The 2018 Content Planning Calendar every marketer needs

If you’re a marketer, work in PR, or you’re responsible for putting out timely content for your own business, then you know how tricky planning activity for a new year or client can be.

As the Content Marketing Manager at MintTwist I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve found myself browsing through the search engine results pages (SERPs) entering keywords like “key dates in 2018”, “list of sporting games 2017” or “events in London this summer”, to discover opportunities to strategise and develop topical content. After trawling through a variety of websites, with dozens of tabs open all to place into an Excel document, I found myself thinking: “there’s got to be an easier way” and “I can’t be the only person with this problem”. Well, I wasn’t. After speaking with the wider team at MintTwist, and friends who work in marketing, it became clear that there wasn't a tool or a content calendar (that they/me were aware of) that displayed a variety of dates, anniversaries, events and more throughout the year to help with marketing planning. There are examples of individual industries or international dates, but what I was really after was a one-stop shop. So, in the final few months of 2017, we started to develop a resource that would do this. Introducing The 2018 Content Planning Calendar. This is a free calendar that marketing, PR professionals and business owners can use to identify what content to promote when and what activities they could or should get involved in. For this first iteration of the calendar, there are over 400 dates of relevance to various professions and industries. We plan to continually make updates to this calendar throughout the year – so stay tuned, this is just the start! If you’ve got dates you think we should add, then get in touch. The calendar is split into 7 main categories, with more on the way! These categories are: anniversaries, art events, fashion events, festivals, sporting events, world events (like World Teachers Day) and other events (like Mothering Sunday in the UK). There is definitely a spin on UK-based dates, as we’re a digital marketing agency in Old Street – but we’ve added in lots of international and a few US-based dates for good measure. But that’s not all. To make lives a little easier and to save you from copying and pasting the dates that are relevant to you, we’ve also included an option to download the calendar as a CSV file for you to format into your very own Excel spreadsheet.  Additionally, if you’d like to feature the calendar on your website or within a blog article, use the embed code at the bottom of the page. You can view and start using The 2018 Content Planning Calendar right here. We hope this tool becomes as helpful to you as we feel it is here at MintTwist. We’re certainly proud of what we’re offering so far and have already received some great feedback from clients and peers alike. Shares, shout-outs, or special mentions? Yes, please go right ahead!