How to create a photo editorial calendar?

If you have decided to “give life” to your photography blog, the truth is that creating a photography editorial calendar with a good content strategy will be the key to make your articles work.

You may not be sure how to create an editorial photography calendar, but we assure you, it’s easier than it seems. That’s why today we’re going to tell you how you can plan your own editorial calendar and we’ll reveal 5 reasons why you need to start it right now.

“Creating a photography editorial calendar is going to help you write your articles faster.”

Before creating an editorial photography calendar, do you know what it is?

The truth is that an editorial calendar is simply a resource that will allow you to have well organized and planned all the contents of your photography blog. And when we talk about creating a photography editorial calendar we are not only referring to think about some topics to cover in your blog.

Thanks to this previous planning, you will be able to organize your work and adapt each topic both to the objectives you have set and to the trends of the moment.

So, before you start creating an editorial photography calendar, the first thing you’re going to have to think about and define is what you’re going to want to do:

• Have your own clear objectives: why do I want a photography blog?
• Know the reader’s profile very well, will this topic interest my clients?
• And set a series of actions to achieve your own goals. What steps do I need to take to make my blog work?

If one of the growth goals you have set for yourself is to improve your blog posts so that they are really useful (not just filler), create quality content (not just publish for the sake of publishing) and establish a long-term content strategy.

Learning how to create a photography editorial calendar will help you to plan all these actions in order to achieve your business goals.

>> How to create a professional photography blog

How to create a photo editorial calendar for your blog

The first thing you need to do to create an editorial photography calendar is to consider your business needs:

What topics will I cover?

When am I going to publish them and why?

Who is going to write them?

What goal do I want to achieve with this article?

These and other questions are the ones you have to ask yourself when it comes to shaping your publication calendar and give your photography blog a reason to exist.

For your photography editorial calendar to be really useful and to achieve your goals (previously defined), it has to contain the necessary information to help you to speed up the task of writing posts and to give you a clearer vision of where your photography blog has to go in order to achieve your long-term goals.

After publishing your article, you still have some work to do. There’s no point in creating posts if you don’t analyze their reach afterwards.

Set quantifiable (measurable and realistic) goals such as tracking: the number of visits, engagement (engagement between your brand and your audience) or conversions. This will be the first step to achieving your broader goals (such as increasing sales for your photography business).

Example for creating a photo editorial calendar

Here we are going to detail the sections that can have your own editorial calendar, it is just an example, ideally you can adapt it to your ideas and goals.

You can organize it in Excel format and if you try Google Sheets you will be able to share it with other team members or editors.

We are going to analyze one by one all the columns of the sample editorial calendar:

Article

It will help you to keep track of the number of posts you have published and the ones you have left to write in the following weeks.

Date of creation

The ideal is that you schedule each quarter the articles that you are going to deal with in that time, this way you can reserve a space to write them and you will not pile up the work.

The frequency of publication will determine the structure of your publication calendar. If you plan to publish every week or every month, this is where you have to organize all the content. These dates will depend on the time you can dedicate to your blog and the needs of your audience.

Date of publication

Occasionally, you’ll have articles that deal with temporary features, special offers, or special news. Keeping in mind when to publish them will help you to make sure you don’t miss the right time to publish them.

Thematic

As you will plan your calendar (at least) 3 months in advance, you will be able to organize in advance the topics to be covered in each article.

Recommendation: your photography blog topics have to solve a problem for your audience and have a practical background.

Keyword

Each article must have its own keyword (an expression that your potential clients will use in search engines to look for a specific piece of information or to solve a doubt). Programming it in advance will help you to avoid repeating expressions and to deal with several topics related to your reports.

Target

You have to define what you want to achieve with each post and it’s not enough to say “get more sales“, that will be your more general goal, which will become a reality based on achieving smaller goals.

Let’s give you an example.

If you’re a wedding photographer, it’s clear that your overall goal will be to get more weddings for next season.

What can be the goals of your blog?

• Get them to find you when brides and grooms are looking for churches.
• Appear in the most important wedding halls in your region.
• Give ideas about wedding decorations.
• Tips for brides and grooms who want a country wedding.
• Etc.

All these questions are being asked right now by a large number of couples and if you want to appear in their searches, it is best that you create an article for each of these keywords to help you position yourself in those terms and that really gives useful information to couples.

Meta title

Short title that will appear in search engines as the title of your article. Try to include your chosen keyword here.

Meta description

Brief summary where you must make clear the question that your readers will solve. It will also appear in search engines.

Internal links

In order to improve the SEO of your website, it is highly recommended that in each post you add a series of links to other (related) articles of your photography blog and to some important part of your website.

External links

This type of information also helps the SEO of your online business and it is about including (as long as it makes sense and gives more value to your post) a series of external links.

Let’s give you an example.

Imagine you are a newborn photographer and your unique props make your sessions more original than the rest of your colleagues in the area. In one of your articles you can talk about the most appropriate wardrobe for babies or even colorimetry and as an idea, you can add the link to your accessories supplier.

Editor

If you are a team or you are going to delegate to an editor the creation of some of the articles, you can add a column with the name of the person who is going to write it.

As a final recommendation, if you have more than one person working on the calendar, you can include a final drop-down column specifying where the task is at.

5 reasons why you need to create an editorial photography calendar

Editorial calendars are very important for many reasons, but specifically for your photography blog these are going to be the main reasons:

• Bring value to your audience.
• Planning with a long-term strategy.
• Optimization of resources.
• Improve the SEO positioning of your photography website.
• Attract quality traffic to your online business.

1# Bring value to your audience

Once you are clear about the topics of your content about your photography work, the dates of publication and you also have your audience well defined, you will have much more chances that your content will be interesting (and therefore useful) than if you start writing without doing previous research.

2# Plan with a long term strategy

Creating a photography editorial calendar is perfect to always have the reference and look at the long term, because one of the most common mistakes of photographers who decide to launch their blog, is to focus on the “now” and not plan for the long term.

3# Optimize resources

With a well-structured editorial calendar, you’ll improve your workflow and you’ll see that writing an article won’t take as much time as you thought it would.

It is also important to keep in mind that, sometimes, the research process and the search for topics will be more important than the actual writing itself.

4# Improve the SEO positioning of your photography website

There is no doubt about it, a well worked blog will give you a better SEO positioning of your photography website.

To do this, a study of keywords for the content of your photography website or take into account the internal and external links will also be essential for your articles to position better in search engines.

5# Attract quality traffic to your online business

Publishing quality, well-written content on your photography blog will allow you to reach a much wider audience and you’ll be more likely to find your content (and your services) useful and interesting.

Here we are going to share with you 5 more reasons!

>> Why Start a Photography Blog: 5 Reasons Why

Creating an editorial photography calendar will always be a very good option

In Arcadina we know the importance of creating a photography editorial calendar to achieve an optimized blog, but we also know that having a photography website where you can offer your services to customers in a professional manner is essential to grow as a professional.

Don’t wait any longer to have a professional photography website that meets all your business needs, contact us!

>> Discover the new Classic and Infinite blogs on our websites. And many more blog improvements

This time we are going to share with you the opinion of Ñ Fotógrafos.

>> Ñ Fotógrafos, 15 years and counting

Before we say goodbye, we would like to ask you a question: what do you think can be the most difficult thing to create a photography editorial calendar for your blog? We’ll read you in the comments.

Open the door to your photography business

Fulfill your dreams and develop your professional career with us. We offer you to create a photography website for free for 14 days so you can try our platform without any commitment of permanence.

Arcadina is much more than a website, it’s business solutions for photographers.

If you have any questions, our Customer Service Team is always ready to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We listen to you.