Managing Editorial Calendars in Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a practical tool for editorial planning — it gives content teams a visual timeline of planned and published content, shared across everyone who needs visibility. But without active management, editorial calendars accumulate past entries that make it progressively harder to use as a forward-looking planning tool.

Setting up an editorial calendar in Google Calendar

The most effective setup uses a dedicated calendar specifically for editorial planning, separate from meeting calendars:

• Create a dedicated "Editorial Calendar" or "Content Schedule" calendar
• Share it with the content team, relevant stakeholders, and anyone who needs visibility of the publishing schedule
• Use event titles to indicate the content type and topic (e.g. "Blog: 5 tips for Google Calendar clean-up")
• Use event colour coding to indicate content type or status (planned, in production, approved, published)
• Use event descriptions for briefs, links to drafts, and sign-off notes

The most common editorial calendar problem

After 6–12 months of active use, the calendar becomes a mix of future planned content and past published content. This makes it difficult to use as a forward-looking planning tool — the past content is always there, taking up visual space and making it harder to see what is coming up.

The solution: periodic clearing

Build a quarterly or annual clearing into your editorial calendar management process. At the end of each quarter (or at the start of a new editorial year), use WipeAway to clear all entries before the current period. This keeps the calendar focused on upcoming content rather than a historical archive.

1. Export the calendar as an ICS archive before clearing (useful for auditing what was published and when)
2. Set the cut-off date to the start of the current quarter or editorial period
3. Clear the previous period's entries
4. The calendar now shows only current and upcoming planned content

Recurring content entries

If you have recurring content commitments (a weekly newsletter, a monthly report, a daily social post), WipeAway handles the recurring series automatically — clearing past instances while leaving future ones in place. This is one of the most common uses of WipeAway for editorial teams.