A twelve-month content calendar for the Burquitlam–Lougheed corridor

Step 1: Choose a rhythm you can keep for a year

Start with capacity, not ambition. Ask how many hours a month you or your team can honestly give to content, including the busy season.

A realistic baseline for a single-location business:

That adds up to roughly 10 to 12 hours a month. If that is too much, halve it. One article every two months and a weekly profile post, sustained for a year, beats an ambitious plan abandoned in spring.

Write your chosen rhythm at the top of the calendar. Every later decision has to fit inside it.

Step 2: List the questions you answer every week

Before filling months, collect raw material. Spend a week noting every question customers ask by phone, text, email or in person. Do not filter yet.

A corridor painter might end up with notes such as:

• Can you paint while we are still living in the suite?
• Does the strata need to approve colours on my balcony door?
• How long before we can hang pictures?
• What does it cost to paint a two-bedroom condo?

A café might collect different ones: do you have seating for laptops, are you open early on weekends, can you cater a small office lunch near the station?

Each question is a candidate article, clip or profile post. Most businesses find 20 to 40 in a week, which is more than a year's worth of articles.

Step 3: Map the corridor's year

Now match topics to time. In the Burquitlam–Lougheed corridor, several patterns repeat every year, and planning around them puts your content in front of people when they are already looking.

Rain season: October to March

Coastal rain dominates these months. Questions about leaks, drainage, gutters, condensation, mould and damp storage rise. Trades should publish their water-related content in early autumn, before the first heavy rain, so it has time to be found.

For shops and restaurants, rainy months are a chance to promote cosy indoor seating, delivery and quick pick-up near the SkyTrain stations.

The holiday stretch: November and December

Office lunches, gift shopping, pre-holiday cleaning and guest-room refreshes. Publish in early November; by mid-December people have already decided.

New year planning: January and February

Owners and residents plan renovations, budgets and fitness goals. Good months for "what to plan this year" articles, cost explainers and before-you-hire checklists.

Spring refresh: March to May

Painting, cleaning, decluttering, balcony and garden work, and moving. Many trades see enquiries climb now, so content should be published in February and early March.

Summer: June to August

Outdoor dining, patios, balconies, and events. For some trades, summer is quieter and ideal for filming ahead and writing the autumn articles early.

Back to routine: September

Students return, routines restart, and people who put off work over summer come back to it. A good month for maintenance checklists and "before the rain" reminders.

Step 4: Plan ahead of move-in waves

This is the corridor-specific part. Coquitlam's Burquitlam-Lougheed Neighbourhood Plan guides growth for the decades ahead, concentrating the tallest buildings near the stations and along North Road. On the Burnaby side, Lougheed Town Centre is redeveloping under plans listed in Burnaby's community plans index.

New buildings tend to hand over many suites in a short window. Each handover means hundreds of new households searching for internet set-up help, cleaners, movers, furniture assembly, painters, locksmiths, dentists, groceries and coffee, all in the same few weeks.

How to plan for it:

1. Keep a simple watch list of buildings under construction near your business, with a rough expected completion season.
2. Publish evergreen move-in content early, such as "What to sort out in your first month in a new Burquitlam suite" for your trade, at least two to three months before a big handover.
3. Prepare profile posts and clips that you can release as residents move in.
4. Avoid naming buildings or developers unless you have a genuine relationship or permission; describe the area instead.

Treat completion dates as approximate. Construction schedules slip, so content that stays useful regardless of exact timing works best.

Step 5: Fill in the calendar

Now combine the pieces. Here is a sample quarter for a corridor plumbing business on the baseline rhythm:

Each article feeds the profile and clips: a quote from it becomes a post, a photo from the job becomes a clip.

Step 6: Track and review every quarter

A calendar without review is just a to-do list. Keep a simple tracking sheet with one row per piece:

• Date published
• Format and topic
• Where it was posted
• Enquiries you can link to it (ask new customers how they found you)
• A note on whether you would make something similar again

Every three months, sort the sheet by enquiries. Do more of what worked, drop what did not, and update any older article that is drawing visits but is now out of date.

Common mistakes

• Planning by holiday rather than by need. "National Pizza Day" posts rarely bring local work. Questions customers actually ask do.
• Planning too far in detail. Themes for the year, topics for the quarter.
• Ignoring your busy season. Write ahead in quiet months so your calendar survives the rush.
• Copying other cities' calendars. A calendar built for the Prairies or Toronto misses the coastal rain cycle and the corridor's construction pace.

Where to go from here

Once you have a calendar, the next skill is writing the articles well. Our guide to writing local pages that help covers that. If you plan to include clips, read the phone video playbook. And if you would rather hand the calendar to someone else, see our content audit and editorial planning service.