copywriting – Professional Survivalist

5 Reasons Content Writers Need an Editorial Calendar

As an all-around creative person, I was never a big planner when it came to writing. Copywriting for my day jobs was always assignment-based, so I usually didn’t have much time for research. I just learned to turn around compelling copy in a short amount of time. When it came to personal blogging, I only wrote when I felt like it. Granted, when I was younger and people on the internet usually kept their disagreements contained in that realm, I felt like writing often – even if it meant sharing unpopular opinions. These days, writers need to consider a lot of variables that could end up hurting them in the future. And it’s that kind of calculus that kills inspiration, which is one of the many reasons why an editorial calendar is a necessity.

1. You Will Always Know What to Write About with an Editorial Calendar

For me, this is the most important function of an editorial calendar. Marketers need to constantly create valuable content to fight for mindshare and eyeballs. So much time is spent thinking up and researching appropriate and relevant topics that it doesn’t make sense to restart that process every week. Even something as small as a tweet can be paralyzing if you’re trying to craft something impactful on the spot. Instead, building an editorial calendar for the year (or whatever cycle works for you) helps you create these topics while you’re in the mindset of topic research and creation. I think of it like meal prep days for the health-minded. Yes, you could prep your meals every day, but doing all of the preparation on one day reduces all of the repetitive actions, like washing and portioning, to one day instead of multiplying them by five days. Creating the topics ahead of time and aligning them with events throughout the year will ensure that your content is relevant when you need it to be.

2. Editorial Calendars Give You a Complete View of Your Content

As a content creator, it’s easy to lose yourself in the individual pieces your creating without realizing the pattern you’re creating for your audience. For instance, if your company or brand is multifaceted, but you’re mostly focusing on only one aspect, then you’re only being partially effective. It’s in our nature to write what we know best, and we may neglect other topics without realizing it. Even if we have an equally strong grasp across all the relevant topics, it’s still important to know that we’re covering them with the proper amount of marketing at the appropriate times. Some lines of business are responsible for only a small percentage of revenue; you should devote a similar amount of marketing to them.

3. Stay on Schedule with an Editorial Calendar

Knowing when to write content is just as important as knowing what to write. An editorial calendar allows you to align with your company, customers, and industry. The calendar I created has different columns for internal events, external events, promotions, official holidays, and unofficial recognized days. For social media managers looking to raise brand awareness without burning out their audiences on self-promotion, aligning social posts with current trends is a good solution. An editorial calendar will help you identify those topics ahead of time.

4. Keep Stakeholders Informed on Marketing Activities with an Editorial Calendar

Every department in a company serves a specific and distinct purpose. As such, there is always a danger that departments will silo themselves off from other departments, eliminating the possibility for synergy. A socialized editorial calendar can address these visibility issues for marketing. When Sales knows what Marketing is promoting, then Sales can complement that promotion with their call-down efforts. Likewise, Sales can provide input on the editorial calendar by suggesting lines of business to promote based on lead and opportunity performance. Finally, the editorial calendar is proof of performance for leadership whenever they wonder just what the heck Marketing is doing spending their days on social media.

5. Stay Motivated to Create with an Editorial Calendar

This point is more philosophical than practical, but motivation is a large part of content creation. Most likely, the products and services of your company don’t change very quickly. Or, at the very least, they don’t change fast enough to match your personal desire for fresh topics. That’s when you need to start managing burn out, because it will show in the content you produce. But, while the subjects of your marketing may not change quickly, the way you market them can. Preparing those angles of attack early on can give you something to look forward to when you’re stuck in an off-season that doesn’t inspire you.

BONUS: Keep Historical Marketing Records with an Editorial Calendar

It’s not enough to just perform marketing; you must also measure marketing. What campaigns were effective last year? Should you try them again? You don’t want to recall previous years’ marketing activities from memory. On top of that, what about turnover? What happens when someone with a piece of the tribal knowledge separates from the company? Is that information just gone for good? No, keep as much marketing knowledge as possible saved in central location to minimize these knowledge gaps. An editorial calendar is good start.

Are you using an editorial calendar? If so, then how so? Is it for your personal or professional writing? Let me know in the comments below!

