A big part of the success in my career is deeply connected to my organizational skills and the general path to planning that I developed in my 14 years of experience in this industry.
In this article I want to highlight some steps that in my opinion are essential to create a communications calendar that can support and help you in your work.
But, what is a communication calendar?
A communication calendar is the visualized summary, in a form of a calendar, of all the activity that you will do to support the communication for your product.
It doesn’t matter if it is created to support a campaign or just a standard month without big updates/happenings. You can even have multiple communication calendars at the same time. For example, a general communication calendar and another one with deeper insights for specific campaigns/timeframes.
Let’s assume we want to create a communication calendar for the entire year. This means that we will work on the overall communication without going too much into details.
1. Brainstorm about the possible actions
One important step you need to take in order to be able to create a successful communication calendar is to set a goal for your actions and decide from which angle you will reach it. To do so, I suggest brainstorming. You can do it with your colleagues or also with yourself by writing down all the ideas you have.
The aim is to make a list of all possible activities/action cards you can run over the year, from standard to crazy, from small to big and create a card for each of them (or post-it).
When thinking about the different possibilities, don’t forget to consider your target group and your brand guidelines
2. Pick one theme
One of the most powerful tools we can use in Community Management is storytelling. My personal favorite approach for creating a yearly communication calendar is to use a story that develops over time and touches all the development pillars.
Just imagine that every month you will publish a new chapter of the story for your community.
To do so you must pick a theme and have already an idea of the general storyline.
There are a lot of different approaches for this. My favorites are for sure the seasonal path, to have a different theme for each season of the year, and as well a 12-chapter story, to fit with 12 months.
The good thing about the story is that you can write the plot even without knowing what content will be implemented the product you support or what potential impediments might get in your way. You can always minimize the impediments related to unpredictability of the development process. and adapt to external happenings that influence your planning by building spin-off of the main story for example and use them to introduce a new character.
3. Connect the dots
Once you have your theme decided and your plot is ready, it’s time to connect the events/milestones/topics with your storyline.
Remember those action cards you wrote at the beginning, well it’s time to connect them with the story you want to tell the community over the year.
Associate the story plot pieces with a fitting activity / action card or call-to-action that you think fits with the overall plan.
4. Visualize your plan
It is time now to visualize your plan and split the different parts of it in the calendar. This is a crucial step. It’s the moment where I always start to change things or realize I missed some opportunities.
Having the plan sorted during the year always helped me to see strength and flaw in it, and do the needed changes to make it work better.
If you do not use a content manager tool, you can always use your calendar, a Trello Board, one Note, or pen and paper.
Use color code for different categories of content, in this way will be easier to visualize it.
5. Check the balance of your plan
The visual approach will help you to check the balance of your planning. Make sure the action items are spread throughout the month and do not overlap each other.
The type of content depends a lot on the interests, trends, habits and culture of your Community. Consider the characteristics of your target group and prepare a communication calendar that will keep them informed and entertained regularly.
At Travian Games I am taking care of their leading browser game Travian: Legends. The game published since 2004 and it is still very popular. The gaming community around this product is very loyal, interested in history and eager to solve strategic riddles.
My approach is to theme the month around the main game update of the month, or the main event of the month, or just choose one of the topics the community is interested in and develop the plan around it.
After a bit of trial and error (yes, you need that too), we found a great balance between information sharing and entertainment activity.
How does it look like?
We always have one chapter of our yearly story connected with one riddle for the community. The story develops within the 12 months and our audience gets really attached to the main character. This usually happens at the beginning of the month.
In the second part of the month we have different kind of activity which may be a bit more creative, like for example a painting/drawing contest, or even a cooking contest.
At the end of the month we always publish our informative video where we answer questions from the community.
These are the pillars of the communication plan. We develop the rest of the communication/actions around them.
6. Re-think and improve
Do never forget that a plan is just a plan and it can change in any moment. I usually prepare a yearly communication plan for the upcoming year. It is a high-level plan but contains all the communication pillars and the structure that ideally, I would love to see.
Once the high-level plan is ready and I have all the action items in front of me, usually I do various rehearsals, with the aim of optimize the content flow before starting work on the details of the action items. Having the plan visualized in front of me shows me clearly where the flaws are and where improvements can be made. On top of that, brainstorming with colleagues generates additional ideas that can be implemented in the plan.
And, don’t forget that even when you are happy with the plan, things can change! So, remember to stay flexible and organize your work so that details / items can be moved on the calendar.
7. Get ready
The communication calendar is ready! Right in front of you, all the action items have been defined. How to proceed now?
Personally, I like to write detailed concepts for each item and already start assigning tasks to my college to deliver the content needed to perform the activity. As I am planning so much in advance, I usually make sure that the resources are delivered between 45 and 30 days before. Why?
Because plans can change, and even during the year, our amazing plan needs to be adaptable to unforeseeable obstacles/impediments. Having a series of assets/concepts/activities ready-to-go will make it easier to adapt and will make possible for you to pre-pone or post-pone content.
Do you think this content is interesting? Would you like to read more about communication planning?
Leave a comment to this article and share the topic that is the more interesting for you, I’ll be glad to share my expertise with you.
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