The road to hell is paved with editorial calendars

I served on a panel of speakers about blogging in a Social Media Breakfast in Fort Wayne, where I live. One of the things we talked about — relevant especially to corporate bloggers — was keeping an editorial calendar. I told everyone that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions — and editorial calendars."

Dramatic, yes, but it illustrates the point that those who write in some form or another professionally often talk a big game about their foresight and organization. (I most definitely include myself in that category, too.)

I think a lot of people imagine an editorial calendar as some scary monthly calendar that tells them exactly what they need to write about and when. For some people, this works. For others, it's something as simple as a list.

Using an editorial calendar in general is easier said than done. Things change. Sometimes your best ideas are last minute (I changed the editorial calendar last-minute just last week, in fact, to post something more relevant to the snow-storm they were forecasted to get).

More often, though, we just don't think about it. We have a fleeting thought, and instead of trying to capture it and develop it into a blog post, it just flies away.

I regularly write for two blogs: Woodclinched, my blog about wooden pencils, and the blog for my employer, a local web development company. I also put short thoughts on my personal blog. I maintain some semblance of an editorial calendar, which exists mostly as a project in Things, my to-do list app. Here’s an example of what it looks like as of RIGHT. NOW:

And, admittedly, I don't touch it very often. My of my posts happen last minute in a fit and a start. This post, my inaugural post for Medium (thanks to whomever noticed me after my fairly hyperbolic tweet), was conceived and written in a matter of 30 minutes, in two chunks of time in front of my computer.

So, don't worry TOO much about your editorial calendar. The key is posting consistently (which is definitely helped by actually using one). Don't be a slave to it. If you have a great idea — run with it, and worry about cleaning up your calendar later.