Great online communication doesn’t happen by accident.  Whether you are a small organization or a large international NGO, communication in many forms is likely crucial to your success.  I have adapted several resources to help you better plan, understand goals, and focus and align your team around a communications strategy. A big thanks to my friend and colleague, Jonathan Cottrell of User10, for creating the documents from which these have been adapted.

These may not be the perfect fit for your organization, but they should provide a decent framework upon which to build upon. In order to best facilitate this, we’ve shared these documents using Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-alike 3.0 Unported.

Free Editorial Calendar – Lite Edition

This downloadable free editorial calendar combines content idea generation (second tab) with planning, scheduling, and a commonly used channel checklist.

Download ‘Free Editorial Calendar – Lite. Having issues? Shoot me an email.

Free Editorial Calendar for Large Campaigns

This more robust downloadable free editorial calendar which organizes content around campaigns. To help organize larger campaigns with multiple key messages each, it provides additional tabs, columns, and 30+ sample channels.

This Master Roadmap can serve as the catch-all for all product and content related efforts you have going on. It’s planned there. It’s kept there. It’s updated there. From this, you can create a Campaign Brief (see below).

Download the Editorial Calendar for Large Campaigns. Download issues? Shoot me an email.

Campaign Planning Document: Campaign & Content Briefs

Depending on your unique needs and time available, these documents can either serve as regularly used templates or simply as reference points when planning future content.

The Campaign brief helps you to define individual campaigns

• Objective
• Start and End Date
• Audience
• Key Messages
• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• General Dependencies or Requirements
• POC for any campaign-related questions

The Content Brief breaks down an individual message (there are usually multiple) within a campaign by defining

• What campaign it belongs to
• Key points of that message
• Call-to-Action
• Short URL
• General Dependencies or Requirements

Download the Campaign Brief and Content Brief. Download issues? Shoot me an email.

Tips 

• See “INSTRUCTIONS” tab on calendars.
• Consider converting one of these free editorial calendars into a google spreadsheet for easier collaboration.
• Use the supporting documents for your next two big campaigns then decide if you want to continue to use them or simply reference them as needed.
• Feel free to make modifications to create a better fit for your organization.

This is an updated version of a previous post.