I’ve been working in content marketing for a long time. In all my years in this industry, nothing has been as useful to me as a content calendar.

As a content marketer, we have to deal with multiple content platforms. Having a single document that you can use as a reference to check schedules, topics, and deadlines is a great way to keep track and stay on top of everything.

That said, here are some general guidelines that I would like to share when you create your content calendar:

1. Centralize Everything

When you’re doing content marketing for your own brand or a client, you probably have numerous streams of content from various platforms and develop material for all of them. There is no point in setting up a system that will have you switching from one folder to another constantly. You want to have everything centralized and accessible on a single spreadsheet.

For example, if Client A needs you to create blog posts, manage Facebook, post on Instagram, and send out Tweets, you can create a single spreadsheet with multiple tabs for each platform.

2. Use the Cloud

Hinging off my previous point of centralizing everything, I would also recommend that you do everything on the cloud. This is especially useful if you have multiple team members who need access to your calendar. This ensures that any edits made are applied on the document in real time. It will help minimize rework and confusion and prevent teams from creating multiple documents.

3. Customize your calendar according to your needs

It’s likely that you’ll be Googling content calendar templates after you read this answer. And that’s OK. Just keep in mind, your own content marketing needs are different from every other business. That means you may have to tweak and change sections to fit your exact requirements.

There’s no one way to create a content calendar. So, feel free to play around with the categories and change the elements as needed. A template only serves as a guide so you don’t have to create everything from scratch. You will begin to understand exactly what you need from your content calendar as you start to fill it out and adjust accordingly.

Hope this helps! If you actually need a template, I’d be happy to share the one we use. Shoot me an email and I’d be happy to get in touch with you.