An editorial calendar is an excellent way to ensure blog posts are timely and relevant. Calendars are also attractive to advertisers. They give them the opportunity to prepare ad materials, as well as offer a long view of upcoming material that might be good fits for future or ongoing ads.

To set up an editorial calendar, simply plan your keyword-driven content around appropriate dates and times of the year. Using our food blog/ recipe example, consider slating posts about heavier foods (a chicken gumbo, for example) in the months leading up to and including fall and winter. Lighter foods, such as chicken salad, would be a natural choice for spring and summer months, and posts with particular ingredients can be scheduled around when those items are in season. Editorial calendars are not just for food items, however. Just about every industry’s topics of interest fluctuate during the course of a year.

Mandates should be set, too. These are items that are regularly scheduled throughout the year, every year. For example, an e-commerce blog could set a mandate of writing holiday marketing tips every August, and posts about dealing with chargebacks every December.

Once an editorial calendar is in place, publish it on a separate page of your blog so that advertisers have easy access to it, along with links to advertising rates and contact information.