Creating A Content Calendar For Bloggers That Saves You Time and Sanity 

1. Create and Schedule Two Months of Content in Advance 

When thinking about things like vacations and maternity leaves, this is my first strategy for making sure that fantastic content keeps rolling out when I need to take these breaks. And that's not the only time! 

Ideally, I like to have at least two months of blog posts in my publishing queue at all times. I consider this to be a bit of an “insurance” policy for when real life comes up against my business.  

Sometimes, life just gets in the way! Maybe you get really sick and have to take a week off, or all your kids pick up some awful stomach virus and there goes 5 days of your work time.  

Maybe something stressful happens and it throws your household out of whack for a little while. Or summer rolls around and you're spending way more time having fun outside and less inside working on your business. (That’s awesome, you won’t regret that time!) 

Or heck, maybe sometimes you just get in a little funk and need to take some time off to rejuvenate. I've certainly been there, and there's no shame in that! 

If I had to choose only one content planning tip to live by, it would definitely be to have my blog content scheduled in my publishing queue several months in advance. 

And remember, this isn't limited to just your blog posts! You can schedule emails in advance, your social media posts, and even your Pinterest pins!  

It takes a fair amount of work upfront, but once you do it you will be so relieved to have that pressure off your back. 

2. Plan Ahead for Holidays and Seasonal Content 

My second tip for a successful content calendar for bloggers is to plan ahead for holidays and any seasonal content you want to put out.  

If you have a food blog, for example, your content is probably going to be heavily dependent on what season the post is published in as well as any holidays that are coming around.

You don't want to have your favorite Easter bunny cookie recipe flying out in June, or a Yule log recipe that comes out in February.  

One thing I love about writing and uploading my blog posts and other content in advance, is that I can plan well ahead for holidays.

There are a number of reasons to do this, including if you want to run a sale on a particular holiday. This is really something that should be planned in advance, so don't wait till the last minute! 

I recommend planning and scheduling new content at least two months in advance.

Not only is two months simply a good insurance policy for getting content out there when life gets in the way, but that's about how far in advance you want to plan for holidays.  

For example, you don't want to plan Thanksgiving content the week before Thanksgiving. It's too late for those posts to gain a lot of traction!  

Ideally you want to publish holiday content six weeks before the holiday itself (and of course you'll want to give yourself a couple of weeks to actually create and schedule the content).  

You can always schedule more content than that in advance if you want to. I would love to have three to six months of content in my queue waiting to go out at any given time! Unfortunately, I'm not quite there yet.

3. Make A Plan for Last Minute Trending Content in Your Content Calendar 

One question I get asked often about having a content calendar is how to deal with trending content that comes up unexpectedly.  

Let's say that you have two months worth of content scheduled to go out in WordPress, and then something comes up that you really want to write about. It's time sensitive, and something you need to get to right away. 

No big deal. When unexpected topics come my way, I will simply bump one of my currently scheduled posts out a week to make room for the trending content.  

You could also simply upload an extra post that week, and I'm sure your readers wouldn't complain!  

4. Batch Your Content Creation for Maximum Productivity 

At this point you probably have a good idea floating around in your mind of how you would like to create a content calendar in advance.

But how exactly do you actually get all of this work done? 

It's true, the first time you create and upload everything on your contact calendar... It’s a metric shit-ton of work! That being said, if you keep up with it from there on out it isn't too big of a task. 

My favorite productivity tip, especially for writing blog posts, pin titles, or creating social media posts, is to batch them. 

Batching works off of the idea that the human brain works best when it isn't constantly switching from task to task.

It takes time and mental energy for us to change tasks, and so it's in our best interest to focus heavily on one task for a set amount of time until we are truly done. 

As a busy mom and someone with ADD, I've found that this is absolutely true for me. Switching tasks frequently does not work out very well!  

So instead, I batch my blog post creation so that I am dictating an entire month's worth of posts in one or two sittings per month.

This allows my brain to dig deep and get creative without bouncing around trying to do other things at the same time. 

Keep in mind that I don't edit or upload my posts at this time! This is only for outlining and dictating the actual content. I do, however, batch the editing process in one sitting, and outsource the uploading to my VA. 

Batching has been an absolute game changer for me. It used to be that I would try to write and upload two posts per week every week, and it was so dang hard to stay consistent!  

I've also found that the quality of my work has gone up when I batch. Once I get into “creative mode”, as I call it, I'm able to create some really great stuff. But until that point, I feel like nothing I write is very good.  

It takes me a good 10 or 15 minutes to really get into the groove of things and by that point I don't want to stop.

Dictating four to eight blog posts in one big creative session has helped me so much, especially because I can spend the rest of the month focusing on other tasks when I do that. 

5. Where to Get Content Ideas Your Readers Will Love