Mark Your Calendar

It’s the time of year when calendars start to crowd out the books and magazines in bookstores. But there’s a special kind of calendar that all good public relations professionals use – the editorial calendar.

Except for the year and the names of the months, these calendars bear little resemblance to the glossy hang-up calendars in the stores. No swimsuit-clad models, lush scenery, puppies, kittens or cartoons of Dilbert. Editorial calendars are usually bare-bones lists of upcoming issue topics and major features—or at least the cover stories or special sections. Not much to look at—unless you’re a PR pro trying to crack that market.

What’s great about editorial calendars is that your target publications – the ones which their target markets match yours – are basically telling you exactly what information they need for each issue. If you can spin your own story to match what the media is looking for, then you have a great chance of being featured in that publication.

A current editorial calendar can usually be found in the advertising section at the publication’s website. If you can’t find it there, contact the publications marketing/sales department and ask them to email/snail mail it to you.

Now, not all publications have editorial calendars. Really small magazines – the many labor-of-love kind of magazines published by enthusiasts –usually don’t. Magazines, which don’t accept ads, may have one but they don’t publish it. Totally reader-contributed publications don’t. New magazines generally don’t because the content is so often changed and tweaked as the publication searches for its “voice.”

Even some large, national magazines don’t have calendars. News weeklies like Time and Newsweek don’t. Neither does People or US Weekly. They are steered by what news hits that week and that is, of course, something you can’t predict months in advance.

After reviewing the calendar, you can decide which stories you can offer to be a source or expert for, or, in the case of trade publications, which months you could offer a written expert-opinion piece.

Remember that editorial calendars can and do change, so check for updates regularly. Also, pay attention to deadlines. Article queries and pitches especially should be sent to the editors well ahead of time. And if they don’t have deadlines, assume that the media need the information about four months out.