content optimization, and analytics. While it's a paid option, it provides comprehensive functionality.

Airtable - Cost: Free with premium options

Airtable is a versatile, spreadsheet-database hybrid that's highly customizable. Writers can create a content calendar base and add columns for content type, publication date, status, and more.

Excel or Google Sheets - Cost: Free

A simple spreadsheet can be an effective tool for creating a content calendar. You can customize it to your needs and share it with collaborators.

There are a ton of factors to consider when you choose a content scheduling platform, but the most important one is whether you will actually use it.

We have tried a ton of solutions over the years, but the one that I keep using is a combination of Excel and Sheets because I keep using them. If you use something, then there’s a good chance you will keep using it. It’s not complicated AND it works!!

Additionally, I don’t want to end this section without mentioning that it’s possible to create a beautiful content calendar using a physical planner or calendar, especially if you work for yourself. I can’t overstress that there is so much context switching in our lives that drains us, if you have a system that works, it’s probably good enough…until it isn’t. Use it and LOVE it and it will pay you richly in time and lack of headaches!

Types of content

Still breathing….good! Seriously, using the word content is starting to grind my gears in a very visceral way, but we’re deep into it now, and I’m not sure how to talk about different formats without saying the word content again. Add to that that I’m writing about it on Substack, we’re in a whole tangle of tinsel! Thanks for sticking with me!

Moving on - in general, you will likely choose one of the following as your main medium for delivering content.

Substack or Medium, you’re probably used to writing written articles or blog posts. These are the original currency of the internet. Personally, it is what I use for my main content delivery. While we have a podcast and produce video content, it is sporadic compared to our written content.
Videos: The internet seems to have moved to a video-first medium, and with it, left me behind because I do not do well on video. This includes vlogs, educational videos, interviews, or even animated content. Video engages audiences and often receives high interaction rates.
Podcasts/Audio Content: My favorite medium (though one I simply don’t have much time or energy for) is podcasting, specifically the interview podcast. I recorded 200 episodes of my previous podcast, and it built so many amazing connections. This format allows authors to explore topics through discussions, interviews, or storytelling. It's a great way to reach audiences who prefer audio content.

That’s not to say you can’t create in all three formats, but one will be the one you build from the most and use as the main driver of your growth. The biggest thing you can get from a main format is consistency. I know I will write articles every week because I have done it since 2008. The other formats have come and gone, but writing has stayed consistent which means I can consistently deliver it.

Once you pick a main format, then you should consider ways to flush it out with additional supporting material.

The biggest thing you can get from a main format is consistency.

Truth bomb - if I was better at business, I would do this more often, but I just only have so much energy for this stuff.

Infographics: Visual content like infographics presents information in a visually appealing manner. They are easily shareable and simplify complex concepts.
Ebooks/Guides: These longer, in-depth pieces of content provide comprehensive information on a specific topic. They can be offered as downloadable resources, driving lead generation.
Social Media Posts: Short and engaging content on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc., helps in maintaining an active online presence and attracting a broader audience.
Case Studies/Whitepapers: These are detailed analyses or reports showcasing real-life examples or research findings. They establish authority and expertise in a particular subject.
Interactive Content: Quizzes, polls, assessments, or interactive tools engage the audience actively, encouraging participation and sharing.

And time to pick up some more willing passengers…

Where Author Ecosystems Fit in

If you’re a Desert, then you care very deeply about arbitrage and taking advantage of it to ride trends. By using a content calendar and Google Trends, you can dissect what the hottest topics are at any time of year, historically over time, and then use that to bring more people to your publication. Especially if you combine this knowledge with the hot trends of the day, you can exponentially increase your traffic.

If you’re a Grassland, then you are interested in trend weaving around your topic, which means taking the hot topics of the day and across historical trends and using them to bring more attention to your topic. Making a content calendar allows you to plan your strategy over a long time horizon while weaving in those hot topics along with it.

If you’re a Tundra, then you’re interested in evergreen trends, stacking them on top of each other, and building maximum excitement with every launch. You might not even launch weekly. You might take all these topics, stack them on top of each other, and create one enormous post a month that combines everything in one epic blog post.

If you’re a Forest, then you care about themes and creating a shared language. Knowing what your community is thinking about allows you to twist every trend to speak to your theme, and use your existing shared language to map onto the hot trends of the day.

If you’re an Aquatic, the idea of making tons of formats to find new readers will be exciting to you. For most other ecosystems, you’ll freak out a bit reading the scope of what’s possible, but not you. For myself, I tend to like seeing which of my pieces have virality before I start spending time and energy building out interactive content, infographics, etc, for my work.

Adapting Your Personalised Content Calendar

No matter how perfect your calendar, no plan will survive without being able to adapt to situations as they arise. New technology, news, or trends will force you to make accommodations as needs arise. I wish the world wasn’t ever-changing in a way that is impossible to keep up with but wishes never fed me without action.

Not everything will work, and some things will work way better than you expect. Some will overperform for a month and then tank. Otherwise, will chug along and they spike out of nowhere.

Since we’re stuck in this rapidly changing world where nothing seems to remain constantly for even a month, we need a plan to adapt to new information as it arises. Here are some of the things you should build into your content calendar structure.

Regular Reviews: Set regular intervals to review your content calendar. This could be monthly, quarterly, or based on your content cycle. Assess what's working, what's not, and identify areas for improvement. Buddy up with someone who wants to do the same?
Analyze Metrics: Use analytics tools to measure content performance. Look at engagement rates, conversions, traffic, and other relevant metrics to understand which content types or topics resonate most with your audience. Reflect on it all.
Stay Agile: Be open to change. If a new trend emerges or if your audience's preferences shift, be prepared to adjust your calendar accordingly. This might mean swapping content, adding new topics, or rescheduling posts.
Content Audit: Periodically conduct a content audit to evaluate the effectiveness of existing content. Determine what can be updated, repurposed, or expanded upon to improve its performance.
Revisit Goals: Ensure that your content aligns with your current business or marketing goals. If there's a shift in objectives, adjust your calendar to reflect these changes.
Stay Informed: Keep abreast of industry trends, changes in algorithms (especially for social media and SEO), and audience preferences. Incorporate this knowledge into your content strategy.
Create Contingency Plans: Anticipate potential disruptions or changes that might impact your content schedule. Have backup content or flexible slots in your calendar to accommodate unforeseen circumstances.
Collaborate and Seek Feedback: Engage with your team or stakeholders regularly. Seek feedback from your audience through surveys, comments, or social media interactions. Use this information to refine your calendar.
Document Learnings: Keep track of what you've learned from past adaptations. Document successful strategies, audience responses, and the impact of changes made to help inform future adaptations.
Test and Experiment: Use A/B testing or pilot programs for new content ideas or formats. Experimentation can help you understand what works best for your audience.

Health warning: Not everything will work, and some things will work way better than you expect. Some will overperform for a month and then tank. Otherwise, will chug along and they spike out of nowhere. It’s a bit like organized chaos (which was ironically the name of the high school yearbook I edited), but we have to set the boundaries to excel, and a content calendar can help you do that successfully.

It’s very normal to feel a bit stifled by one, especially at first, but the key is to add your own voice to the content so that it resonates with your people and your publication.

People often think that structure stifles them, but I believe it sets you free.

You would never get on a rollercoaster if you weren’t sure you would return safely. It’s that security that allows you to process your fear in a safe space. The same is true with developing a content calendar