Hi there, it's Megan from MeganMinns.com
and today I wanted to share with you
how you can plan your content
using just a simple spreadsheet.
While I recommend that you do use
some kind of project management system
like Asana, ClickUp or Trello
to actually manage the tasks
and execution of your content marketing,
I do like to use a spreadsheet
to get a high-level view of what my content plan is.
That way I have one place to look
to see exactly what posts are going live when
and what social media posts I wanna have
going live around the same time as well.
So I'm actually gonna show you
the spreadsheet that I use to plan my content,
and just so you know ahead of time,
I'm actually gonna show you, like,
the exact spreadsheet, how to use it.
You can feel free to recreate this on your own,
or, if you would like to go ahead
and download this same spreadsheet that I'm using,
you can do that by clicking the link below this video
and you can get the same spreadsheet today
and start using it and not spend time
recreating this yourself.
Okay, so here is the content calendar.
Now this just has some demo content in here,
'cause I just wanted to show you how you could use this
and how I approach using a spreadsheet like this.
So I do have, one tab is the whole year,
so you can just scroll and see that
on the left side I have a little mini-calendar
for each month of the year,
and I like to group my content that way.
If you happen to do themes for every month
then this will work really well for you,
or it's just a great way to kinda see
the year at a high-level overview.
So I also have a few different columns here I wanna explain.
So I have Events, which is a great column
to just make a note of any marketing
or promotion events that you have planned,
so if you're doing a webinar or launching a new product,
this is a great place to indicate what's going on that week,
because as a good marketer,
you know that you want your content
to revolve around any promotions you're doing.
So this is a great place to just
keep track of any events that are going on.
Then I do have a space here for you
to use two different mediums.
So if you happen to do just blog posts and that's it,
you can just hide one set of these,
but I've found that a lot of marketers
tend to have two different mediums of content,
so if you have a podcast, you might also
be doing a blog to go with that.
Maybe you do, like the example here, podcast and YouTube,
but you can easily rename these to be whatever you want,
so if you don't podcast and you do a blog,
you could just say Blog Title,
and you will see that that gets reflected
down the entire column for you automatically.
I'm gonna go and put that back,
but let me just keep going.
So we have one section here for medium, one medium
of your content, so in this example it's a podcast.
This is where we're gonna put the title,
once you know it, you could put the topic,
ideas you have, but ideally
the finalized title also goes here once you know it,
and then CTA, which stands for call to action.
So this is the call to action for that piece of content.
Maybe it's applying to work with you
or downloading a free worksheet
or registering for a webinar,
there are a lot of different actions you could have,
and so this is where you're just gonna be,
again, strategically thinking
about the call to action for that piece of content
and making a note of it here.
Then we have the same thing repeated
for just your second medium, and so then,
in this example, it's your YouTube topic or title
and the call to action for that YouTube video
or whatever this content is,
and then on the right here is where you're gonna
be able to plan the themes or topics
for your social media posts.
Now, I like to recommend that you pick
one social media platform to focus on,
especially for content creation.
So, for example, I focus on Instagram right now
but you may focus on Facebook or Twitter
or another medium, that's okay.
What I've gone ahead and done here
is given you a spot for every single day of the week.
That doesn't mean you need to post
every single day of the week,
but in case you are someone who posts every day of the week,
this gives you plenty of space
to plan out when those posts are happening.
So let's focus here on this February example.
So I like to use some color-coding,
I'm a color-coding nerd, and so
I like to use some color-coding here
to help me see exactly what days things are going live.
And you can create whatever color legend you want here.
For me, I have yellow as the day, in this example,
the day the podcast episodes would be going live,
so if I have a podcast episode going live,
it's yellow, so I know that
the podcast episode where I have here Example 3
is actually going live on February 5th.
So again, you can totally come up
with your own color scheme here,
I just did yellow for my main piece of content,
which is the podcast in this example.
Blue here represents the second medium here.
Again, in this example, I'm assuming
that maybe you don't post on YouTube every single week,
but maybe just one to two times a month,
so you could use blue to indicate
that this Tutorial A is going live on February 14th.
