This process uses the content calendar standard, the organic social post brief, the article brief, messaging, and the approval process.
What you’ll end up with
- A calendar filled to your planning horizon, every row with an owner, a status, and a message pillar.
- Every row that exists because of something else carrying what it is anchored to.
- A brief for every row that has reached production.
Before you start
The planning session
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1. Close out the last period first
Before adding anything, walk the rows that have passed. Fill in published URLs, move anything that did not ship to Dropped with a reason or forward with a new date, and note which posts did unusually well or badly.Planning on top of an inaccurate calendar produces a plan nobody trusts by week two.
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2. Lay in the fixed points
Start with what is already committed and cannot move: campaign flights, product releases, events, reports, and anything seasonal.These are the anchors. Everything added in the next step is timed relative to one of them or is deliberately standalone.
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3. Add supporting content around each anchor
For each fixed point, decide what content it needs and in what order. Fill in the anchored to and sequence columns as you go, not afterwards.A campaign flight usually wants a set rather than a single post. See the sequencing table below.
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4. Fill the remaining slots, or leave them empty
Work to the target volume in your calendar standard, and stop when the ideas stop. A row that cannot say what it is for is a slot being filled, not a post being planned.
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5. Assign an owner and a status to every row
One name per row. A row with no owner is a row that gets discussed again next month in exactly the same state.
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6. Check the mix
Read the period as a whole: are the message pillars balanced, or has one taken over? Is one format doing all the work because it is the fastest to make? Both drift without anyone deciding.
Sequencing content around a campaign
Organic content supporting a paid flight is a set with an order. Decide what each piece is doing before deciding what each piece is.
Record each row’s position in the sequence column and the flight in anchored to. That pair is what lets the whole set move together when the flight moves, and what tells whoever picks up production which post has to be ready first.
The weekly pass
Short, and the thing that keeps the calendar worth reading.- Every row publishing in the next two weeks has a brief and an owner.
- Every row in production has cleared, or is queued for, whatever approval it needs.
- Every row that published last week has its URL filled in.
- Anything slipping has been moved, with its sequence moved with it.
- Anything urgent that published without a row has one now.
When an anchor moves
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Filter by the anchor, not by the date
Every row anchored to the thing that moved is a candidate. Rows on the same dates that are anchored to something else stay where they are.
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Move the set, keeping the intervals
A sequence timed four days before, mid-flight, and at close keeps those relationships. Shifting only the first post breaks the set.
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Check what the move collided with
Rows moved into a week that was already full is the common second-order problem, and it is the reason to re-read the week rather than just the moved rows.
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Tell the owners
A moved date with no message to the person producing against it is how a post arrives finished on the wrong day.
Exceptions
- A reactive or urgent post. It publishes first and gets its row the same day. The row is not optional; it is what keeps the channel report and the retrospective complete.
- A recurring series with a fixed slot. One row per instance still, because each one needs its own URL and status, but they can share a brief per the post brief.
- A channel someone else owns. If another team publishes on a channel you report on, the calendar still needs the rows, even if it does not own the production. Agree who adds them.
Related resources
- Content calendar The standard this process fills in.
- Content calendar concepts Why anchors and sequence are recorded.
- Publishing an organic social post What happens to a row once it is in production.
- Creating an article The other producer of rows.
- Campaign brief process Where the flights that anchor content are decided.