If you’re a marketer, you know about the perks of B2B blogging programs—blogging boosts traffic to your website, helps potential customers find you online, and informs your audience—but it can be a tough job. Both newcomers and experienced managers of ongoing blog programs face similar challenges: What should you write? Who will create the content? When should you publish the blogs? How do you keep things fresh and organized? Figuring out what to blog about next doesn’t have to lead to anxiety or endless thinking. Simplify the process with a blog calendar or editorial calendar.

Whether you use project management software like Basecamp or a simple spreadsheet, a blog calendar can keep your site content on track with a few basic details. Your calendar should include:

  1. Topics: Determine what the post will focus on. Include a few headline ideas, source material, relevant links, customer questions or other raw material that will lay the foundation for a post that’s helpful to your audience.
  2. Authors: Even if you’re running the blog solo, each post can support your team’s expertise. If you can attribute spokespeople for specialized areas, the content will give them a springboard from which to write, speak or participate in other circles.
  3. Timing: If the post coincides with an upcoming product launch or the CEO’s panel at a trade show, make sure it’s planned far enough ahead to go live with the news or draw attendees to the session.
  4. Status: Use a descriptor or color coding to indicate which blogs are drafts in progress, awaiting approval, scheduled to publish, or live and ready to distribute via other channels, like social media or your e-newsletter.

Based on the other details you want to monitor or organize in your editorial calendar, you can include categories like suggested calls to action or the customer stage of the B2B marketing funnel that the post will focus on. By gathering all the information in one project or shared document, you’ll quickly see the pipeline status, helping writers stay on schedule with a consistent workflow.

A healthy blog program feeds all of content marketing

This careful planning doesn’t stop at the blog. It’s the center of many other content marketing assets at your fingertips, like:

  • Newsletters: After a few months, you will likely have posts on your latest releases, recent events the team attended, new hires and other company news. Batch these links for a quarterly newsletter to analysts or investors.
  • E-books: If you’ve posted several related posts or inform a specific vertical, combine them for a handy how-to guide or e-book your prospects can download and share.
  • White papers and premium content: Noticing a blog series that received high site traffic or analyses that generated interesting comments? These could be fodder for webinars, podcasts, white papers, infographics or other content assets that draw attention.