You probably use a calendar at work to keep track of meetings, assignments, and other project deliverables. You probably keep some sort of a calendar for family events, birthdays, and other personal items.

If you are a blogger, you damn sure better be keeping a content creation schedule as well.

My Confession

Before we proceed, I do have to confess to something to you. Up until this year, I never kept a content creation calendar. I winged it. An idea would pop in my head and I would write to it.

Bad Idea.

Not only was my message fragmented, but it was sporadic at best. There would be times where I would put out a bunch of content followed by weeks of silence.

You might be saying to yourself, “But Jeff, why would you of all people do such a thing?” The reason – I thought I was too good to be held down by a calendar. I thought I had a grip on it and could post content based on my loosely formed plan in my big dumb head.

I realized I was wrong and set out to do something about it.

First Approach

I like free stuff. Don’t we all? My first step in the right direction was to create a content delivery calendar. I set off using what I use for planning and tracking everything else in my life, Google Calendar.

I created a new content calendar solely to keep track of my content publishing needs. I put place holders for podcasts and blog posts. I created color codes and merged the view with my family calendars. I had it all figured out.

But it failed. I simply moved right past the events or kept shifting them further to the right.

So what was the problem? Why did my approach fail? In a word – Usability.

At least that is what I’m telling myself. You could probably choose “Laziness”, “Noncommittal”, or “User Error” also. But, at its core, usability was the issue that resulted in those words being in play.

It was too easy to skip over a date or to move an item to another date with no accountability. There had to be a better approach.

Second (and Current) Approach

I had heard about a tool called CoSchedule quite some time ago but never really gave it much thought. In my arrogance, I felt as if I didn’t need a tool. I thought I could handle everything myself. Well, I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong and when I need to pay for something that might save me time.

Just last week I gave up on the manual Google Calendar approach and started using CoSchedule. So far I love it. The usability is off the charts and the integration with social platforms is the cherry on the top.

I now have the ability to create, edit, and schedule blog posts and social media messages using a slick calendar dashboard embedded in my standard WordPress interface. And I’ve probably only begun to scratch the surface of what’s possible.

I’m not going to get deep into the tool itself here, but the important point to take away is that you have to have a schedule for your content creation goals. You can’t simply wing it and write what pops into your head. Implement a tool and get yourself in a position to deliver quality content in a manner that allows your audience to not only consume your content but to gain the value you intended. Without a tool to help you plan, manage, and ultimately deliver content, you are literally swinging in the dark.