Then I also like to use another color
to represent the events.
So in this example I am saying
that there's gonna be a webinar on April 1st,
so I have made April 1st green.
So pick whatever colors you want,
decide what those colors are gonna represent
and that gives you just, at a glance,
what piece of content is going live when.
And I just love getting to look at February
and see, you know, the volume of content
going live versus another month.
Kinda gives you just an at-a-glance snapshot
for how much content you're creating
and releasing on any given basis.
Okay, so again, we've entered in the podcast title,
and these are just examples,
so I've just said, very creatively, Example 3, 4, 5,
typed in the call to action for that,
and of course you can repeat calls to action,
like you can see here in this example, and then
same thing for the YouTube title and call to action.
And then over here in the social media section,
so let's say that on Monday I wanna post
about my morning routine,
I know Tuesday I'm gonna promote that new podcast episode,
since I know that goes live then.
I wanna do a day in the life on Wednesday,
and then Thursday I'm gonna do my evening routine.
Friday and Saturday and Sunday and Monday
I'm gonna promote that webinar that's coming up.
And you can kinda see this workflow.
I'm gonna promote the new YouTube video,
and then you can brainstorm,
I wanna do a day in the life on this Monday,
so really you can plan as far ahead as you want to,
but it kinda gives you just that snapshot.
This isn't the place where you're gonna write
the actual content for social media.
At least, that's not the way I've intended it.
This is really just that higher-level topics,
themes, ideas, a place for you
to just brainstorm and solidify,
this is my content plan for the week or the month,
and share that with your team
so you all have a central point
to reference what the plan is.
And I want you to think of this as like,
a living and breathing document,
so as you change your mind, so maybe you decide
to swap out this call to action to be some affiliate,
didn't mean to do all caps, some affiliate promotion.
You can just update that while you're
talking about it on a meeting or a call.
Maybe you decide you're gonna do that
day in the life on Wednesday,
so I want you to really think about this
as a fluid document that you keep up-to-date,
so any time you're talking to a team member
or you're just, like, planning out in your head,
when you decide you wanna swap something around
make sure you're coming into your spreadsheet
and making that adjustment, so that
this is always kinda the final word
on what content is going live when.
So this is really that simple.
I like to come in here and just brainstorm topics
as I'm loosely planning out my content
and then just continue to refine
and update as I finalize things.
Now again, I briefly mentioned this,
but I wanna just show you guys again
that the top row here, and in my spreadsheet,
for example, in this January section,
I have set up the entire spreadsheet
to depend on the titles of this second row,
so if you change any of these,
it'll just automatically update in the whole spreadsheet,
and I had to do that for myself
because as I was creating new columns and changing things,
it was so, so tedious to like,
manually copy and paste everything.
So if you decided you don't need to have
your calls to action reflected here,
maybe you wanted the URL to be here instead,
you could just go up to the very top of this spreadsheet
and say URL and it'll update everywhere for you.
Same thing here, you could just decide
to use these sections for something totally different.
Maybe you post two times on Monday and zero on Sunday.
You could say, you know, M a.m. and
you'll see it reflected everywhere.
So just wanted to highlight that feature
if you are using the spreadsheets that I've provided.
So this is how I like to plan
and manage my content calendar.
I love using a spreadsheet,
I have tried other systems
and I just keep coming back to a spreadsheet
because it feels like a really good way
for anyone that I work with, contractors
or team members or even just my own self,
to know exactly what the final plan is
and to keep this updated as a resource
for the entire team and for myself as I create content.
So that is how I use a spreadsheet,
this one is specifically a Google Sheet,
to manage and plan my content calendar.
Feel free to actually grab this exact set of spreadsheets
by clicking the link below this video,
and you can download those and start using it instantly,
or if you'd like to recreate this
on your own, feel free to do that too.
Either way, I would love to hear some feedback from you
if you enjoyed this video, if you download
the spreadsheets and use them,
please leave me a comment below
and let me know what you think,
and I hope you guys have a great time
planning and managing your content using a spreadsheet.