The Editorial Plan is one of the pillars of any online project related to content marketing. Once much underestimated, the editorial calendar is now one of the first aspects to be structured for an effective communication and marketing strategy .
In this article I will guide you towards the creation of an Editorial Plan for Blog, Social, Instagram and Facebook.
Before starting, however, I want to briefly explain what the editorial plan is and why it is so important.
Editorial Plan What is it?
The editorial plan, or editorial calendar, is in fact the operational strategy that allows you to plan the contents that will be published.
There are those who define it as a set of strategic actions that aim to acquire traffic, people potentially interested in your products / services (or the services you are talking about), contacts, sales.
If we want to use English terms we can talk about Prospect, Client, Customers, Followers, Fan.
The editorial plan is the tool within which you will go to collect ideas, analyzes, information and where these will be organized in a structured way. By creating an editorial plan you can in fact:
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- Define one or more specific objectives (and consequently create one or more calendars)
- Define the resources necessary for the creation of certain content (photos, videos, texts, reviews, in-depth content, …)
- Organize and structure topics, days and times of publication
- Scientifically establish the content marketing strategy and at the same time the contents that will have Call to action(so as not to have too many promotional contents and balance the contents well;
- Organize the best, in the case of the publishing plan for a blog, the ‘ internal linking
In fact, the editorial plan will be your map , the map that will guide you towards achieving the results.
Strategic Publishing Plan
At this point I’m sure you understand why we often talk about a strategic editorial plan: this is where the entire communication strategy of your project will be contained.
Unlike the editorial calendar that simply reports publication dates and content that will be published, the editorial plan is a more structured document that starts from an internal analysis of the project, of the objectives to be achieved, of the target audience ( buyer personas or reader personas ) .
There are those who, in the implementation of the editorial plan, also include the definition of the communication style and the tone of voice to be used.
The strategic editorial plan, in particular, may also include a document in which the following are reported:
- Aims
- Target
- Information architecture
- Structure and Organization of Pages and Categories (in the case of a site or a blog), of the type of content (in the case of social profiles)
- Creating categories
- Choice of tone of voice
- Publication frequency
- Web Analysis Tools
Journalism Editorial Plan
The editorial plan of a newspaper , or an online newspaper is a document shared with journalists through which they are outlined:
- Topics
- Shared rules
- Tips for writing in the style of the newspaper
- Editorial line (and political inclination)
- Topic tree
- Types of content
- Times to be respected
Food Publishing Plan
The food sector is one of those sectors where creating a good editorial plan can really make a difference.
In fact, those who work in the world of food or catering often rely on some macro areas for the realization of their editorial plan, such as:
- Local events
- Events organized by the owner of the venue / restaurant
- Launch of new menus or new initiatives
- Sharing customer photos or customer reviews
- Publication of recipes and combinations
- Quotes about food
It is clear that this will not help the business to differentiate itself, and that the best way to get results is to have a more structured and less generic strategy.
First of all it is necessary to organize topics and contents in order to have a good planning that avoids the publication of the content late or worse still without a clear vision of the result to be achieved.
Each content should in fact have a title and a specific topic , from which then go to structure the content, through the description and above all the multimedia part ( images and videos ).
Whatever the editorial plan you will have to create, it is of fundamental importance to know the project you will work on well: strengths and weaknesses, company values, exclusive or differentiating characteristics, products and services available.
Weekly Editorial Plan
There are those who call it weekly planner: after creating the editorial plan with short – medium and long term goals, you can divide that plan by organizing it into monthly editorial plans and weekly editorial plans.
It will be from here that you will have to start to organize your content and your publications, having clear not only what content to publish but at what time of year you are publishing (and consequently if there are topics / holidays that can be treated and that can get more interactions / traffic / interest from your target audience).
The Annual Planner will therefore give you indications on the progress of your project and on the events or holidays to take into consideration, the monthly planner will allow you not to forget anything and know what to focus on, the weekly planner will give you indications on the objectives and activity to be completed absolutely.
Social Editorial Plan
How to create an editorial plan for social media that can improve the engagement of fans / followers and make them grow?
- Do some research to find out: type of content (in your reference sector) that generate more interactions, age range of people who interact the most (and if these reflect your typical customers / fans), times and days of publication;
- Collect and prepare the materials : photos, texts, videos, audio. Optimize the images both in terms of size and quality, apply filters if necessary, create texts that include emojis and are captivating, you must capture the attention of the user who is on his favorite social network and who will see your content
- Monitor the results: use analytics software or the tools provided by social networks to understand what works best on your audience, then periodically update and review the editorial plan
Social Excel Editorial Plan – On the internet there are many ready-made templates for creating an editorial plan, many of these are simplified and generic. I recommend building on one of the free templates and then creating a customized and more advanced one.
Usually these templates contain 4/5 columns which are: Date and Time of Publication, Topic, Post to Publish, Image / Video, Notes and reference links for creating the content.
Facebook Editorial Plan
How to create an editorial plan for a Facebook page?
If you are a social media manager you are probably wondering what are the recommendations for an editorial plan on Facebook that can bring concrete results.
After reading this article, and the various paragraphs dedicated to the definition of objectives, competition, target, best times for publication and best days for publication, one of the aspects to be included in the editorial plan will be the contents that will be sponsored / promoted. through advertising on Facebook (to learn more read my F
