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How to Use the Editorial Calendar

Our editorial calendar can be found in Asana, and is used to track upcoming content to be published on the Mattermost website, blog, developer blog, and third-party channels.

Templates

The editorial calendar includes a Templates section, with workflow templates for common content types. To create a new task using a template, right-click the Template you want to use and select Duplicate Task. The task will automatically be added to Inbound Topics.

Task Workflow

Every piece of content moves through the same general workflow for creation, review, scheduling, and distribution. This is reflected in the Board View of the Asana project.

Inbound Topics

When new content ideas and topics are shared with other members of the team, they should be added to Inbound Topics with the status [REVIEW] Inbound Idea. This helps us capture and triage new post ideas and ensure that our backlog stays healthy.

Tasks in this category may need to be approved by external or internal collaborators before moving forward. For example, technical content must be reviewed by R&D team leads before it's confirmed. For more on this process, please refer to our Content Development and Distribution Processes.

Planned and In Progress

Once we’re sure that we’ll move forward with developing a piece of content, the Asana ticket is moved to Planned if it hasn't yet been started. When it's underway, it's moved to In Progress.

In order to move into In Progress a post must have an assigned author/contributor.

Pending Review

All content requires an SEO/grammar review by the Editorial Team, and many pieces also require a technical review or external approval before they're ready for publication. Please add any internal reviewers to the Asana ticket during this stage, and make a comment for any additional/external reviewers.

Publication Prep

Posts are moved to Publication Prep when they're fully reviewed. This status indicates to the Editorial Team that the post is completely approved to go live.

Scheduled

Scheduled posts that are fully loaded into WordPress and have social media content scheduled are moved into Scheduled. This gives the Editorial Team an at-a-glance overview of content that's ready to be published.

Our goal is to have the Editorial Calendar scheduled about two weeks out, allowing us to avoid last-minute scrambles to complete content!

Note that Scheduled posts still need to be distributed manually (syndicated to third-parties, posted to Reddit, etc.).

Done

When all publication activities are completed, the post is moved to Done and no further action is needed. Completed posts should be reviewed in the next Content Strategy review cycle, during the first meeting of the month.

Editorial Calendar Fields

Every content task has a number of fields that help us track campaigns more easily. They allow anyone who is editing or preparing a post for publication to have all the information they need to get the job done.

  • Assignee: The name of the person responsible for moving the post to whatever its next state is; for many stages, this person will be on the Marketing team.
  • Due date: The date that the post is set to go live.
  • Tags: The high-level Content Themes that the post is associated with. A task may have multiple tags associated with it. There are currently five tags in use for content:
    • Open Source for Enterprise
    • DevOps Workflow
    • Remote Collab
    • Product: Use this for product releases, product-specific how-to’s, and other content.
    • Developer: Use this for any content that should be cross-posted to the Developer blog.
  • Status: Statuses are set to change automatically as a task is moved through different sections of the Asana board. Additional automation may be integrated in the future.
  • Content Type: Content types help the Editorial Team plan for the specific development and distribution activities for different content formats of content, e.g. building sales collateral for case studies. Please try to use existing content types where possible.
  • Byline: The name of the person (or people) who will be credited as the author of the content, where applicable.
  • Draft/Link: A link to the Google Doc, WordPress entry, or other source of content.
  • Description: Any notes on the content that are not captured in other fields.