Blogging and operating a full time real estate business can get super busy. I find that if I don’t plan out what I am going to blog about or what real estate related work that needs to be looked after in a given month (or even week!) – it’s difficult to stay on track.

I plan my month out in advance and incorporate everything blog and client related, ensuring that I block off days for family and personal events. But how do you really create an editorial calendar and actually abide by it with all of life’s distractions?

At its core, an “editorial calendar” is really just a place to keep, plan and organize all of your social media posts. If you manage a handful of social media platforms, each with their own image size requirements or post length limitations, plus varying ideal post frequencies… it can be a lot to keep track of! And that can certainly be too much to just “wing it” from day to day!

For my editorial calendar, I use a blank monthly calendar and write down the different categories I will be blogging on. So, Mondays are usually dedicated for my #GirlBoss posts while Fridays are for my Realtor Life blog posts. By having a set day for specific items, it helps to keep you on track with everything that is going on.

Schedule Your Posts - Writing posts ahead of time is ultimately the way to go. I’m not talking about an entire month of posts done in a weekend, only a few a week so you never fall behind. Once they are written, schedule them to be published so that you don’t have to worry about them from that point onwards. I love SquareSpace for this feature and I am certain other platforms have it as well.

Schedule Your Social Media - When your post goes live, it needs to be promoted through your social media and newsletter. You can schedule your social media ahead of time using services like Hootesuite and Buffer. Make sure to promote your posts even after you have new content on the blog; a blog post is never too old to be promoted unless it’s not relevant anymore, or seasonal.

The Editorial Spreadsheet

An alternative is an editorial spreadsheet which ideally is the same as using a calendar format, but purely a personal preference.

There are many different methods, tools and opinions out there regarding social media planning, but I like to keep it simple. I use a single spreadsheet for all of my social media posting, with separate tabs for Instagram, Facebook (and Google+, which gets the same content as Facebook), and Twitter. Each of these tabs has the following columns:

Day of the Week: Although I have the actual date and time in the next column, I like to be able to see what I’m posting this week at-a-glance, by day.
Date/Time: The date, and sometimes the time, particularly if I post multiple times per day to that channel.
Link: The URL that I’m sharing, if applicable. I like to use Bitly to shorten the links.
Visual Asset: I list the name of the image, or briefly describe the image I will post, if applicable.
Scheduled: I usually use a scheduler for my blog posts through SquareSpace to post automatically once the draft has been finalized. .

In addition to having one tab per social media channel in my spreadsheet, I also have a tab at the end that I call my “Content Bank.” This is where I save links to articles or other content that I find that I will want to share later. Maybe an article isn’t relevant at the moment I find it, but I know I’ll have a use for it someday. Or, often the content that I put on this tab is an article that I found particularly useful, and I know I’ll want to share it over and over again.

Keep the Content Flowing

It can be a challenge at times to keep your social media presence flowing consistently. As I mentioned earlier, we all have times of abundant ideas and creativity, and other times where we aren’t sure what to post next. To help with this, have a place (ONE place) to keep random ideas as they come to your head. For me, it is the note pad app on my iPhone. I write my ideas down, and when I have time, I transfer them to the Content Bank on my spreadsheet. I know that if I need ideas, I can either look on this Note on my phone, or check my spreadsheet… nowhere else!

Have you created an editorial calendar? I think it’s the best thing invented for content creators!

With Love | Nikki xo