Mastering Content Calendars in Google Sheets for Effortless Planning and Organization
Harness the Power of Google Sheets for Your Content Calendar
Introduction
Google Sheets is not just a tool for creating spreadsheets, tracking data, or organizing tasks. It is also an excellent platform for crafting a content calendar. Whether you’re juggling various client campaigns or coordinating internal projects, having individual calendars for each campaign or project on Google Sheets can greatly streamline your workflow. In this guide, we’re going to learn how to create a calendar in Google Sheets and explore additional tips and tricks to improve your calendar design. Get your Google Sheets ready as we dive into this tutorial.
Benefits of Creating a Calendar in Google Sheets
Google Sheets may not be the first tool that comes to mind when thinking of calendar creation, but it packs several benefits that make it an ideal choice including:
- Effortless Collaboration: Google Sheets allows seamless collaboration with team members. Creating a calendar here lets you share it in real-time, ensuring everyone stays updated and organized.
- Accessibility: You can access and update your Google Sheets calendar from any device with an internet connection, providing flexibility to stay up-to-date wherever you are.
- Customizability: Google Sheets provides plentiful formatting and design options to personalize your calendar. You can choose from different colors, fonts, and styles to align your calendar with your branding or personal taste.
- Integration: Google Sheets integrates seamlessly with other Google tools like Google Calendar and Google Drive. This way, you can synchronize your spreadsheet calendar with Google Calendar and link relevant documents, ensuring everything is centralized.
- Cost-Efficiency: Another notable advantage of using Google Sheets for your calendar is that it is completely free of charge, making it ideal for small businesses or individuals on a tight budget.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Calendar in Google Sheets
1. Open New Spreadsheet and Select Your Month
Firstly, open a new spreadsheet. Then, choose the first month you want to create a calendar for and input it in the first cell. For instance, if you are inputting January 2022, Google Sheets will automatically recognize this as a date since it follows the format of a known date or period.
2. Start Formatting Your Calendar
Next, you need to begin formatting your calendar. First, Merge seven columns (A-G) into one to provide a proper space for each day of the week. You can also center-align your text for a better presentation. Additionally, you can increase the font size and make the month bold to stand out.
3. Populate The Days of The Week Using Formulas
You can fill in the days of the week in each column (A-G). Consider using the formula “=TEXT (1, “DDDD”)” instead of manually typing each weekday. This formula tells Google Sheets to replace numbers with dates or time, depending on the format you’re using.
4. Input The Dates
After having your days of the week ready, it’s time to fill in the numbers corresponding to the dates in the month. Simply identify the first day of the month and continue until you fill in all days of that month.
5. Extend the Process Over The Entire Month
As you complete the first row of dates, repeat the process for the other weeks in the month. Note that you’ll need to manually insert the first number of each week, then drag horizontally to autofill the rest of the week.
6. Optimize the Look of Your Calendar
At this point, your sheet should already look like a calendar. To enhance its presentation, you can expand blank rows to create boxes under the numbers. You can also vertically align all elements to the center of their cells, bold your day numbers, shade your numbered rows, and gray out weekend columns for better readability.
7. Personalize with Design Elements
To make the calendar look professional and personal, you can add some fun elements like images, upcoming events, and play with different font sizes.
8. Rinse and Repeat the Process
Lastly, apply the same steps for the other months of the year. For ease, simply duplicate your designed January calendar and update the dates and days for each subsequent month.
Boost Your Efficiency with Google Sheets Templates
If creating a calendar from scratch in Google Sheets sounds daunting, fret not! Google Sheets offers pre-made templates that greatly simplify the process. These versatile templates serve your basic to advanced scheduling needs, including annual planning, editorial strategy, and social media content scheduling.
How to Use a Google Sheets Template
Using a template in Google Sheets is straightforward. First, access Google Sheets’ homepage, navigate through the “Templates” section, locate the “Annual Calendar” template under the “Personal” category, and hit click. Your calendar is generated instantly, ready for customization. Google Sheets offers you themes to choose from. Moreover, you can adjust the fonts as per your preference.
Conclusion
Google Sheets can be a powerful tool for organizing your tasks and projects through a well-crafted calendar. Creating a Google Sheets calendar is a fantastic way to track internal campaigns, organize client projects, or share an event calendar across your team. And with the provided free templates, you can jump-start your planning and organization efforts swiftly. Now, you are equipped with the knowledge to harness the full potential of Google Sheets for your calendar needs.
How Google Sheets can Complement Your Website Design Workflow
Aside from being a powerful tool for managing your content and editorial calendar, Google sheets can also be a great addition to your website design workflow. This is particularly beneficial for website design professionals and businesses who handle multiple projects simultaneously.
How Google Sheets can Boost Your Design Workflow
Here are some ways Google Sheets can complement your website design processes:
Website Content and Copy Management
You can use Google Sheets to manage website content and copy. With sheets, you can easily track and update pieces of content for different pages of your website. This is helpful when working with copywriters and editors ensuring that no detail is missed.
Audit and Issue Tracking
When designing a website, there are often numerous rounds of review and revisions. Google Sheets allows multiple collaborators, making it easy to keep track of issues and their resolutions.
SEO Tracking
Google Sheets can also be used as a tool for tracking SEO keywords and strategies. This can include tracking keywords, performance metrics, backlinks, and so forth. For SEO professionals, this feature of Google Sheets will be highly valuable.
Client/Collaborator Access
If you’re running a website design firm or working as an SEO specialist , sharing Google Sheets with your clients allows them to see and monitor the progress of the project in real-time. This instills trust and transparency.
Efficient Project Management
Google Sheets can aid in visual timeline creation, interlinking various tasks, and even generating automatic reminders for due dates. It can benefit project managers by providing strong documentation and collaboration features.
Integration
Last but not least, Google Sheets integrates well with a wide array of tools – from project management software like Asana to data analysis tools like Supermetrics. This helps reduce manual work and streamline processes.
Conclusion
Google Sheets offers far more than just spreadsheet functionality. It is a versatile tool that can significantly streamline your workflow, from planning and scheduling your content, tracking SEO performance, managing your website design projects, and improving your overall organizational systems. With the multitude of features it offers, it is worthwhile exploring everything Google Sheets has to offer.
About MKTG Plan
MKTG Plan is a digital marketing agency focused on helping businesses grow and succeed online. We offer expert services in web design, SEO, PPC, and social media marketing, amongst many others. Our team is committed to delivering results and ensuring our clients are equipped with the digital strategies and tools needed to lead their industry. Contact us today to learn how we can help your business achieve its online goals.
Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in May 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.