Open Work Environments Are Bad for Marketers

I understand the impulse that businesses have for open work environments. When workers know that they can be seen, it makes sense that they are less likely to screw around on the internet or their phones. Synergy is also easier when employees can simply turn around and get answers from coworkers rather than type to them via the internal chat system. However, when it comes to marketing departments in general and my work experience specifically, I can’t see that these benefits outweigh the cost in productivity and quality.

Almost every job I’ve worked after college has been in some kind of cubicle. Some cubicles wrapped around me with high walls while others were little more than desks with low barriers to separate the stations. During almost all of that time, I was performing some aspect of content creation for marketing purposes, like copywriting, blogging, video editing, designing, coding, etc. Looking back, I know that I was most productive when my environment was mostly closed off and I could work in relative peace. Open work environments always made marketing unnecessarily more difficult.

No matter how collaborative a project is, the various parts are always built individually. That means the copywriter, designer, editor, photographer, whomever all work by themselves to produce the deliverable that assembles into the final product. The worst thing a company can do is give these people visual or aural distractions. I know that when I’m trying to find the perfect combination of words that fit the limited space I’m trying to fill in an ad while still being persuasive and on-brand, the last thing I want is to hear other words. In fact, I want to make it as hard as possible for other people to disturb me in any way.

Designers and production artists probably feel the same way about open work environments. I see them struggle to block out light by building makeshift shades around their monitors to get accurate color reproduction. The best creative rooms I’ve seen have always been dimly lit and quiet so that artistic people can concentrate.

That’s not to say that I can’t be productive in an open work environment. My first exposure to it was at a mid-size manufacturing company where Marketing was situated right next to Sales. So, you had one department that needed quiet next to a department that was necessarily loud. To make matters worse, my specific station was directly beneath a loudspeaker, which the owner of the company used very frequently to summon people to his location around the property. When I think about those times, I’m impressed that I got any work done at all. My manager was always impressed with my work, so I certainly wasn’t turning in substandard copy, but I can only imagine how much more I could have accomplished with a better work environment.

There’s also something to be said about illnesses and privacy. I have watched flus and colds run rampant through offices one sneeze or cough at a time. One shrewd boss even sent me home when I was deathly ill so that I could work remotely, because she was worried that I would infect the office. I had just started with the company, and I didn’t think it would look good to call off on the first week. And while I don’t think that high-wall cubicles are a foolproof answer to stopping the spread of disease in the office, they certainly help.

In terms of privacy, not every call is personal. Sometimes conversations about office political maneuvers or other work-related delicate topics need to be had, and forcing workers to leave their desk to find private spaces just seems like wasted productivity. I sit next to the director for my business unit, and I often see him get up and walk for a phone conversation that is several paygrades above me. And this forces him to use his personal cell phone for business matters. Perhaps a high barrier wouldn’t prevent me from hearing his conversation, but at least it would prevent me from seeing his monitor or paperwork or anything else that would give me the context of the conversation.

I’m straying a little bit from the marketing topic, so allow me to wrap up with a relevant anecdote. In one company I worked for, the workspace was broken up into large rooms, so corner workstations – while still rare – weren’t impossible to get. As soon as one opened up, I put in a request to move there. In that space, where no one was walking around me and I could block out the faces of coworkers and their conversations, I was able to innovate for the company, creating a new marketing content process that would lift sales by 4% for every product that used my process. I created this process while making sure my regular duties were fulfilled, of course. It’s doubtful that I could have done the same in a more distracting environment.

After I left the company, I visited them a few months later to discover that large windows had been cut out of every internal wall, destroying the privacy that corner stations offered. I was told that it was a decision by the owner who reportedly said, “When people can hide, they don’t work.” I admit that there is some truth to that, but a low-value employee will always find ways to not work regardless of visibility. Conversely, a high-value employee may be prevented from going above and beyond their salaried duties in the same environment.

So, companies need to decide what goal they want to achieve: encourage workers who are actively working against the company’s interest or encourage workers who are creating new opportunities for the company’s success. Once that’s decided, then the choice of office environment should be a no-brainer.