If ever there was a great time to have an editorial calendar for your blog or website, it’s during the holiday season. Holidays are overwhelming- there is so much to see and do and many people are traveling.

You’re preparing for the New Year and you’re spending time with family. Adding content to your website or blog might seem like one too many tasks for the already busy season.

But you don’t have to let your blog go while the holidays are here. In fact, this is a prime time for keeping great content on your site because many people will be out of work, enjoying vacations and browsing on the Internet.

An editorial calendar will help you remove stress from the many tasks you have to do this time of year. With research, creativity and a solid plan, you can take action!

With an editorial calendar you can:

  • Avoid the stress that comes with last-minute additions to your blog or the stress of not knowing what to write about.
  • Keep regular content on your blog, even during the holiday season.
  • Write and post content that is relevant and interesting- set trends and stay ahead of the trends in your industry.
  • Avoid writer’s block because you will always have a plan for what you’re going to write about.

So we know that an editorial calendar is a great idea any time of year but how do you prepare one for the holiday season? Well, the first step is to research what your readers will be celebrating. There are many different holidays this time of year aside from just Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Some examples are:

  • Black Friday
  • Cyber Monday
  • Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
  • Free Shipping Day
  • Hanukkah
  • Winter Solstice
  • Christmas
  • Boxing Day
  • Kwanzaa
  • College Football Games
  • New Year’s Eve

Research your target market and determine which of these holidays may apply to them and then plan your content around them. Consider how often you will post (every day, 2 times a week, once a week…) and use this to plan what posts you will make and when.

This works best if you have an actual calendar to use in your planning. This can be digital or a paper calendar; whichever you prefer. Mark the holidays you will be writing about on the calendar and then plan the days that you will publish up to and around the holiday.

Now spend some time brainstorming what you can write about and how you can tie this into the holiday season. For example, an editorial calendar for a parenting blog during the holidays might look like this.

Monday: Managing Manners (Teaching Your Children How to Behave During the Festivities)

Tuesday: Quick Tip (5 Moms Tells us How to Tame Toddler Tantrums)

Wednesday: Worry-free Shopping (How to Tackle Black Friday with Kids in Tow)

Thursday: Mommy Moments (A great, heart-warming story from a parent about a child)

Friday: Friday Fun! (share games, links to free apps or book downloads, etc.)

Saturday: Shake It Up! (Talk recipes, ideas to make food more fun for kids, etc)

Sunday: Top 10 List (Top 10 Toys for ___)

Rather than doing a day-of-the-week theme, you might choose instead to do a weekly theme. For example, on a small business blog, you might have these weekly categories:

Week 1: Managing Your Marketing During the Holidays

Week 2: Who is Your Target Market and How Do You Reach Them?

Week 3: Examine the Competition- What Can You Learn from Them?

Week 4: Stress-Free Holiday Business Tips

Write and Schedule

Once you have your plan in place, give yourself enough time ahead of schedule to write and post-date your posts for the appropriate days. You will no longer have to worry about what you will write about and when. You won’t wake up stressing that your blog has no content. You know that your message will be out there and that it is keeping in your brand theme and with the holiday season to draw more readers in.

Your holiday editorial calendar is your roadmap to excellent content all year round.

You can learn more about creating a social media editorial calendar in this post.

Do you use an editorial calendar? Have any tips of your own for producing holiday content?

Takeaways:

  1. A holiday editorial calendar will help you plan your content and take the stress out of the season.
  2. Your editorial calendar will help you plan and publish content that is interesting and useful to your readers this time of year.
  3. Learn how to use the editorial calendar to plan ahead all year round.

If you need help creating your own editorial calendar, or writing content for your existing calendar, contact me today.