Content/Editorial Calendar in a Bullet Journal

I manage Rediscover Analog by myself – I write the blogs, create the marketing materials, take photos, film videos, and manage social media accounts. It’s not as overwhelming as it sounds and I love what I do so it really doesn’t stress me out. The only thing that stresses me out is when I’m unable to organize my content and my thoughts.

I normally use apps to help me with my content such as Planoly, Co-schedule, and Trello. Somehow, in the past couple of months (basically since the rebranding), I haven’t maximized the use of these apps (except Planoly). So – whenever I fail in the digital space, I resort to writing things down on paper. That’s where my bullet journal editorial calendar / content calendar comes into play.

Weekly Content Calendar

I got the idea when I was doing my research on best times to post on social media. I was inspired by the best times to post on Instagram infograph that I saw on on Later.com.

Initially, I wanted to do a monthly calendar design for my content calendar but then decided to start small (weekly) just to test the waters.

I started by creating a weekly vertical layout with timetables on the left-hand side. I then used the data from Later and plotted the best times in the weekly calendar. I didn’t like the first one that I did (watch the video to see) because the space that I had allotted was too big. I’m glad I only created a weekly page for it at first. I didn’t know exactly what I needed yet and this was a good way to test it.

For week 6, I created a condensed version of the previous one – cramming it into 1 page and came up with this.

Instead of highlighting, I just created a thin mark for the best Instagram times just so that it’s easier on the eyes. Also, in case you were wondering why I’ve only marked Instagram, it’s because out of all my social media accounts, Instagram has the largest following.

With this content calendar, I have been able to establish a new process to organize my thoughts and content. First, I use Planoly to save and schedule my images for Instagram, I then write it down in my bullet journal content calendar. From there, I am able to have a vision of what I need to write about and when I need to publish them.

A Short Term Solution…

This content calendar helped me in the past couple of weeks. I definitely was able to conceptualize and prioritize the ideas that I want to implement.

However, a handwritten content calendar will be difficult to sustain in the long run. It works well for me now because I’m using it as an organization tool rather than a project management tool. As things move along, I might move to a monthly calendar format for the content calendar. I will move back to the digital medium when I have a better sense of what’s next to come here on Rediscover Analog.