Market Core · Content · Module
The calendar
The publishing rhythm, what is scheduled against it, and the fixed points in the year worth planning around — set at what can be held through a difficult quarter.
The idea
How it works
A calendar exists to make publishing a rhythm rather than a series of decisions. Its value comes entirely from being held, which means a modest cadence that survives a busy quarter beats an ambitious one that collapses in month three.
Seasonal moments are the part worth planning furthest ahead, because everyone plans them at the same time and the execution that stands out is the one that started earliest.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Set the cadence at your bad quarter
Not at what was managed in a good month. Irregular publishing performs worse than infrequent publishing, and an abandoned schedule costs credibility a modest one never does.
- 02
Plan on a rolling horizon
Firm near-term, provisional beyond. A calendar filled in for twelve months is either fiction or a refusal to respond to anything.
- 03
Take the moments from the audience’s year
Their reporting periods, their busy season, their renewal dates. The organisation’s own calendar is rarely the relevant one.
- 04
Track whether it is actually held
Published against planned, per month. It is the one content measure almost nobody keeps, and it explains most of the others.
One level in
The components of the calendar
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Published against planned, month by month. It is the content measure nobody keeps, and it explains most of the others.
The other modules in content
Pillars
The few subjects the organisation keeps returning to and wants to be known for — chosen so that a body of work accumulates into a position rather than into a stream of unrelated pieces.
LearnFormats
What the organisation actually produces, and what job each format is doing — which audience, which stage, and what it is meant to change.
LearnProduction
What each piece costs to make, including the research, review and approval that dominate the total — and how much the organisation can actually get out of the door.
LearnReuse and lifespan
How long each piece stays useful, and how much of it can become something else — because the cheapest content is almost always something that already exists.
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