As a YouTube creator, you know that creating high-quality content consistently is the key to building a solid following and, ultimately, earning a YouTube income. However, it takes a lot of work to to run a successful YouTube channel, and juggling it all while maintaining a consistent posting schedule can be a little overwhelming.
Enter the YouTube content calendar. Creating a comprehensive, easy-to-use content calendar helps you organize your workflow and streamline your production efforts, ultimately saving you time and earning you more as a YouTuber. In other words, if you want to start building your dream YouTube business, you’ll definitely want to harness the power of the content calendar.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of creating your own YouTube content calendar, as well as highlighting all the great benefits that come along with it.
Oh, and we’re also providing you with a handy template bundle that makes creating your YouTube Content Calendar a total breeze. The bundle provides you with everything you need to define your YouTube goals, plan your content, and track your progress today.
What is a YouTube content calendar?
Before we dive into the how-tos and all those great benefits, let’s get into what a YouTube content calendar actually is.
A content calendar is a strategic planning tool that helps creators plan, organize, and schedule their content to publish on their platform(s) of choice. In a nutshell, a content calendar provides a roadmap for all your content creation, distribution, and promotion activities, and ensures that your content marketing strategy is rolled out in a consistent and timely fashion.
Creators across all social platforms (from Instagram to TikTok) can build and use content calendars to manage their channels. It almost goes without saying, but a YouTube content calendar is designed specifically to suit YouTube creators’ needs.
With that said, there are a few key things that all content calendars do. A content calendar helps you:
- Develop a content publishing timeline: A content calendar sets out a clear timeline for the creation process of each piece of content you’re producing, from the planning phase all the way to publication. This makes it easier to coordinate your content marketing strategy and, most importantly, to maintain consistency in your output, so you’re engaging your audience regularly.
- Set specific publication dates and times: It’s called a calendar for a reason! Having a content calendar lets you get super-specific about when you publish your YouTube videos. This is especially helpful in targeting specific audiences based on their locations, time zones, and viewing habits.
- Evaluate your marketing strategy: Tracking the performance of your marketing efforts in your content calendar allows you to get an overview of what works and what doesn’t. This means you’re able to catch trends earlier and make adjustments on-the-go, as you see fit.
Benefits of using a content calendar for your YouTube channel
A content calendar is a powerful tool to have in your YouTuber tool belt. Not only does it streamline the content creation process, it also helps you stay organized and achieve your goals.
The benefits of having a content calendar for your YouTube channel include:
- Organizing your content marketing strategy
- Maintaining a consistent stream of content
- Boosting accountability
- Documenting your accomplishments
Organizing your content marketing strategy
Content calendars play a key role in organizing your content marketing efforts.
Why? A content calendar gives you a clear, big-picture view of your YouTube content strategy, which helps you strategically plan your creation and distribution efforts, manage your time appropriately, and balance video topics, so your audience stays interested and engaged in your YouTube content.
Maintaining a consistent stream of content
Speaking of an engaged audience: consistency is key when it comes to keeping your audience interested.
Having a content calendar enables you to set up a solid publishing schedule complete with detailed dates and times, which helps you post consistently and on time.
Boosting accountability
As a solo creator, it’s easy to procrastinate content creation and to let deadlines slide. That’s because we only have ourselves holding us accountable to our timelines and goals.
In this respect, a content calendar can be a huge motivator. Keeping a content calendar with specific timelines and deadlines helps you stay accountable to your goals, ensuring you keep up with your content publication schedule and don’t fall into patterns of procrastination.
Documenting your accomplishments
Your content calendar also serves as a written record of your entire YouTube business, including past publishing schedules, promotional campaigns, goals, and, of course, your accomplishments. Content calendars can also have built-in progress trackers that keep track of the performance of your videos as well as your YouTube milestones.
This document is a helpful reference in terms of what has worked (and what hasn’t) in the past, so you can hone your content creation process and continue to create videos your audience will love to watch. Having a record of all of your accomplishments can also provide you with an extra dose of motivation when you need it most!
Our free YouTube Planning Templates Bundle provides you with sections for tracking your monthly goals and performance insights, as well as a section to brainstorm future improvements, so you can grow your YouTube business effectively.
How create a YouTube content calendar
Now that you know what a YouTube content calendar is and all the great benefits to using one, it’s time to hunker down and create your very own.
Creating a content calendar for your YouTube channel isn’t as tough as it looks. Here, we’ve broken the process down into four easy-to-follow steps:
Step 1: Define your goals
The best laid plans always start with a goal in sight. And this totally applies to your YouTube channel as well!
The first step to creating your YouTube content calendar is to figure out what you want to achieve with your YouTube channel. In other words, before you can start organizing and planning your content, you’ll want to get clear on your YouTube goals.
Your goals can be big or small (or a mix of the two!) Just ensure that they’re realistic, measurable, and align with your values as a creator. For example, your YouTube goals could be to increase watch time on your videos, generate revenue from your content, or to gain a certain number of subscribers. After you’ve defined your goals, you can start engineering all of your content production and marketing efforts towards helping you achieve them.
By setting clear goals for your YouTube channel from the jump, you’re setting yourself up to success by ensuring that the content strategy you build will help you achieve them and that you won’t be wasting any of your valuable content creation efforts elsewhere.
Step 2: Create or choose a template
Now that you’ve defined your goals, it’s time to start creating your content calendar. And this process begins with building (or choosing) a template.
So, what is a template? A template is a pre-formatted document that you can use and customize to create a final document that fits your needs. In this case, a YouTube content calendar template would be a pre-designed document that you can use to organize and implement your YouTube content and business plans.
Most YouTube content calendar templates contain a few key fields, including ones for the title of your videos, its content topic, its target audience, and its upload date and time.
