Читать книгу The Nonprofit Marketing Guide - Kivi Leroux Miller - Страница 54

An editorial calendar is your day-to-day working plan and what I consider to be the most important of all of the documents discussed in this chapter. At a minimum, an editorial calendar outlines what you are sharing, in what communications channels, and when. You can add much more detail, including who is responsible for what, internal deadlines and workflows, and more.

Editorial calendars can take the form of spreadsheets or calendars. Whether you have “spreadsheet brain” or “calendar brain” – which format allows you to work more productively – is up to you.

An editorial calendar, along with your Big Picture Communications Timeline, will help you keep track of what's called the story arc. Although each communications piece should be able to stand on its own, it's also helpful if you view each article or video as part of a larger story that you are trying to tell. Using an editorial calendar can help you map out that story arc, or how the story will progress or evolve over time.

Ultimately, you'll work toward creating a master editorial calendar that includes everything that's being created and published in a given time period. However, in practice, many nonprofits find it easier to begin editorial planning with just a subset of their communications.

You can ease into editorial planning by setting up your editorial calendar in several different ways.

By channel. Create a separate editorial calendar for each major communications channel that requires a significant amount of content, such as your newsletter or blog. You can also create an editorial calendar for your social networking presence as a whole.

An editorial calendar for a quarterly print newsletter could have the standing heads or placeholders for the different types of articles you typically include in your newsletter (for example, success story, donor profile), as column heads. The publication date of each issue would run as row heads in the left-hand column (see Table 3.2 for an example). You would then fill in the grid with the specific article details for each edition, such as the name of the program that the success story would come from and the name of the donor who would be profiled.

Or let's say you want to create a weekly social media calendar to ensure that you are updating your status and contributing to the conversations on a handful of sites throughout the week. You would put each of the sites (Facebook page, Twitter profile, and so on) across the top row and the days of the week down the left-hand column. Now you can fill in as many boxes as you like with the topic you want to talk about or the kind of update you want to share (say, retweet three times, post a discussion question on the Facebook page).

By audience. You can also organize editorial calendars by audience. If you have multiple, distinct audiences (such as teachers, parents, and students) and you want to ensure that you communicate with them regularly, you might create a calendar for each audience with your channels down the side and your time frames across the top. If you have several groups of people who you're trying to reach out to and you're concerned that your communications may unconsciously favor one group or other, this method will help you find the right balance.

Table 3.2. Sample Editorial Calendar for a Print Newsletter for a Local Humane Society

Article Category	Spring Edition	Summer Edition
Program Success	Spay/Neuter campaign results	How we increased our cat adoption rate
Donor or Volunteer Profile	Bill Miller – How he brokered the deal for the free dog food	Shondra Smith – How she got teenagers to volunteer at the shelter
Adoption Profile	To be decided – recent dog adoption	To be decided – recent cat adoption
Pet Tips	Preparing pets for a new baby	Hot weather tips for outdoor pets
How You Can Help	Volunteer with the dog-walking program	Invite us to speak to your community group
In Every Issue: Pets Available for Adoption, In-Kind Donations Wish List, List of Donors Since Last Issue

By program. You can also organize editorial calendars by program if you have several different programs and you want to make sure that you are spending an appropriate amount of time communicating about each one. Just as with the audience-oriented calendar, you can list your program across the top and dates down the side, then fill in the boxes with channels and specifics about the content you'll deliver there.