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Editorial Calendars: An Age-Old Collaborative Work

By Nate Riggs on February 03, 2011 |

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It's Thursday again and time for another guest on nateriggs.com. Since Mike was in town this week, I'm pleased to share something that he'd written for brainzooming.com. I think you might find the comparison interesting.

Here's Mike Brown...
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Social media programs benefit from new strategies and thinking.

Successful social media efforts should also consider offline best practices that make sense, even if they may seem old. We've been working a lot recently with Nate, introducing collaborative blogging in organizations with broad content creation and management needs. Following a client's comment on the challenges of pitching seasonally-based story ideas year after year, I realized something from my spiritual life that demonstrates a great lesson applicable to developing an editorial calendar for collaborative blogging.

Attending mass daily has helped me understand the underlying calendar that plans which Bible passages are read at each service. An approved lectionary (in essence, an editorial calendar) sets the direction. For weekdays, some readings are assigned to annual cycles and other to biannual ones. During special liturgical seasons, all daily readings are the same each year. For Sunday services, readings rotate every three years. Specific feasts and holidays during the year may cause the replacement of that day’s passages with other related Bible readings instead.

The end result, beyond emphasizing different messages with varied frequencies, is simple: over the course of the daily and Sunday calendars, approximately 95% of the Bible's books are included with at least some passages.

If your organization has many stories to tell and needs to reinforce key messages at different times (with varying rates of repetition), adopting a comparable editorial calendar approach could make sense for you. Employing a similar strategy for collaborative blogging requires answering critical questions, including the following:

  • What's the full range of content we want to cover for the organization and target audiences?
  • What content priorities need more frequent reinforcement, and which can be addressed less regularly?
  • What are special events that need coverage and should rightfully interrupt the editorial calendar?
  • What options can be provided to content creators (either in topics, style, etc.) to allow creative flexibility?
  • What strategic links exist between content areas and associated SEO and keyword strategies?

The questions can seem daunting, but there’s incredible upside in the opportunities generated from implementing collaborative blogging and incorporating a strategic editorial calendar.

If the prospect of creating an editorial calendar and collaborative blogging plan seems overwhelming, let us know. We'd love to help streamline developing and implementing your social media and collaborative blogging strategies.

Has your organization done anything like this? Have you tried a similar approach for a smaller organization?

Mike Brown and The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ve developed integrated social media and collaborative blogging strategies for other brands and can do the same for yours.

Nate Riggs

Written by Nate Riggs

Nate Riggs is the Founder and CEO of NR Media Group, a Certified HubSpot Partner and inbound consulting firm. He leads a team of experienced strategists, content marketers, creatives and technologists that help organizations deploy and use HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and service software to operate more efficiently and accelerate growth. Nate regularly presents keynotes and workshops at top industry conferences like INBOUND, Content Marketing World and Oracle’s Modern CX. In 2017, Nate was recognized by HubSpot for his contributions to the development of the HubSpot Education Partner Program. Nate regularly presents keynotes and workshops at top industry conferences like INBOUND, Content Marketing World and Oracle’s Modern CX. In 2017, Nate was recognized by HubSpot for his contributions to the development of the HubSpot Education Partner Program.
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