The editorial calendar is the most-frequently rebuilt and least-frequently used template in marketing. Every team starts a quarter with a meticulous Gantt chart and ends it with a Slack thread. This template is built for the second reality.
Thirteen weeks, three themes
A quarter is thirteen weeks. We recommend a maximum of three rotating editorial themes per quarter, with one anchor theme owning at least 50 percent of the slots. More than three themes destroys the compounding effect of repetition; fewer than two creates audience fatigue.
Channel pacing rules
The template includes default pacing rules for owned media, earned media outreach, paid amplification, and community management. The defaults assume one anchor piece per fortnight, three derivatives per anchor, and a paid amplification cycle that begins on day three of the anchor and runs for fourteen days.
What to put in, what to leave out
In: anchor pieces, derivative formats, channel owners, paid amplification windows, measurement checkpoints. Out: every social post, every email send, every blog. The calendar is a strategy artefact, not a content management system. If you cannot read the quarter at a glance, the calendar is doing too much.
Maintenance cadence
A weekly fifteen-minute review with channel leads keeps the calendar honest. A monthly retrospective on theme performance feeds the next quarter. A quarterly reset is mandatory: themes that underperformed twice in a row are retired, no exceptions.
Last updated May 2026 · Filed under Templates