How to build a content strategy for your business (with an editorial calendar template)

A content strategy decides what you publish, for whom, on which channel and for which business goal. The editorial calendar turns it into dates, formats and owners. Our method: pick one pillar topic a month based on what your customers search for, turn it into five pieces and measure saves, shares and enquiries, not likes.

Quick summary

• ▸A content strategy answers four questions for every piece: which business job it does, who it is for, which channel it goes on and what action it asks for.
• ▸Topics come from what your customers already search for: Search Console, Keyword Planner and the questions they ask you by phone or email.
• ▸One topic, five pieces: a blog article, a carousel, a short video, a newsletter and a text post.
• ▸The editorial calendar is a spreadsheet with date, piece, channel, business job, audience, call to action and metric. The template is below.
• ▸Measure saves, shares and enquiries, not likes.

What is a content strategy, and how is it different from just posting?

It is the plan that links what you publish to what your business sells. Posting without a strategy does not mean posting little: many businesses post often, but each piece goes its own way and nobody knows whether it helps.

Our rule for every piece is simple: it needs a business job, an audience, a channel and a call to action. If one of the four is missing, it does not go into the calendar.

Step 1. Why are you publishing, and for whom?

Start with the business goal. Every piece does one of these four jobs:

• ▸Attract: get found by people who do not know you yet, on Google, in AI assistants or in social media search.
• ▸Persuade: answer the doubts and objections that hold back a purchase (price, timing, how you work).
• ▸Convert: lead to a specific action, such as requesting a quote, booking or getting in touch.
• ▸Retain: make existing customers come back, recommend you or buy another service.

Then define your ideal customer with three questions. If you cannot answer them, ask three recent customers:

• 1.What problem do they have just before they look for you, and what words do they use to describe it?
• 2.What stops them from deciding: price, distrust, lack of time, not knowing what they need?
• 3.Where do they look for information: Google, LinkedIn, Instagram, email, an AI assistant?

Step 2. Which topics should you cover?

A pillar topic is a broad subject that matters to your customer and is directly related to what you sell. For a renovation company it could be “how much does a bathroom renovation cost”; for an accounting firm, “which expenses a freelancer can deduct”. Topics come from four places:

• 1.Search Console, Performance report. Look for queries with impressions but low positions: Google already links you to that topic and a better piece can move it up. Sort them by impressions and group them by topic.
• 2.Keyword Planner. It gives you the approximate volume of each search and related searches you had not thought of. We explain it in how to use Google Keyword Planner.
• 3.Real customer questions. The ones you get by phone, email and in sales meetings. If three customers ask the same thing, it is a topic.
• 4.Social media search. Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn are also used to search. We cover it in social SEO: social networks as search engines.

Twelve topics give you a year of calendar. Rank them by how close they are to what you sell and by search interest, and start at the top.

Step 3. How do you get five pieces out of one topic?

You do not need five different ideas. The blog article is the master piece and the other four adapt part of it to each channel, with their own format and call to action:

Adapting is not copy and paste. Each channel has its tone: on LinkedIn, an opinion with real judgement works, as explained in LinkedIn for SMEs: a practical guide to generating leads; on the blog, the complete answer. If you use AI for drafts, check the voice with these techniques so your content does not sound like AI.

Social media does not replace the blog. According to IAB Spain's 2026 Social Media Study, 54% of users in Spain already use social networks to look for information before buying online, and the average user visits 7.2 networks. That attention is spread thin; the article on your website is the piece that remains yours and that Google can show. If you do not have a blog yet, see our blog creation service.

Step 4. How do you build an editorial calendar? (template)

This is the template we use, with one example row. Select the table, copy it and paste it into Google Sheets or Excel: each column lands in its own cell.

How to fill it in:

• 1.Choose the month's pillar topic from your topic list, starting with the one closest to what you sell.
• 2.Write the article first. It is the most complete piece and the others come from it.
• 3.Fill in one row per piece, with all eleven columns. If a piece has no clear job or call to action, drop it.
• 4.Assign an owner and a real date, allowing time for review.
• 5.At the end of the month, fill in “Result” with each piece's main metric and decide which format to repeat.

And this is how a month with a single pillar topic is split:

A social media editorial calendar is the same sheet filtered by channel. You do not need another document: add one view per network and you will see at a glance if one is left empty or if you keep repeating a format.

Step 5. What should you measure on each channel?

We measure saves and shares because they say more than a like. Someone who saves a piece plans to come back to it because it solves something for them. Someone who shares it is recommending it to another person. A like takes one tap and tells you neither.

Review the data once a month with the calendar open: record each piece's result and repeat the formats that work with the next topic.

What do the pieces that AI answers cite have in common?

Google has official documentation; other assistants have no equivalent guide, so we apply the same four traits:

• 1.It answers in the first lines. A direct answer of two or three sentences under the title, before the detail, for the reader in a hurry and for whoever summarises the page.
• 2.It adds something of its own. Google's guide to its AI features asks for original content, with a unique perspective or first-hand experience, not what other pages already repeat.
• 3.It is well organised. Headings that are real questions, tables and lists that stand on their own. Google makes clear there is no need to break text into tiny chunks: the structure is for the reader.
• 4.It is a normal page, indexed and crawlable. According to Google, appearing in AI Overviews or AI Mode does not require special AI files or specific structured data.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. IAB Spain: “IAB Spain presenta el Estudio de Redes Sociales 2026” (19/05/2026, with Elogia; accessed 28/10/2026). https://iabspain.es/iab-spain-presenta-estudio-rrss-2026/
2. Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search (updated 10/07/2026). https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide
3. Google Search Central: AI features and your website. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
4. Google Search Central: Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/creating-helpful-content
5. Search Console Help: Performance report (Search results). https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7576553?hl=en

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