Blog Exercises: Add Industry Events to Your Editorial Calendar

In the blog exercise to create an editorial calendar, I gave you many ideas for setting self-assignments and deadlines for content throughout the year on your blog. Don’t forget to investigate your industry to discover events, conferences, and news to add to the calendar.

Whether you go or not, take time to research calendars and schedules for activities, meetings, events, and conferences associated with your blogging topic(s).

If you go to such events, blog about them in anticipation of the date, possibly live blog or tweet the event, and then follow-up with a summary of the event. Add these to your calendar.

If you don’t go, promote them for others who may be interested in going. Join the groups or follow them so you can report on the news and resources they make available to members and the media.

I regularly promote WordCamps around the world, WordPress regional events, to help those living in those areas to attend and get to know and learn from fellow WordPress fans around them.

You can find WordCamps and WordPress Meetups at Meetups.com, along with many other group and association events and activities in your community. Start there to find industry events and groups.

If you blog about chocolate, did you know that the Fine Chocolate Industry Association meets two to three times annually, once on the west coast and once on the west, to honor chocolatiers and contributors to the fine chocolate industry? Moonstruck Chocolate Company, based in Portland, Oregon, only a few miles from me, has been honored repeatedly at these conferences and is rated as one of the 10 Best Chocolatiers in North America. Fascinating that a search for events in the chocolate industry brought me right back home!

Into tea? Seriously into tea? The Tea Association of the USA has it’s annual World Tea Expo in June this year in Las Vegas offering a variety of certified tea training and educational programs and networking opportunities.

If you are a parent blogger, BlogHer is the leading network for you in North America. They hold many conferences and offer news and resources especially to help the parent, mommy, and daddy blogger.

Just by digging into the calendars, my mind is spinning with blog post ideas. I hope yours is, too.

Here is a short list of some of the wide variety of calendars available to help you add these dates and find appropriate topics to write about on your editorial calendar.

• Calagator: Portland’s Tech Calendar in Oregon
• Book Publishing Annual Calendar — Month-by-Month Key Book Publishing Events
• Society for Scholarly Publishing – Industry Events Calendar
• Industry Calendars – Stern Investor Relations, a calendar for investors.
• AEM Consolidated Agriculture Industry Calendar 2013-2014 from Agri Marketing Magazine for international agriculture.
• AEM Construction Conventions Calendar (PDF File) for international corporate construction projects
• Industry Calendar for the Amusement and Music Operators Association
• Industry Calendar and Events – ASTA, the American Society of Travel Agents
• Destination Marketing Association International (DMAI) has a list of industry events in the destination marketing industry for the travel, hospitality, and tourism
• Food Service Industry Events Calendar
• Meetings & Conventions for experts in Meetings and Conventions from Meetings and Conventions Magazine
• Groundwater industry calendar of events – National Groundwater Association
• Events Calendar for the Publishing Executive
• Writer’s Guild of America West – Calendar
• Wines & Vines – Wine Industry Calendar of Events

Your blog exercise today is to use the above resources or search for events calendars for your industry and blogging topics.

Use these to schedule events to attend, but also to inspire blog posts.

Blog about upcoming events. Cover the news and information related to those events. Add these to your editorial calendar to keep track of all the things going on in your industry.

Remember to include a hat tip link back to this post to create a trackback, or leave a properly formed link in the comments so participants can check out your blog exercise task.

To help you keep your editorial calendar up to date, here is a list of the schedule and calendar blog exercises to date.

• Blog Exercises: The Editorial Calendar
• Blog Exercises: Blogging with the Seasons
• Blog Exercises: Current Events January
• Blog Exercises: Honor the Past with Anniversaries and Birthdays
• Blog Exercises: Current Events for February
• Blog Exercises: Weekly Link Roundups
• Blog Exercises: Weather Reports
• Blog Exercises: Schedule Blogging Time
• Blog Exercises: How Many Posts Can Your Audience Handle?
• Blog Exercises: Blasts from the Past
• Blog Exercises: March Current Events
• Blog Exercises: Post-Op Care Content

You can find more Blog Exercises on Lorelle on WordPress. This is a year-long challenge to help you flex your blogging muscles.

---

Subscribe Via Feedburner Subscribe by Email

Copyright Lorelle VanFossen.