Content calendar

The idea

Most teams plan content in a spreadsheet and ask in chat where things stand, so nobody knows what's going out this week until someone asks. The method is simple. Every piece of content, whatever its channel, is one Post that moves across one board from idea to published. A calendar shows what publishes when. A post can belong to a Campaign, a group of posts with a shared goal and dates, like a product launch or a monthly theme, so a slipping launch is visible a week early. An Editor plans the calendar and approves what goes out; Authors write. A morning reminder replaces the "is this going out today?" message.

In any work tool, this becomes two kinds of linked records: posts whose workflow runs from Idea to Published, with Dropped as the other ending, and campaigns the posts link to. People live on a board of posts by state and a calendar of publish dates; a button turns approval into a comment that says who approved what for when, and a rule sends the morning reminder. It's the team's single source of truth for what gets published, not a task tracker for writers.

How it runs

Follow one post, Onboarding in half the time, from idea to link.

1. An idea is captured. Someone adds a post in Idea, through the New post form or straight on the board: "Onboarding in half the time". They tag its Channels, where it goes out: Blog, Newsletter, LinkedIn, X, or the team's own list; one post often goes to several, and this one is Blog and LinkedIn. If it belongs to one, they link it to a campaign, here the Spring launch. No date yet; ideas are cheap.
2. It gets planned. The editor, who owns the calendar, gives it a Publish date, the day it goes out, its authors, the one or several people who write it, and a rough Word count. It appears on the Calendar, every post by publish date, and, once the date is within seven days, in This week.
3. It gets written. An author moves it to Drafting, writes in its description and attaches its Images, the cover and any visuals it goes out with. When the draft is ready, they move it to In review. The Stage changed rule notes the day a post is added and the day of every move, so every post shows Days in stage, how long it has sat where it is.
4. It gets approved. The editor, or whoever approves, finds it in the In review column of Pipeline, the board of every post in its state, reads it and presses Ready to schedule, a button on the post: it moves to Scheduled, and a comment records who approved it and for which date. A post scheduled without a date turns red on Pipeline until someone gives it one.
5. The morning it goes out, the Publish reminder rule tells its authors it goes out today, with the post's channels; nobody has to ask.
6. It gets published. The author publishes on each channel, pastes the Link, where the published post now lives, and moves the post to Published. A post published without a publish date gets today from the Publish date on publish rule, so the calendar and the reports stay true.
7. Or it gets dropped. When the team decides not to run a post, the editor moves it to Dropped: the board stays honest, and so do the campaign's numbers.
8. The editor watches the campaigns. A post whose publish date has passed and that is neither Published nor Dropped is Late, and its card turns red on the board. The Campaigns timeline shows each campaign's Progress, the share of its posts already published, dropped ones aside, from 0 to 100, and the Campaign posts grid shows its Published posts and Late posts, counts of its posts. The editor moves a campaign from Planned to Running when its first post goes out and to Done when its dates end. A running campaign in its last seven days with under half its posts published is At risk and turns red on the timeline, so the editor decides in time what to move or cut.

What people look at

• Every morning — the authors of today's posts get the Publish reminder; the editor opens Pipeline, every post in its state, cards red when a post is late: where is every post, and in its In review column, what's waiting for approval.
• Every week — This week: what's due in the next seven days, and how many days each has left. Calendar: what goes out when, for the month.
• Any time — My posts for your own work; Campaigns, a timeline, for whether the launches are on track, red when one is at risk; Campaign posts for what's in each campaign; Archive for everything that went out, with its link; New post, a form, for intake from outside the team; and the Output by channel report for what actually went out, month by month.
• How to run the content calendar — this process on one screen, kept where the team works.

The rules

These are all the automations; everything else in the story is done by people.

• Ready to schedule (a button on a post): moves the post to Scheduled and adds a comment that it was approved for its publish date; the comment carries the approver's name, because they pressed it. It checks nothing: a post scheduled with no date is red on Pipeline. Approval is a click that leaves a trace.
• Publish reminder: every day at 08:00, the authors of every post that is Scheduled with a publish date of today are notified, with the post's channels.
• Publish date on publish: when a post moves to Published and has no publish date, the publish date is set to today.
• Stage changed: when a post is created or moves to another state, its Stage changed on is set to today, which is what Days in stage counts from.

No automations in your tool? Then a person does each of these at the same moment, and the promises they keep below become practices.

What must stay true

Whatever anyone edits, adapts or corrects, these hold; each says what keeps it so.

• ★ Every piece of content is one post on one board, whatever its channel; a channel with its own tool still gets a post here, with the link. A practice; nothing stops a second board, and a second board brings back the question of what goes out this week.
• ★ A post that is Scheduled or Published has a publish date. Shown on Pipeline, where a Scheduled post with no date is red, like a late one; kept by Publish date on publish for a post moved to Published straight from the board.
• Approval leaves a trace: who approved a post, and for which date, is in its comments. Kept by Ready to schedule, which writes the comment; a card dragged to Scheduled on the Pipeline board skips it, so approving means pressing the button.
• ★ Dropped is a real ending: a post the team won't run is moved to Dropped, not deleted and not left in Idea, so the board and the campaign counts stay honest. Shown by Late: a post past its date that is neither Published nor Dropped turns red on Pipeline and counts against its campaign until someone publishes or drops it.
• A campaign's numbers follow its posts: Published posts, Late posts and Progress count the posts linked to the campaign now, so a post moved to another campaign, or dropped, changes the counts at once. Kept by the Published posts, Late posts and Progress formulas.
• A slipping campaign shows before it ends: a running campaign in its last seven days with under half its posts published is red on Campaigns. Shown by At risk; what to move or cut is the editor's call.
• A published post is history: it stays Published, its publish date says when it went out, its link says where. A fix is an edit to the description or the link; a rewrite is a new post; a post that slipped a day gets its date corrected by whoever pastes the link. A practice; the Output by channel report counts what the dates say.

Making it yours

Decide these before you set it up; each has a default if you shrug.

• Other words: "Pieces", "Content", "Articles" for posts; "Launches", "Themes" for campaigns: rename freely. The calendar is the mechanics, not the vocabulary.
• Editors as a role, when the team wants review as a person rather than a state: an Editors field on Post, the people who review it, and a Needs my review list for them.
• Owners for campaigns, when several people run them: an Owner field on Campaign, the person who answers for its numbers, and a My campaigns list.
• Different kinds of content (a video needs a script and a thumbnail; a webinar needs a date and speakers): a Kind field on Post is usually enough; a separate database only when the stages differ too.
• Agencies and freelancers who don't use your tool: a Writer database linked from Post, so an outside writer is still a name on the post; Authors stays for the team's own people.
• Distribution checklists (repost on day 3, add to the newsletter, update the hub page): headings in the post's description first; a Task database only when the steps need owners and dates. Past that, the calendar has become a task tracker for writers, and the editor's view of what goes out gets buried.

Sources

• 7 Steps to a More Strategic Editorial Calendar, Kelsey Raymond, Content Marketing Institute, 2022: the path from topic to author, draft, edit, approval and publish date.
• Editorial Calendar Tools and Templates To Help You Master Your Content To-Do List, Jodi Harris, Content Marketing Institute, 2022: what each entry records, from publish date and author to status and approver.
• Blog Handbook, GitLab: an editor who approves every post and gives it its date on the calendar.