In this episode of the Content Amplification Podcast, host Shaun Whynacht explains why a content (or editorial) calendar is essential for small‑business owners, solopreneurs, and anyone looking to grow an audience. He frames the calendar around two core purposes: accountability (committing to create and publish content on specific dates) and relevance (aligning content with holidays, seasonal trends, and industry events). Shaun walks listeners through a step‑by‑step process: start with a simple physical calendar, highlight major holidays and any niche dates important to the target audience, add industry‑specific events (e.g., Financial Literacy Month, Small Business Week), decide which content formats will be used (podcasts, blogs, videos, etc.), and then populate the calendar with topics that address the audience’s pain points. He recommends practical tools such as wall‑mounted calendars, Post‑it notes, and color‑coded pens to differentiate release dates from production start dates, and stresses the need to calculate lead time for each content type. While the ideal is to plan a full year in advance, Shaun emphasizes flexibility—allowing the calendar to be adjusted when new trends, technologies, or breaking news arise. He concludes by urging listeners to commit to a calendar (even a digital one like Google Calendar), maintain consistency, and thereby build audience loyalty, subscriber growth, and overall business expansion.
Welcome to the Content Amplification Podcast, where you will gain insight into real-life tactical and strategic elements to help you scale and grow your business. Now let's get started with today's episode.
Hi and welcome to episode number 6. That's right, 006 of the Content Amplification Podcast. As always, I'm your host Shaun Whynacht, and this is an episode that is very timely at the time of recording this. Currently is the 23rd of December. That's right, 2 more days and Mr. Ho Ho is here and all the kids are happy. Well, I'm happy too. But that's not the reason why this is timely. This is timely because we are in the last less than 2 weeks until 2020. And what I want to talk to you about is the idea of content calendars or editorial calendars. Now, you know, if you get into a large company like a magazine or a news-generating company, editorial calendars and content calendars are two different things. But as you, as a professional, as a small business owner, as an individual who's growing their business, you don't need to get hung up on what is the difference between the two because I don't feel that it matters. I've seen success in somebody creating a calendar or a calendar method to plan out their content in a way that doesn't need to be one or the other. And what do I mean by that? Well, I'm gonna get to that here right now. The idea, the concept of a calendar when it relates to the content in which you're creating serves two purposes in my mind. First, accountability. If you take the time to plan out and say, hey, I'm going to create this piece of content on this date or release it by this date, you are committing to doing that. Now, if you don't do it, you're following through on that commitment, that self-commitment to yourself. If you've got a team, you're, you're following through on that commitment to them. But most importantly, you're failing your audience. So writing it down, planning it out is going to give you that accountability. The second part is it allows you to plan out and stage content that is relevant to current dates, current trends, current times of the year, and also an order in which it makes sense to your audience. Let's dive a bit deeper in that one 'cause I feel that one there is most important to you. Now, when I'm coaching people on creating a content calendar and they've never done it before, The easiest way to do it is go get one of those calendars. You get them at the grocery store, people give them away, accountants give them away. Heck, you probably even have them for promotional items, right? They got the different pictures each month, but it really, it's just a calendar you can write on. Now what I want you to do is take that calendar and go through and highlight all the major holidays in which your ideal audience would celebrate. Things like Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's, Valentine's Day, all those holidays. And there might be specific holidays that your audience, um, is celebrating that mine may not. For example, if you have clients in both Canada and the US, they both celebrate Thanksgiving, but they fall on different dates. So depending on your calendar, you might have to look at what date the other countries' holidays fall on because you don't want to miss out on that. So that's the first thing. The next thing is you want to identify what industry events might your ideal client be attending. So if you're in the financial services space, there's a month, and I believe it was November, that was Financial Literacy Month, at least here in Canada it was. So it's a big month, right? So if you're in that financial space and you're working with clients where you're educating them on finances and debt reduction, Financial Literacy Month is a great month to piggyback your content on. If you're dealing with businesses, you've got Small Business Week or Small Business Month in some places. If you're in the services space for home renovations, in your area. There might be certain home shows or home renovation events that they may be interested in, especially if you're in a local market. So you see what I'm getting at here. You're going to start to think about this. I'll tell you, this is not something that you can just sit down for 5 minutes and get it completely done, right? This is going to be something that's going to take a little bit of time, and you may have to do some research, which is okay. Now next, what you want to do is you want to start to think about What type of content are you creating? You may have already thought about that as you've been following through us in this podcast series, but if it was a podcast or blogs or videos or a combination of all or some, then you're going to be thinking about which one of these events would I want to do types of content for. Would I like to do a special podcast special on it? For example, right after recording this one, I'm doing a Christmas special for a different podcast that I have. And what I did is I asked my audience on my email list to send me a marketing question, and I'll be answering those questions, putting together this Christmas