Maybe you’re like me and you post things to your per­sonal or com­pany blog when inspi­ra­tion hits ¹.

Or hope­fully you’ve got more of a plan when it comes to the con­tent on your blog — par­tic­u­larly if it’s a com­pany or busi­ness blog. Hav­ing some sort of edi­to­r­ial cal­en­dar to plan out your posts is essen­tial to mak­ing sure you always have fresh con­tent on your blog.

Some of the ben­e­fits of putting in the extra work to man­age an edi­to­r­ial cal­en­dar are:

• Con­tent doesn’t bunch up all at once. You can prop­erly space out new posts through­out the week or month for fresh con­tent, year round.
• Plan­ning a series of posts on a spe­cific topic is much eas­ier to pro­mote if you think about it ahead of time. Start­ing off with “This will be a 4 part series on how to grow eggier egg­plants” is more incen­tive for peo­ple to sub­scribe or come back to read the rest of the series.
• Plan­ning ahead also allows you to bring in guest authors who bring exper­tise on a spe­cific area that you may not have. This has the added ben­e­fit of bring­ing their audi­ence to your blog.
• Hav­ing a rough sketch of the month ahead will force you to write bet­ter posts. Rather than show­ing up Mon­day morn­ing and need­ing a post for your site because it’s been 3 weeks since your last post, you’ll be able to put your feet up and sip a cup of cof­fee as Word­Press auto-publishes a pre­vi­ously writ­ten mas­ter­piece on “Egg­plants: Humanity’s Last Great Hope”.

A plu­gin for Word­Press that helps man­age an edi­to­r­ial cal­en­dar is cre­atively called Edi­to­r­ial Cal­en­dar:

Did you remem­ber to write a post for next Tues­day? What about the Tues­day after that? Word­Press doesn’t make it easy to see when your posts are sched­uled. The edi­to­r­ial cal­en­dar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be pub­lished. You can drag and drop to move posts, edit posts right in the cal­en­dar, and man­age your entire blog.

Down­load the Edi­to­r­ial Cal­en­dar Plu­gin here and leave a com­ment below with when your next post is sched­uled to come out.

Update: For more on the ben­e­fits of an edi­to­r­ial cal­en­dar, read The First Step to Pre­dictable Blog Pub­lish­ing Suc­cess:

But busi­nesses and writ­ers who want to share their sub­ject mat­ter exper­tise or thought lead­er­ship need to plan in advance, think deeply about what they’re offer­ing over time, and make sure that they have bal­ance and depth.