How to Create a Content Calendar
How to Create a Content Calendar
CAUTION: Dates on calendar are CLOSER than they appear.
As a parish, there are so many places that need content:
the bulletin
the social media accounts
the website
the e-blast
the blog
It's enough to make you want to throw in the towel. Do not despair, instead create a Content Calendar!
Below are 5 easy steps.
Step 1 - Print a Calendar or Write the Dates Out
This is definitely the easiest and fastest of the 5 steps. You can literally print out the calendar month you are working on or just grab a lined piece of paper and write out the days of the month. I use both methods and both work.
Let's choose June and work on this together.
Step 2 - Filling Out the calendar
While you certainly do not have to have content for every day of the month, it is definitely something you can work towards. To begin filling out the days on the calendar, I suggest you look at 5 different categories in the following order.
Liturgical Calendar
I generally start with the Liturgical calendar to see what "big" days are coming up. There are a lot in June 2025: Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity, Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart of Jesus, Immaculate Heart of Mary and return to Ordinary Time. The best place to confirm these dates is the USCCB Daily Readings Calendar.
Saints Feast Days
Next I look to see what Feasts, Memorials and Solemnities of the Saints are happening in the month. My two favorite places to get this information is Franciscan Media's Saint of the Day and the Vatican's
Saint of the Day - Calendar of Saints. I generally choose the most well-known saints as well as saints from your country.
In June we celebrate St. Charles Lwanga & Companions, St. Anthony of Padua, St. John the Baptist and Saints Peter and Paul. Depending on whether I am trying to fill out the full calendar I may choose saints, blesseds and venerables I'm less familiar with - remember they all have interesting stories.
Secular Holidays
I also tend to include major "secular" holidays. In June we have the Belmont Stakes, Flag Day, Father's Day and the first day of Summer. You can get this information from timeanddate.com
Parish Happenings
Be sure to include whatever events are happening in the parish. Are there First Communions or Confirmation? Is there a special school Mass for the end of the school year? What about a Parish picnic? Is your priest celebrating an anniversary or birthday?
Miscellaneous
Many different things can fall into this category including quotes, book or movie recommendations, suggestions for virtual tours or Catholic places to visit over the summer holidays. All of these things can provide additional content, especially if you are trying to create content for every day of the month. Use these to fill in the blank spots.
You can also refer back to blog "Where to Find Content" for more ideas.
Step 3 - What? Where? How?
Once you have an idea of content for each day, you then need to decide where you will use the content. You could create daily posts for your social media, which you could also send out in an e-blast? You could write a few short blurbs for your parish bulletin and then also use them on your social media or on your website.
Next you have to think about how you will present each piece of content. For instance, there are many beautiful paintings of the Ascension that are in the public domain (Christi Himmelfahrt by Gebhard Fugel, c. 1893) combine that with a quote from the gospel and voilà!
When it comes to the saints I like to either use a painting or photo of the saint that is in the public domain along with a quote by the saint. Or you could link to a YouTube video about the saint - there are a lots of good ones.
One of my other favorite go tos is a virtual tour! For instance, I would suggest people take a virtual tour of St. Peter's Basilica as well as St. Paul Outside the Walls in honour of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29th.
For days such as the Belmont Stakes, I generally turn to Google and type in the word Catholic along with the event to see if anything comes up. In this instance, I found a story about Catholic Jockey Mike Smith who won the Triple Crown in 2019.
If you cannot find a Catholic connection try asking ChatGPT. I asked it to give me something for Flag day with a connection to the Church and here is what it produced for Flag Day.
Happy Flag Day!
As we celebrate the ideals our flag represents, we turn to God with gratitude and hope: “Seek the welfare of the city… and pray to the Lord on its behalf.” – Jeremiah 29:7 Lord, bless our nation and guide our leaders.
Step 4 - Make the Content Look Pretty
The best place to do this is Canva! You can create posts for everything you came up with. This method will likely take the longest.
So instead of Canva, find an image of a painting in the public domain and post that with your caption.
If you want really simple find a relevant YouTube video and share it on your social media or in your eblast. You can find an article about the topic and share it to your Facebook account.
Another really easy way to make your caption stand out is to use the Facebook background (see above.) This will work best for Quotes and Scripture.
Step 5 - Post & Print
Finally, print and/or post your captions, videos, Canva images, quotes, etc...
Final Thoughts
A content calendar may feel overwhelming - and definitely it is a lot of work, but if you break it down it will be manageable. Creating the calendar should only take about 30 to 40 minutes. Finding the resources and prettying them up will definitely take longer, but consider working on one week at a time. And remember you don't have to create something for every day, maybe you want to start with just 1 or 2 days a week to get comfortable with the process.
To get you started, click here and download the June 2025 calendar of ideas.
Next week will talk about how to use batching to create content.
See ya soon!👋
