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You’re ready to streamline your content planning. Let’s get started.

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Click here to access the Story Calendar template (and keep reading to learn how to use it)

[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”15″][vc_column_text]Editorial plans, content calendars, social media marketing templates… oh my. You’ve heard the marketing pros talk about these essential tools to use for your business when it comes to planning and organizing your content.

The Story Calendar asks:

  • What key story are you telling that day?
  • What channel are you using to distribute that great content?
  • What piece of content (image, video, audio, blog) tells that story effectively?

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Five steps for the Story Calendar

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Step 1: Discover your brand stories

What are your core brand stories? This is the first question to answer before filling in the Story Calendar. Brand stories are your overarching key messages that guide your content and speak to your audience.

We suggest having 3-4 stories in mind that you want to tell on social media, throughout your newsletter, and in your blog content.

How do you find these stories? Well, you probably already know them. They exist in the fabric of your business. Remember to keep your content marketing goals in mind when determining your brand stories.

Here are some questions to get you started:

  1. What is the benefit of your business offering?
  2. How do you solve the problem for your customer?
  3. What sets you apart from your competition?

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Head over to the Story Calendar template to follow along.

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Step 2: Choose your priority channels and frequency

Once you’ve established your brand stories, the next step is to prioritize your content channels. Start with three—you can always add more later as you build up your strategy.

What are the top three channels that distribute your content to your audience? Here is a list of popular choices:

Newsletter  |  Blog  |  Facebook  |  LinkedIn  |  Instagram  |  Twitter  |  YouTube  |  Pinterest

After choosing your channels, think about frequency. How often do you want to show up per week or per month to your audience on a particular platform? For Facebook, it might be twice a week. For a newsletter, once a month. Customize the frequency to meet your content needs and the bandwidth of your team.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Head over to the Story Calendar template to follow along.

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Step 3: Set up your Story Calendar

Now that you have your brand stories, priority channels, and frequency, it’s time to put the Story Calendar to good use and fill it up.

Once you open up the Story Calendar, make a copy so you can edit it with your own information. File > Make a copy > Download to your Drive > OK

You can choose to rename the Story Calendar, share it with your coworkers, and save it in your own Google Drive.

Navigate to the Details tab for more information on using the Story Calendar, and refer to the Sample Calendar for an example of a completed version.

Your work will start in the Blank Calendar by filling it in with the correct month and dates. We’ve left this calendar blank so you can start your content marketing journey at any time.

If you’d like to duplicate the Blank Calendar, right click on the Blank Calendar tab at the bottom of the sheet > Duplicate. You can do this for as many months as you’d like to prepare in advance.

   

Next, enter in your three brand stories under the Stories heading that you decided on in Step 1. Then, enter your priority channels under the Channels heading that you decided on in Step 2.

We’ve decided on a Frequency level for you already, so choose your priority channels based on how many times per week or month you’d like to post to that channel. If you want to change the Frequency, you can do this manually at any time.

Your story pillars and priority channels will serve as your guide as you begin to operationalize the Story Calendar.[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]

Head over to the Story Calendar template to follow along.

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Step 4: Fill in your Story Calendar

By now, your Story Calendar is ready to take shape. You’ve probably noticed that after entering your brand stories and priority channels, the calendar auto-populated them throughout the month.

Feel free to change this if you wish (but be warned, the formulas will break if you do!). Our MO behind it is to spread your brand stories out so they are distributed throughout the week on different days.

Then, we’ve chosen a standard frequency that corresponds to a content channel of your choice. If you change the frequency, you’ll have to change the formula as well—or manually alter the calendar to suit your needs.

See how your Story Calendar fills up! Remember, you can toggle over to the Sample Calendar tab if you need a reference

This is what one week at Forge & Spark looks like using our channels and frequency.

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Head over to the Story Calendar template to follow along.

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Step 5: Add in your content items

Now that you have a bird’s-eye view of your brand stories (plus, when and where you’re going to share them), you can add in specific content items as a comment on each cell.

  1. Look at the brand story for the day
  2. Click into the coloured cell that includes your channel
  3. Determine what content item (video, image, audio, GIF, etc) you can use to tell that story on that channel effectively
  4. Right click on the cell > Comment
  5. Comment with a brief description of the content item and why it works

You can also assign team members within the comment to add in content items themselves.

Now, you have your Story Calendar in full operation mode. What’s left? Publishing your stories to your audience!

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Ready? Get to work on the Story Calendar template

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