Using a content calendar template (rather than going freestyle) ensures that your content is organized in a uniform and intuitive way. Not only does a content calendar template streamline your workflow, it also saves you tons of time and effort during the content creation process. In other words, creating a template is key to creating a content calendar that actually works for you and helps you achieve your YouTube goals.
Option 1: Create your own template
Want to build your own template? Luckily, there are a few different types of tools you can use.
The first you’ll want to consider is a spreadsheet tool like Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. Spreadsheets are engineered for organization purposes, and allow you to organize, sort, date, and highlight your content as needed.
Don’t jive with spreadsheets? Then you might also want to consider a calendar app like Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar to create your template. These tools enable you to get a calendar-style overview of your content production timeline and publication dates, which can be a more intuitive way of organization for those who are more visual.
You can also combine the two, using a calendar app for upload dates, deadlines, and milestones, while using a spreadsheet to keep track of content ideas, track progress, and record your goals.
Option 2: Download a pre-made template
Want to save even more time? Our free YouTube Planning Template Bundle has your back.
By downloading our template bundle, you can skip the entire template creation process and start planning your content, right now.
Want to kickstart your dream YouTube channel today? Get our YouTube Planning Templates Bundle now.
Step 3: Plan your content
Now that you have your template all laid out, it’s time to plan your content.
Brainstorm content topics
This step starts with brainstorming ideas for your YouTube channel. Think about your niche and your target audience’s interests. What topics do they find interesting, entertaining, or valuable? Organizing these topics into broader, distinct categories (also known as content pillars) makes it easier to plot out your content strategy.
Decide on video formats
Next, you’ll want to figure out what type of videos you want to create based on the themes and topics you want to explore. As a YouTuber, there are tons of different video formats you can use to give shape to your content, including vlogs, tutorials, and interviews. However, it’s important to keep in mind that certain video formats are a better fit for specific content topics and niches.
For example, if you’re a beauty YouTuber wanting to teach your audience how to apply a makeup look, you’ll probably want to create a tutorial-style video rather than a vlog. However, if you’re a nutrition and wellness YouTuber, you might want to harness the power of the vlog to show your followers “What I Eat in a Day.”
Plan according to the calendar year
After you figure out the type of content you want to create, it’s time to start strategically planning it. It helps to begin with the calendar year. Pull up your template and begin plotting out your content around major holidays and events, like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas. Planning around the calendar year ensures that you’re creating content that’s timely and relevant. It also makes planning your content a lot easier.
Aligning your YouTube content with national holidays and events also helps you deliver a broad array of content topics that will keep your audience interested and engaged all year round.
Create fresh content
In addition to planning around the calendar year, you’ll also want to be creating fresh content on a regular basis. This means keeping up to date with current cultural events, world issues, and social media trends, as well as news and developments within your niche. Brainstorming and creating new content around these topics ensures that your YouTube content remains relevant and timely, so you’re keeping your audience engaged and maybe even going viral.
Fresh content is also one of the best ways to promote new products and services, and to experiment with new formats.
Create evergreen content
Finally, you’ll want to plan and create your evergreen content. Evergreen content is YouTube content that remains relevant and useful to your audience over time, no matter when it was created. This type of content is usually educational in nature and highly related to your particular area of expertise or niche. These include tutorials, how-to guides, mini-courses, and other video resources that provide value to your audience and can be shared over and over across time.
While brainstorming this kind of content, you’ll want to do some market and keyword research within your niche to see what kinds of pain points your target audience is struggling with and the kinds of content solutions they’re looking for.
Evergreen content is the cornerstone of any YouTuber’s content strategy. Maintaining these videos ensure that your audience always has access to the resources they need, and that you’re consistently driving new subscribers and prospective customers to your channel.
4. Determine your upload schedule
The final step in creating your content calendar is to hammer out your upload schedule. This means determining how often you’ll be publishing new content on your YouTube channel. Remember, when it comes to YouTube success (i.e. keeping your audience engaged and the YouTube views rolling in), consistency is key. So, you’ll want to decide on a publishing schedule that you can stick to reliably.
Be as realistic as possible when choosing your schedule and don’t overcommit. It may be tempting to commit to posting videos daily, but if you’re not able to maintain this cadence, your content strategy will get derailed and your engagement.
Ask yourself what cadence suits your workflow and schedule the best. Whether you’re uploading videos once a week or once a month, make sure you set up a consistent schedule that you and your audience can rely on.
Monetize your YouTube audience
And that’s it! Now you know how to create a stellar YouTube content calendar so you can begin planning and implementing your content strategy.
Creating a content calendar is only the first step to building the YouTube channel of your dreams. Next up? YouTube monetization.
Want to monetize your YouTube audience easily? You can with The Leap.
The Leap is an all-in-one platform with features including an AI-powered digital product builder, a mobile-optimized link-in-bio storefront, and email marketing tools. Because it’s powered by generative AI, The Leap’s powerful authoring tool enables you to transform your YouTube content into best-selling digital products (like mini-courses, video tutorials, challenges, and more) in just minutes. The Leap’s built-in storefront tool and email marketing suite means you can build, sell, and market your digital products to your YouTube audience all from one place. How easy is that?
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Follow The Leap on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for more monetization tips for creators. We also make a newsletter.
Further Reading
- What Is the Best Time to Post on YouTube?
- 11 Tips for Getting Your First 1000 YouTube Subscribers
- How To Make YouTube Shorts
- 27 YouTube Shorts Ideas To Help You Go Viral
- How Many YouTube Views Do You Need To Make Money?
- YouTube Shorts Monetization: How To Start Earning (Even Without 1,000 Subscribers)
- YouTube Money Calculator: Estimate How Much You Can Make on YouTube