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Editorial calendar

The calendar has twelve rows, a title in each, and a date. By week three you are two behind, by week six nobody opens the file, and by the end of the quarter somebody makes a new calendar.

Part 1

A title and a date is not a plan

It tells you nothing about whether the piece can be written. No source named, no owner, no idea whether the number it needs exists. So the first hard piece stalls, everything behind it slips, and the calendar becomes fiction.

Do this: Add one column: what has to be true for this to be writable. Half your rows will fail that test today, and that is the useful part.
Part 2

The two missing columns are the review date and the measure

Everybody plans publication and nobody plans what happens afterwards. A review date turns a published page into an asset somebody maintains. A measure agreed up front turns it into something you can learn from.

Do this: Add both columns to every row before the quarter starts. Filling them takes an hour and it changes what you commission.
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Part 3

Plan fewer pieces than you can write

A calendar full to the edges has no room for the piece somebody actually needs in March, and that piece is always more valuable than the one you planned in January. Leaving a slot open per month is planning, not slack.

Do this: Cut a quarter of your planned pieces and leave the slots empty. You will fill them with better work than what you removed.
Part 4

Group into clusters, not into weeks

Five pieces on neighbouring questions, published close together and linked to each other, do far more than five unrelated pieces spread evenly. The linking between them is most of the effect and it only works if they exist at the same time.

Do this: Order the calendar by cluster instead of by date. Publish a cluster at a time.

This is teaching material and our own reading of standard editorial practice, not advice for your specific business. Check anything important with your own specialist before you act on it.

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The vocabulary used here is set out in the editorial glossary. Three content operations taken apart, ending with what the correct plan does to the money, are in the case studies, and longer pieces sit on the desk.