If you don’t have an editorial calendar you may find that your posting is sporadic, you may become stressed keeping up with posting, or you may get blogger burn out. Today let’s talk about how to avoid all three of these by setting up an amazing editorial calendar.

You will find two benefits from a great editorial calendar.

1. When you sit down to blog you have your idea already sitting in front of you. You don’t waste time trying to decide what  to write about.
2. You can schedule your posts so if something unexpected happens you have posts that will already be coming up on your blog.

The Tools

First let’s get the tools you will be needing to set up a calendar. My two favorite WordPress plugins to help me with my calendar are:

• Future Posts Calendar - This is a great tool to see when you have scheduled your posts on your dashboard and from you post. Plus when you are ready to schedule a post just click the date and it will automatically change your publish date.
• Editorial Calendar - This will give you a calendar to add ideas as post drafts, see where you have posts scheduled, and quickly drag and drop to change posting dates for your posts.

Weekly Schedule?

Now is a good time to decide if you want to  have a weekly posting schedule or just post as you go.

What is a weekly schedule? Many bloggers decide on daily themes for their blog. I use this here on Pepper Scraps (though I’m a good example of not having it set in stone).

• Mondays you will find my Project 52 posts.
• Tuesdays I’ve been doing a series on Android Apps.
• Wednesdays are my Weigh In Wednesdays
• Thursday I’m doing a series on Bloggers You Should Follow.
• Fridays is All About Blogging
• Saturday is a Craft a Day

To create this schedule just think about 3-6 subjects you write about on your blog. Now designate one subject for a day of the week. What is nice about this system is if you are stuck about what to write about one day you have at least narrowed down the subject to talk about. This will also give your readers a since of what to expect when.

Don’t feel like you are always stuck posting to your weekly schedule. If you have some exciting news that you want to share right away, feel free and break the routine. Also take some time and review your schedule every few months to make sure you don’t need to rearrange or update your weekly schedule.

Collect your Ideas

Now it’s time to start brainstorming. It is always a good idea to always have a running list of blogging ideas. Keep a notebook (or use your phone or tablet) in your purse to always have available for ideas.

One of my favorite ideas for brainstorming is magazine covers. I find mine at the doctor’s office.

Today take some time and make a list of 30 ideas, this will help you on the next step in creating your awesome editorial calendar. If you created a weekly posting schedule create an even number of post for each category. Example: if you have 5 subject per week you schedule you will want to come up with 6 post ideas for each category.

Enter your Ideas into your Calendar

Open up your calendar either your Google Calendar or  Editorial Calendar or even a written calendar if you prefer pencil.

First enter all your time sensitive posts (holiday posts, sponsored posts, etc) into your calendar.

Now divide your ideas into your categories if you are posting on a weekly schedule.

Look through your ideas. Are you really inspired by an idea or do you have a post already all planned in the back of your head? Post these next in the upcoming week or the first week of the month.

Now start entering your post ideas. Don’t worry about what date you have them once you have your posts in the calendar you can rearrange them by drag and drop (or eraser). Just make sure they are  in the slots for your weekly schedule.

You now have an amazing editorial calendar now what?

Try to stay ahead of the game. Sit down and try to write 2 posts a day for a week, then after that you should be able to write one week ahead. Or spend a day to go through your month and create the outline for each post.

Do you currently have an editorial calendar for your blog? If yes, what is your tip today? If no, I’d love to hear why not?

This may be cheating for My Place & Yours, because yes this technically is not a photo but a screen shot. But my secret weapon is my Google Calendar. I love my Google Calendar. No matter what system I try I always end up back at my Google Calendar.

Now the above image may look like a colorfully garbled image but there is a system to it. I can look at each calendar individually or I can have a few open to sync everyone in the household or I can have the whole thing open but that is a bit overwhelming.

But let’s dissect my Google Calendar I maybe you too will run out and get one.

Let’s start with a blank calendar:

This is what your calendar will look like with nothing on it. Okay, let’s start adding things. One nice thing about Google  Calendar is that you can sync to other calendars. Google offers multiple holiday calendars you can sync to your calendar. I can also sync Google Calendar with my favorite online to do list Remember the Milk.  (I have the phases of the moon on my calendar, though I can’t find how to add this option anymore.) Let’s add those options:

You will see a little blue check next to the date. If I click on that and it gives me a drop down of my  remember the milk to do list.

I also have a calendar for birthdays but I will not be showing that for privacy to others. I found that you can download your friend’s birthdays from Facebook and upload to your calendar. The application to do this is called Birthday iCal. Very nice feature.

I also have my church’s calendar synced to my calendar so when they have events I would like to attend I can just add it to my calendar.

Let’s add my personal calendar, which is purple because I like purple (you can choose the colors of your calendars from a list of colors). This calendar is where I put my appointments, my events I attend, or things we do as a family.

I keep my work schedule separate to make it easier to add my schedule to the calendar and to be able to find my shifts faster. You can add all day events which are the bold blocks of color or you can add time frames. One other nice feature is you can make things repeat. This month I am working every Monday 10-5:30 so I told the calendar to repeat this through the last Monday in the month.

I also keep my menu plan on my calendar. I love this, it makes it so much easier to plan meals, make a grocery list and link to recipes (in the notes). I learned to this from simplemom.

I also keep a calendar for my online work. Right now I have mainly just the meme’s I like to participate in, but hopefully that will change soon.

And now let’s add my boys calendars. I have a calendar for my husband and each of my boys. If your husband has his own Google Calendar you can just sync it to your calendar and that way you will know when he has plans with the guys or has to work.

My last calendar I have is our routine. I have set up one calendar so that it shows our daily routine so I can make quick reference to it to see what we are doing today.

And that brings us to my full schedule. Which isn’t actually complete for the month. I still need to add date night, family day and I want to add a cookie making party with my friends. But this will be easily scheduled now that I have my whole calendar in front of me. I hope that maybe you to will try out Google Calendar.

If you already use Google Calendar, are there any features that you love?