How to set up an editorial calendar in Wrike

I’m always amazed by people who don’t use calendars to track their lives. I love ripping off a page each day on my little desk calendar (this one comes highly recommended), flipping my wall calendar to see what the image of the month is, and tracking every little life event on my Google Calendar (don’t judge me, I’m having a great time). 

It’s the same for work. I don’t know how I’d manage our content team’s output without an editorial calendar. I track that baby first thing in the morning, and last thing at night. It started out as just a blog publishing calendar, and now it covers all our assets, including case studies, guides, infographics, landing pages, social posts, and videos.

Earlier this year, I was asked by my colleague Brandes Gress to film a video demo on how to build a content calendar in Wrike. So, if you’d prefer to watch that than finish this blog post, I will not be offended. If you prefer a written guide, keep scrolling.

4 steps to create your content calendar

I’ve broken it down into four simple steps, and I’d estimate it takes about 30 minutes to get set up (depending on how many tasks you’ve got and how quickly you can categorize them into folders).

1. Create a folder for each content asset type

At Wrike, we’ve built our editorial calendar around our different content asset types. That means we need to have a source folder for every content type we want to show. 

For example, the very blog post you’re reading exists as a Wrike task that’s tagged into “Blog Posts.” If you want to ensure every blog post shows up on the calendar, you need to make sure it’s included in this folder.

Note: You can use projects rather than folders if you prefer. This may be more suitable if you want to track multiple campaigns or initiatives at one time, rather than asset types. 

2. Select new calendar

Next, head to Calendars in the left-hand sidebar. If you don’t see it, just select More, and it will appear as an option.

Note: This is different from Calendar view, which you can toggle to on an existing project or folder without creating a standalone calendar.

If it’s your first calendar, you can select Create new and name it. You can also select the space it should belong to. If you’re a space admin, the name of that space will appear here. Once you create it, it will automatically be shared with everyone in that space. So, if you prefer, you can just initially create it in your Personal space and then share it with other users when you’re done.

3. Add custom layers for each content asset 

Here, you’ll need to create a corresponding layer for every folder you have. So, navigate to the three dots beside your new calendar and select Create layer. 

Now it’s time to customize it. 

1. Name the layer based on your content asset type, e.g., “Blog Posts”
2. Select Smart based on Tasks if you plan to use specific tasks within the folders to track milestones and publish dates
3. Add your Tasks source — this will be the name of your chosen folder
4. Check Include tasks from subfolders to ensure everything is viewable (e.g., you might have subfolders in your “Blog Posts” folder, like “SEO Blogs”)

For filters, the world is your oyster. Maybe you want to filter by Assignee and only show tasks for that specific person. For my team, I filter by Task date type and select Milestone. This is because we have specific “Go Live” subtasks for each of our assets and this is solely to track the publish date. 

However, if you just have one task, you can simply select End date and it will still appear. If you choose Full duration, it will show the entire length of the task, which mightn’t look too bad right now but when your calendar is more populated, it’s gonna start getting messy.

Once you’ve hit Save, you can move on to your next layer and repeat until you have one for each folder

Tip: Don’t forget, you can customize the colors for each of your layers — just head to the Settings option for that layer. For the record, I’m a big fan of the pastels. 

4. Share your beautiful calendar with the world

Once you’re done adding your layers, it might look something like this. So pretty! 

Tip: Pin it to your sidebar for easy access. 

If it was created in your Personal space, you can now share with a specific user or group, or create a public link to show external users. 

Get in touch

Are there any other things you’d like to know about Wrike calendars? Drop us a comment on LinkedIn and we’ll take note. Happy color-coding!