special, right? So I know that every time Christmas rolls around, I do this every single year, and it's pretty much a staple that my audience is looking for. So thinking about that, what types of content are you going to be, going to be doing? Once you know that, you should know that by now, Now you need to start to think about what are all those different types of topics you want to create content for. Remember when we were talking a couple episodes back about thinking about all the pains, the problems, mistakes, or issues that your audience is making? Those are going to be your topics. So now you're going to start to write those into your calendar. Start to commit to it. So if you're going to be releasing a, a blog every week or every month or every 2 weeks, then you know in your calendar every 2 weeks you need to slot in a topic there. So you're going to go and you're going to start to write them out, keeping in mind that you may change these as you go through. And if your calendar ends up having scratched out spots and rewritten over, that means that you're actually going through the thought process of planning this out. Now, if you've got a lot of wall space in your office, one thing that I, I find really works well is that if you got one of those desktop calendars, you know, at the office supply store, the ones that usually lay on your desk, they're pretty big in the squares, and you get them in paper format. You could lay out the next 3 months on the wall And Post-it notes are perfect size to fit in there. So you can write those topics on the Post-it notes and stick them on the different dates. And then if you need to rearrange them, you can just pull them off and replace them on there. It's a little inside tip and something that works really well for those people who have large wall space to be able to plan this out. Now, once you start to plan out this content as to when it's going to be released, now these are the publish dates, right? These are the dates in which your content goes live. To your audience. So it's the date in which your, your blog gets published, your podcast gets its— or episode gets re-released out to the audience, your video gets uploaded. That's the date in which those sit on the calendar. Now you need to figure out how much lead time do you need to create that content. For example, if you're going to be doing a podcast, like for example, we record these the exact same day that we publish them because we're fairly fast at editing them, getting them into the show template, and putting them out. So it's okay if my date for this content of the podcast is on the same day that I'm releasing it, because I know when I come in, I'm recording it and I'm putting it out. Now, in a case of a blog or a video, maybe you need to get a videographer to come in. With your blog, you need to write it, you need to proof it, you need to find some images. Maybe you got your team that's going to review it, so you may, may need some different lead time for your blog. So you're gonna have to make accountabilities for that. And what I'd even recommend is go with two different colored either pens or Post-it notes, one referencing the release date and one referencing the start of production time. And that's the simplest form to do this. You don't need to go into hyper detail in this calendar as to who's doing what and when. As you start to get more involved in this and you bring on more team members, maybe you need to go a step further with that. But if you're doing your own content, what I found that works really well— it works really well for me— is to know that this is the launch date of that content and this is the date when I need to start working on it. So you can start to plan that out in your system. Your ideal goal with this, if there were no limitations, is to have an entire year planned out. That's not to say that things can't shift around if certain things come up. If there's certain problems that arise. So for example, right now you're thinking 12 months ahead in your industry as to what the current situation is. Now, 6 months down the road, there's something that comes up, a new technology, a new problem, or whatever it is, or the society changes, there's a different need. You can't be like, okay, well, my calendar is already set, I'm not going to talk about this., it's okay to cut it in, right? Just think about the TV networks. They have their schedules set out, but when breaking news happens, they interrupt what's happening in their schedule to bring it to them, right? So you can go ahead and do that and bump some content, pull one out, move it ahead, or shift everything forward. It's okay to do that. So let's just recap what we were talking about with a content calendar. Think about what's happening, what holidays, what's happening in your industry, and then start to intersperse different topics that are going to relate to those. So your main pain points that you listed out in the previous episodes that you're going to be creating content for, those can go in either different dates that aren't around those holidays or industry events just to fill in that content and provide value. But if there's a major industry coming up like Christmas, just because the timely matter here, most financial professionals who are creating content would have started to think about this season back in September and October and started to plan content around not overspending, ways to save money, ways to budget for the holidays so that it's top of mind when people enter that part of the year, right? They knew it was coming up, they planned for it, and they're creating content that's going to be relevant when that time comes or in advance of that season. So that's my goal for you today. Whether you've listened to this in your car, you're writing it down right now, re-listen to it, but I want you in 2020 to commit to yourself to make some form of a content calendar. Even if you're just putting it into your Google Calendar, that's okay, but commit to what type of content you're going to put out, when are you going to be putting it out, and actually stick to it and do it. It's that consistent repetitive action that is going to build loyalty, it's going to build traction, it's going to grow your subscribers, your fan base, your followers, and ultimately grow your business. Thanks for listening and have yourself a Merry Christmas. See you in 2020.
Thanks for listening to the Content Amplification Podcast. If you have questions about how you can amplify your content strategy, go to amplifymycontent.com.
