Editorial Calendar

editorial-calendar

When to use

• A content programme is producing assets in bursts (campaign-shaped only) and the cadence is brittle the quarter the campaign rests.
• The team owes more drafts than it can ship and the backlog is functioning as content-debt rather than queue — surface and prioritise.
• A new audience-by-message matrix exists and the team needs to translate it into a repeating cadence with beat-mapping across channel stages.

Do NOT use to draft the asset itself (downstream), pick channel- specific tactics like ad creative or email subject lines (out of scope — channel-agnostic skill), or sequence a one-off launch wave (route to gtm-launch).

Cognition cluster

• Mental model 3 — Pareto principle (80/20). Roughly 20 % of the editorial beats produce 80 % of the audience pull. The calendar is the discipline of doubling down on the 20 % and letting the 80 % be reactive, not core. See docs/contracts/mental-models.md § 3.
• Mental model 18 — Pull vs. push systems. Evergreen content is a pull system (the audience finds it); campaigns are a push system (we time the arrival). The calendar separates the two so campaign collapse does not collapse pull. See mental-models.md § 18.
• Context-spine — product + customer-segment + channel-stage + funnel-stage. Read product for what is shippable as proof, customer-segment for who reads which beat, channel-stage for where the audience is in the awareness arc, and funnel-stage for whether a beat is top-of-funnel reach or mid-funnel proof. See context-spine.

Procedure

Step 0: Inherit the message stack and audience matrix

Identify the locked primary-message.md, supporting-proofs.md, and audience-matrix.md from messaging-architecture. The editorial calendar is a cadence translation of the matrix; without the matrix it is content-as-impulse, not content-as-system.

Step 1: Analyze the inherited cadence

Review existing surfaces: what has the team published in the last two quarters, what is its evergreen pull (organic traffic over time), and what was campaign-only (a single spike and decay). The output is two lists: load-bearing evergreen and campaign artefacts that have already paid back. Everything else is content debt — name it explicitly.

Step 2: Classify each beat — evergreen · campaign · reactive

Three buckets, never collapsed:

• Evergreen. Beats that map to a load-bearing proof and a durable audience question. Authored once, refreshed quarterly. Pull system.
• Campaign. Beats keyed to a wave (launch, event, season). Authored to a date. Push system. Decommissioned by name when the wave closes.
• Reactive. Beats keyed to a market or competitor event. No pre-allocated slot; the calendar reserves capacity, not a topic.

Step 3: Beat-map across channel-stage × funnel-stage

For each audience in the matrix, plot one evergreen beat per (channel-stage, funnel-stage) cell that the audience actually lives in. Empty cells are explicit gaps; they do not auto-fill. Beats per cell beyond one are content noise, not coverage.

Step 4: Validate against the Pareto cut and the pull-vs-push line

Validate the calendar on three checks:

1. Pareto cut. Identify the 20 % of beats that, if dropped, would visibly shrink audience pull. Verify exactly that 20 % has the highest authoring investment. If high investment is going into the 80 %, the calendar is upside-down — rebalance.
2. Pull-vs-push separation. Confirm campaign collapse does not collapse evergreen — evergreen surfaces are not on the campaign author's critical path.
3. Reactive capacity. Confirm reactive slots reserve hours, not topics. A reactive slot with a pre-decided topic is a campaign in disguise.

Step 5: Manage content debt explicitly

Inventory the debt list from Step 1. For each item: repay (refresh and republish), archive (remove from indexed surfaces), or retire (delete). Untouched debt compounds — it is not free to leave on the shelf.

Step 6: Hand back

Hand the artefacts to content-funnel-design for funnel-stage-to-shape mapping, and to release-comms when campaign waves land near a launch wave from gtm-launch.

Related Skills

WHEN to use this

• The unit of work is the cadence (which beats repeat at which frequency on which surface), not a single asset.
• A team is over-investing in campaigns and under-investing in evergreen pull.
• A content-debt list is silently growing and needs explicit repay / archive / retire decisions.

WHEN NOT to use this

• Mapping each funnel stage to a content shape (deep-dive, comparison, demo) — route to content-funnel-design.
• Drafting voice attributes or tone-by-context matrix — route to voice-and-tone-design.
• Sequencing a launch wave with gates and beats — route to gtm-launch.
• Authoring the asset copy — out of scope here (downstream).

When the agent should load this

• "Build us an editorial calendar for the next two quarters."
• "Wir produzieren zu viele Kampagnen-Artefakte — wo ist die Evergreen-Linie?"
• "Beat-map the cadence against the audience matrix."
• "What is our content-debt list and what do we repay first?"
• "Reactive capacity is full of pre-planned topics — fix the calendar."

Output

1. cadence-classification.md — every active beat tagged evergreen · campaign · reactive · debt, with the Pareto-cut ranking inside the evergreen bucket.
2. beat-map.md — audience × channel-stage × funnel-stage grid with one evergreen beat per occupied cell, empty cells explicitly named as gaps.
3. content-debt-ledger.md — every debt item with a repay, archive, or retire decision and the date it lapses.

Gotcha

• "We are evergreen-first" is the most common self-description and almost never true on the calendar — verify by authoring investment, not intent.
• Reactive capacity that is full of pre-planned topics is campaign capacity wearing reactive clothing; the calendar will betray that mid-quarter.
• Content debt with no archive / retire date is a roadmap pretending to be a queue. Refuse the open-ended "we will get to it" row.

Do NOT

• Do NOT draft channel-specific tactics (subject lines, ad creative, video specs) — the calendar is channel-agnostic; tactics live with the channel owner.
• Do NOT collapse campaign and evergreen on the same critical path — campaign delay should not stall evergreen publish.
• Do NOT inflate beats past one per matrix cell; the cadence will not survive a quarter of vacation.

Runnable example

Mid-market HR analytics tool, audience matrix locked (HR director · CFO · IT-security):

• Cadence classification — evergreen (4 beats, Pareto-cut top 2 carry pull); campaign (2 beats keyed to board-quarter launch wave); reactive (8 hours per fortnight reserved); debt (11 items: 5 repay, 4 archive, 2 retire).
• Beat-map — HR director (mid-funnel proof): one cohort-retention deep-dive per quarter. CFO (decision-funnel proof): one ROI calculator refresh per board-quarter. IT-security (top-funnel awareness): one HRIS-integration architecture explainer evergreen.
• Hand-off → content-funnel-design translates each beat into its content shape; release-comms co-schedules board-quarter campaign with launch waves.

→ Final prose pass for audience-facing output: humanizer — remove AI-writing tells before delivery.