If you haven’t already, you’d better start preparing for the new school year. In the next month, students all over the country will head back to campus for a new season of college classes, social activities and football.

Managing social media is a daunting task, especially amidst the beginning of a new semester and thousands of incoming freshmen. How do you manage? Two words: editorial calendar.

I was introduced to the editorial calendar for the first time when I was just a mere little intern at Verge Pipe Media. It was confusing and a little overwhelming, but it has ended up saving me hours of time, and it makes life a heck of a lot easier when things get busy.

So what IS an editorial calendar and what does it look like?

For us, an editorial calendar is a weekly breakdown of all of the content we’re going to write and publish on behalf of Verge Pipe Media. We try to have it mapped out at least one to two months in advance so that each week, we can look at the editorial calendar to see who is writing blogs, what the blog topics are, and where and when we need to be publishing content. You can make an editorial calendar as simple or detailed as you want (the more detailed the better, in my opinion). Here’s an example of our calendar a few months back:

As you can see, we have a monthly theme, a weekly focus, and then a breakdown of what needs to be done on behalf of Verge Pipe Media each day, all the way down to the subject of the blog posts. I made it a little bit more detailed than normal for examples sake; nonetheless, it’s a great illustration of how you can be scheduling social media and blog posts for your university.

Why?

Often times, the most difficult task for me is trying to figure out what to write about each week. A detailed editorial calendar makes that task so much easier. Even if you don’t have the specifics, having a weekly theme will help you better focus your efforts and save you time. Moreover, having a daily “to-do” list will keep you on track and get you into a successful work routine.

Driving traffic to your website and social media accounts requires constant and routine updating. An editorial calendar will help you to do that in a more efficient way.

You can never go wrong with having a plan. If you’re dreading the craziness that is the beginning of the school year, take a few hours to draft a calendar and get things in order. You can thank me later.