Add Structure To Your Blog With An Editorial Calendar

An editorial calendar is a document that displays media content over a period of time. They are often used by professionals in traditional media such as television, newspapers, and magazines. Increasingly, however, new media people are finding them useful as well. Bloggers, podcasters, YouTube personalities, and more are using editorial calendars to add structure to their content development, stay abreast of upcoming events, and brainstorm. To make it easy for you, I've developed an editorial calendar template you can download for free. Feel free to use, modify, and share it as you wish. Here are a few ways to put it to good use.

Plan out your content well in advance

Use your editorial calendar to plan your content well in advance. In doing so, you allow yourself to be more clear and consistent. Also, taking this bird's eye view over a period of time will better position you to develop content around important topics, events, dates, etc.

Find experts to provide guest content

One of the best ways to engage with the community and bring awareness to your website, blog, show, etc. is by showcasing guest content. If you know well in advance what topics you want covered, you can begin your search right away and give guest bloggers, writers, and other producers more time to provide quality work. A good place to search quality blogs by topic is Technorati.

Find publications to submit your content

If you find yourself producing especially relevant work, there may be other places to publish it. Magazines, newspapers, blogs, etc. are always looking for quality pieces to feature. They each have their preference in how they like to receive inquiries, but identifying them in advance will help ensure you are able to meet their requirements.

What other ways can you use an editorial calendar?

I've just outlined a few ways to get you thinking about how to use an editorial calendar to increase your effectiveness. What other ways can you think about? Please share with us what works for you or what other ideas you have.

Files

Editorial Calendar Template

Personal Branding Tip: Should My Bio Be In 1st or 3rd Perspective?

The Question - Should I write my bio from the 1st or 3rd perspective?

The Simple Solution - Write Both

• 160 character


• One sentence


• 100 words


• 250 words (1st person)


• 250 words (3rd person)

The Three Guiding Principles

1. What is the message I’m trying to deliver?


2. To whom am I delivering this message?


3. Through which media am I delivering this message?

However, these are just guidelines, not hard rules, so do whatever feels right to you. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below or on twitter at @michaelbmaine. Until next time…peace.

Values and Value Creation Blog Post #4

The Power Of Creativity

Do you know what skill is desired most in today’s CEO? It’s probably not what you think. It’s not analytical skills. It’s not the ability to perform market research. It’s not having the foresight to think about risk management and contingency planning, or the ability to read numbers. It’s not even people skills. So what is this all-so-important skill? Believe it or not, it’s creativity. That’s right—creativity…the one thing typically not taught in business school.

It’s not wonder we have a population that lacks creativity—we spend most of our lives getting creativity beaten out of us. We’re taught the importance of reading, writing, math, science, and other “core” subjects, but are often taught that we must let go of our “hobbies” such as drawing, painting, playing an instrument, acting, etc. when it’s time to “get serious” about life. If we exhibit any deviant behavior we’re told to “act right” or “be like everybody else.” The problem with being like everybody else is that you become just, well, like everybody else.

I remember undergraduate school at Southwestern University, a small, liberal arts school in Georgetown, TX. I majored in business…minored in both sociology and communications studies. When I inquired about somebody’s major, they often hung their head in doubt as they stated, theater, performing arts, or art history.” Others would say with disgust, business, math or biology. I always wondered why so many people where ashamed in the things they loved and spent so much time studying things they loathe. But it makes sense. We live in a culture that celebrates conformity and formality. We use terms like band geeks and theater types to describe people who produce things we often value more than education while we hold doctors, lawyers, and businesspeople on pedestals.

I don’t know. I find it sad that so many of us lead an existence based in denying ourselves true happiness. We look up to the rebels—the Steve Jobs’ of the world—the ones that said “’f’ it, I’m doing what I want.”

If we are going to produce the business leaders with vision, compassion, and courage needed to tackle the increasingly complex problems we are facing, we have to cultivate creativity. Where is your passion really? If you’re not following it, now is the time to start. It’s never too late. Never too early.

I'm Live Blogging From BGI

I am live blogging from the BGI C.A.I.R. (Change Agents in Residents) program at IslandWood. I hope to bring this event to those who otherwise would not have access to this.