A Better Editorial Calendar
August 10, 2016 10:00 AM Subscribe
I just joined a marketing department for a public library and I have been asked to investigate a better way to handle the editorial calendar. Right now we use a color coded spreadsheet with a tab for ever six months. It was created inhouse. It works but we looking for suggestions for something more efficient.
I have no idea what a editorial calendar is supposed to do, but have you checked out Google Calendar?
Easy to use, easy to color code, easy to set up recurring tasks or appointments, accessible anywhere, can be shared, etc.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 10:33 AM on August 10, 2016
Easy to use, easy to color code, easy to set up recurring tasks or appointments, accessible anywhere, can be shared, etc.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 10:33 AM on August 10, 2016
Is the issue that there are too many different people responsible for content and posting? Or is it an inconsistent posting history? If the former, then look at something like Asana to assign deadlines to specific people. If the latter, then Hootsuite is a fantastic and free tool for pre-populating content in advance.
Or is it something else entirely?
posted by A hidden well at 11:00 AM on August 10, 2016
Or is it something else entirely?
posted by A hidden well at 11:00 AM on August 10, 2016
Agreeing with previous posters that telling us what the problem with the current setup is will probably help you get better answers.
In the meantime, seconding the rec for Google Calendar. It's been a godsend for group projects.
posted by Tamanna at 11:11 AM on August 10, 2016
In the meantime, seconding the rec for Google Calendar. It's been a godsend for group projects.
posted by Tamanna at 11:11 AM on August 10, 2016
I've recommended this several times, and I think Trello + Google Apps might work well for your purposes, too. Trello is a lightweight project management system. It's free to use whether you have Google Apps or not, but it's particularly great if you do -- you can use your Google login to sign in (so no need for multiple accounts), link Google Docs, and show all your Trello deadlines in a Google calendar automatically.
Once you're in Trello, you can create multiple "boards" for project teams or departments or any other grouping you like. Then, within each board, you can create unlimited "cards", each of which generally represents a task or project. Within each card, you can add team members, create checklists, carry on discussion, set deadlines, link google docs and other files, and set up that automagical Google calendar. It's also very intuitive to learn and use -- I've seen lots of different folks with different tech backgrounds adapt to it with minimum fuss. Here's a video tutorial that shows you through the basics.
posted by ourobouros at 11:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Once you're in Trello, you can create multiple "boards" for project teams or departments or any other grouping you like. Then, within each board, you can create unlimited "cards", each of which generally represents a task or project. Within each card, you can add team members, create checklists, carry on discussion, set deadlines, link google docs and other files, and set up that automagical Google calendar. It's also very intuitive to learn and use -- I've seen lots of different folks with different tech backgrounds adapt to it with minimum fuss. Here's a video tutorial that shows you through the basics.
posted by ourobouros at 11:37 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
Where I'm at now, we use a Google Spreadsheet with tabs for each vertical (Personal Finance, Frugal Living, Career, etc). Each tab has columns for Title, Writer, Due Date, Pub Date, Status (color-coded, with pull downs to select the status) and a couple other fields. Ho-hum so far.
The cool bit is that we have a couple of Google App scripts that work with the data in different ways. The key one pulls Title, Writer, Pub Date, and Pub Time into a separate Google calendar for each tab, which members of the team can then subscribe to and see at a glance what's coming up. It's not 100% bullet-proof. The Script updates once every 20 minutes (Google caps the number of script calls an account can make per day), and there's still some spreadsheet maintenance to do to keep it all up to date.
We have other scripts that pull data into other sheets for other kinds of planning (for example, one of these sheets tracks the number of articles assigned per week, which tells us how many pitches/assignments we still need to accept/make to meet our story budget for that week). Another script pulls Titles, Writer, Pub Date & Time, and wraps that around a blank column we fill during our headline meetings.
I think what I'm getting at is that while everybody sorta hates the internal spreadsheet solution they've come up with, it's the one everybody uses because the alternatives aren't any better, and they don't match your workflow. You can do an awful lot with Sheets + App Scripts -- as long as you have a clear idea what you want or need to do.
posted by notyou at 12:37 PM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
The cool bit is that we have a couple of Google App scripts that work with the data in different ways. The key one pulls Title, Writer, Pub Date, and Pub Time into a separate Google calendar for each tab, which members of the team can then subscribe to and see at a glance what's coming up. It's not 100% bullet-proof. The Script updates once every 20 minutes (Google caps the number of script calls an account can make per day), and there's still some spreadsheet maintenance to do to keep it all up to date.
We have other scripts that pull data into other sheets for other kinds of planning (for example, one of these sheets tracks the number of articles assigned per week, which tells us how many pitches/assignments we still need to accept/make to meet our story budget for that week). Another script pulls Titles, Writer, Pub Date & Time, and wraps that around a blank column we fill during our headline meetings.
I think what I'm getting at is that while everybody sorta hates the internal spreadsheet solution they've come up with, it's the one everybody uses because the alternatives aren't any better, and they don't match your workflow. You can do an awful lot with Sheets + App Scripts -- as long as you have a clear idea what you want or need to do.
posted by notyou at 12:37 PM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]
I created a content calendar using Google Docs for the agency I work for; we did some consulting for a content farm, and the content farm ended up using my spreadsheet to build their own web tool.
posted by My Dad at 2:56 PM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by My Dad at 2:56 PM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]
We use Trello boards, one for each channel (topic), and use Zapier to merge them into a Google Calendar. This set-up worked nicely when we were publishing 5-20 posts per week; we're only now starting to outgrow it at 35+ articles per week.
posted by third word on a random page at 3:56 PM on August 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by third word on a random page at 3:56 PM on August 10, 2016 [5 favorites]
In the freelancing world, people use Asana and Trello a lot. I am more of a visual person so I really like Cushion.
posted by Brittanie at 4:29 AM on August 11, 2016
posted by Brittanie at 4:29 AM on August 11, 2016
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by brainmouse at 10:16 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]