Chapter 1: Build Your Own Marketing Calendar

In This Lesson:

• Bulk Import Existing Projects & Content On Your Marketing Calendar
• Add A Project To Your Calendar On The Publish Date
• Give Your Project A Name
• See The Big Picture & What’s Coming Next: Project Card Breakdown
• Add Your Integrations

Core Concept: Put Everything In Your CoSchedule Marketing Calendar

Marketing projects, requests, and ideas get dropped on you from all directions – emails, Slack messages, meetings, and even desk drop-bys. With CoSchedule Marketing Calendar, you now have a place to manage every project and request that comes your way. Once you get in the habit of putting everything in Marketing Calendar, it becomes your single source of truth for your marketing. Throughout this guide, you’re going to learn step-by-step how to build your own marketing calendar so you can get visibility into everything you are doing and when. What is this guide? This lesson will walk you through how to use CoSchedule Marketing Calendar to see all your projects & social messages on a single calendar Who is this guide for? Marketers who wear many hats and struggle to coordinate their marketing work as their task list grows.

Bulk Import Existing Projects & Content On Your Marketing Calendar

If you already have projects and content in a different platform such as Google Sheets, Excel, or a different project management platform, you can bulk import this content to your Marketing Calendar. This is made easy with Marketing Calendar’s Bulk Project Import feature. To import projects, follow these steps:

1. Select Bulk Project Import in the Create drop down menu.
2. Choose which platform to import your projects.
3. Follow the provided directions to import all your content into Marketing Calendar.

Now that your existing projects have been added to your marketing calendar, all new projects need to be added to your Calendar.

Add A Project To Your Calendar On The Publish Date

Marketing Calendar is meant to be used as a publishing calendar – meaning you’ll add projects to the calendar on the day they will go live or be completed. Here’s why:

• This provides visibility, so you (and others) know what’s going live and when.
• It helps set priorities (i.e. the next upcoming project should be your priority).
• It creates a deadline – which increases the likelihood of accomplishing a project on time.

Think of an upcoming blog post, newsletter, event, etc. that you are currently working on. Now it’s time to add it to your Calendar. To add a new project, click the plus sign on the specific date on your calendar you want the project to publish or go live. Then select the project type.

Give Your Project A Name

After you’ve clicked the plus sign on the publish date and selected the project type, you’ll need to give your project a name. The project name shows up on your project card when you are on the Calendar view. Continue adding planned marketing projects to your calendar to create visibility into all of your projects.

Project Card Breakdown: See The Big Picture & What’s Coming Next

The project card gives you all the details you just filled out like the project name, Color Label (which we’ll learn about in Chapter 2), Project Type, and Tags. The project type helps you understand the kind of content you’ll create without having to click into the project for more details. Why is a Project Type important?

• It shows the tactics that contribute to your marketing strategy.
• It helps inform others what you’re working on for better visibility.
• It highlights project frequency so your strategy can be more balanced.
• It allows you to create saved, filtered views of your calendar (i.e. social messages only, email calendar, etc.).

Add Your Integrations

Integrations enhance your projects by syncing activities from outside tools like MailChimp, WordPress, and Social Media to your calendar – which means you don’t have to waste your time duplicating work. Here are a few of the best integrations for marketing teams like yours.

• WordPress & HubSpot – Whenever someone creates a new blog post in WordPress or HubSpot, it will automatically appear on your Marketing Calendar.
• Email Marketing – Whenever someone creates a new email in Mailchimp, HubSpot, Constant Contact, or Campaign Monitor, a new project card will appear on your Marketing Calendar.
• Social Media – Marketing Calendar connects to your social media channels, so you plan, create, and schedule your social messages alongside your other marketing projects.

To connect an integration: 1. Click the Settings button in the left-side panel. 2. Select Integrations from the menu list under Settings.