In building a content calendar, how far should you project out? After creating roughly a bajillion content calendars, and being in the middle of one at the moment, I have answers.
Using a Goldilocks framework, let’s look at what timeframes are too short, too long, and just right.
Yearly – Planning annually is too long of a time frame for committing to specific content because even at enterprise operations, things change by the end of the year. At one global company where I ran content, we met in person every January and spent a week in meetings to hammer out a very detailed calendar to align with annual business goals. By June it was useless, and by the third year I just ignored it after Q1.
Annual planning is, however, just right for aligning campaigns and general topics with business strategy. You’ll need to revisit those topics quarterly for realignment, but it’s helpful to define a general content direction a year in advance.
Six months – Totally useless. Planning content every six months is like running the 800 meters in track. It’s too long to sprint, but too short to run as a middle-distance race. It’s painful and pointless, forget this.
Quarterly – Now we’re getting a little more into the weeds. Quarterly planning from scratch is too short for aligning with business goals and internal stakeholders, then producing the actual content. But it’s too long a time frame for planning social media or newsletters, which need flexibility to respond to recent news or trends.
Quarterly planning is just right for scheduling content production for reports, blogs, and webinars. I have the best success when the team meets mid-quarter to review and update the next quarter’s proposed topics with detailed scheduling and production deadlines.
Two weeks – From simply a logistics perspective, two weeks is usually too short for most content planning. If you have a tight team, you can sometimes crank out a quick news or opinion blog or social post, but that’s a resource-intensive move that I only use if it’s a topic we absolutely must own.
One odd exception: Two weeks can work well for a webinar. I’ve had great success with heavy promotion for two weeks driving live registration, then promo again on-demand after broadcast.
Weekly – We’re talking newsletters here. These must feel immediate and important, and planning can make newsletter topics feel stale. Sure, plan one or two newsletter pieces ahead of time just to keep your sanity. But the best newsletter success I had (we doubled click rates and grew open rates by 60%) was due to setting aside every Monday morning to write that week’s blurbs based on the previous week’s metrics and news.
So, what’s “just right?” Rough out annual topics by quarter, then drill down quarterly to define actual content and production schedules. Crank out newsletters and social posts weekly or bi-weekly. This cadence is executable by a small team, and keeps your content calendar fresh, focused, and aligned with business strategy.