Ask Kevin: How Do I Make a Communication Calendar?

 Ask Kevin: “How Do I Make A Communication Calendar?”

In this series, I answer questions from my audience. To submit a question, email me at: [email protected]. You will get a prompt response, and in some cases, I will also eventually outline a more in-depth response on my blog. 

Question: 

I know I am supposed to be creating a communication calendar, but I have never seen one. Can you send me an example?

My Response: 

Of course! Here is a Google Sheets template of a communication calendar. 

Here is how I would recommend that you go about making use of the communication calendar template:

1. Enter all the dates you already know—for example, events, holidays, and anything related to your nonprofit’s usual schedule. You work at a school, so you should add the first day of school, last day of school, holidays, holy days, teacher in-service dates, etc.

2. Next, work on fitting your monthly communication in. I helped by outlining a recommended communication based on my quarterly communication cycle. You should enter things like: 

• First draft of newsletter copy
• Final copy ready for design
• Design finalized
• Send to mail house
• Estimated delivery date
• Load newsletter articles onto blog/website
• Email newsletter designed
• Email newsletter sent

3. Fill in the other communications that you know of so far. For events, you can put in the save the date design and mailing, the invitation, etc. 

4. Add in social media topics. Using the holidays and things you have coming up, put on social media content ideas, so you don’t have to think about it later. 

You will review this communication calendar WEEKLY at a minimum. If you have one, a staff meeting is a good time to pull this up. When you review it, you will make sure you are on track for the week, then look 30, 60, and 90 days out to update it as needed and look ahead and begin preparing early. If you are doing a monthly mailing (direct mail)

Pro Tip: You will notice that your calendar is getting full. That’s why I have it in Excel, so you can merge fields or add lines. I like to make mine easier to see by using different colors to reflect specific things. For example, the final delivery date may be BOLD, while you may highlight the final design orange so the designer can quickly look at the calendar and know when everything is due. You may choose to do email communications in one style and direct mail in another or assign a color to each member of your team. 

Pro Tip 2.0: Some of my clients link files right in this document. For example, social media posts might have a Canva link, so they just click on it and download. Copy for a newsletter might link to the Google Doc where the content lives, so everyone knows where it is at any given moment.

I hope this helps. Thanks for asking, and feel free to reach out again if you have any more questions.