The key steps to quickly building an effective editorial calendar

You don’t necessarily need a massive spreadsheet or months of planning to build an effective internal comms calendar in a short window of time. What you do need is a simple structure and input from the right people.

Erika Hermanson, chief communications officer at Providence Swedish North Puget Sound, told Ragan that a great editorial calendar is built with intention.

“There’s way more to an editorial calendar than the document itself,” Hermanson told Ragan. “It’s the relationships behind it and the ability to listen, absorb and respond to what your organization actually needs. When you have strong connections with leaders, partners and your comms colleagues, the calendar becomes a lot easier to build and enables more effective content pushes.”

When you need to quickly build out a calendar, the top priority should be ease of use. And that starts with a simple, repeatable process.

“It really starts with taking a step back and asking, ‘What are we trying to accomplish?’ before you get into anything tactical,” Hermanson added. “Once you understand the priorities and what’s most important, you can start shaping the messages and figuring out where they fit. That approach makes the whole process feel much more manageable.”

Here’s what that process looks like in practice:

1. Start with your organizational priorities

When you’re prioritizing speed, you don’t want to start by staring at a blank calendar. Instead, use what already exists as your jumping-off point.

Hermanson said her team begins with the organization’s existing priorities, which makes the building process faster and more focused from the outset.

“We start with our broader strategic plan and the key themes that guide the organization,” she said. “Those act as our North Star and help us stay focused on what really matters before we ever get into specific content on the calendar. From there, we look at what’s important across the business and how those priorities should show up in our communications. It gives us a clear foundation instead of jumping straight into tactics.”

Hermanson said that skipping this critical step can derail your calendar from the start.

“If you don’t start there, you end up reacting instead of planning,” she said. “You’re filling space instead of aligning with what the organization is actually trying to do.”

By pulling from work that’s already defined, you can avoid brainstorming from scratch. That’s key when you need to build out a calendar quickly.

2. Determine what actually deserves space on the calendar

Speed comes from a narrow focus, and this is where you create it. If you try to fit everything on the calendar, it’ll bog the process down and render the calendar largely useless.

“We look at the key topics and initiatives we need to support and then weigh their impact,” Hermanson said. “Some things are naturally going to carry more importance than others, and that should be reflected in the calendar. That process helps us determine how much visibility each priority should get and how often it should show up.”

This is what keeps your calendar from becoming a content dump.

“You can’t communicate everything all the time,” she said. “Part of the job is deciding what rises to the top and what can wait, so your audience isn’t overwhelmed and your messages actually land.”

3. Transform your priorities into simple messaging sequences

When you need to move quickly and get a calendar done in short order, it can feel daunting. But you don’t need fully formed pieces of content yet. Just focus on clear and simple messages.

This is what keeps the process moving. Remember that you’re mapping, not writing.

Hermanson told Ragan that her team enables speedy calendar development by breaking down organizational priorities into digestible bits of audience-friendly information.

“It’s not enough to just name the priority,” she said. “We think about what people need to understand, what will be most relevant to them and how to communicate that clearly. From there, we map those messages out over time so they build on each other instead of repeating the same thing.”

She noted that this step is where communicators often get stuck. But it needn’t be complicated.

“You don’t need everything fully formed just yet,” Hermanson said. “You just need to understand the message and the purpose so you can place it appropriately and build from there.”

She suggested thinking in headlines at this stage of calendar development:

• Business priority: New employee benefits rollout
  • Week 1: “What’s changing with your benefits?”
  • Week 2: “What this change means for you.”
  • Week 3: “Here’s what you need to do.”
  • Week 4: “Reminder: Your benefits are changing soon.”

Get the message right here and the content will flow faster later.

4. Do a quick pressure test — and remember, it doesn’t need to be perfect

Hermanson said collaboration is built into her team’s calendar construction process.

“We work closely with our partners across the organization, especially the teams leading key initiatives,” she said. “We sit down together and look at what’s coming up and how communications can support those efforts. It’s about making sure everything is aligned and reinforcing each other.”

It’s also important to remember that the calendar can change as internal comms situations so often do.

“Once we map everything out, we review it with leaders and stakeholders to make sure it lines up with what they’re prioritizing,” Hermanson added. “And it’s always a give and take. Sometimes things get added, sometimes they move up and sometimes we take things off the calendar altogether. It really is a living, evolving document that we continue to refine as things change.”

Here’s what a pressure test of a time-sensitive calendar looks like in reality:

• Share your draft calendar with key partners. Doing this will help you match the priorities you identified in earlier steps to what’s actually going on around the company. That’ll help your messages land with your employee audience more cleanly.
• Flag potential conflicts early. Identify spots on your draft calendar where similar initiatives run too closely together or weeks in which too much content is vying for audience attention.
• Adjust your calendar. Move, cut or simplify entries based on the feedback you get from the pressure test. There’s no need for a full teardown.

Remember that a good calendar isn’t perfect; it’s usable.

“If you can get something down that reflects your priorities and gives you a clear path forward, that’s a win,” Hermanson said. “You can always refine it as you go. The important thing is that it helps guide your work instead of slowing you down.”

For more details on how to construct an internal comms calendar, join Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications.