Social Media Content Calendar
Finding the time to run a successful business is difficult enough, and now business owners must find the time to promote their business via social media, web pages, and blogs in order to get more traffic, promote their brand, and engage with customers.
After deciding to jump into digital marketing, you must devise a planning strategy that can make the process easier and trackable.
Social media content calendars can serve as the roadmap for what your business plans to share in all marketing platforms. A well-organized social media calendar can help define your posting frequency and the desired content to reach a specific audience and objective.
What is a Social Media Content Calendar?
Any content calendar focuses on establishing a system that can lead to long-term success. Whether it is a spreadsheet or app, content calendars plan out a strategy to post content, manage campaigns, and set deadlines. They’re typically built using one of three different formats: printed paper, spreadsheets, or software services.
Planning is important
Quick posts that “win” by getting a few likes or reposts isn’t what you want for the long haul. That may provide a quick, satisfying feeling, but short-term goals aren’t what you are looking for in a social media plan. It’s about the long game. Your business is probably using multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, and each platform serves a different purpose or a different demographic. Keeping these differences in mind can help to prepare your content calendar with all the platforms. It is important to present your content differently to fit that platform’s audience.
A content calendar is created to serve as a guide. It isn’t black and white, and adjustments are usually made to ensure the calendar’s effectiveness. The purpose of social media is to be social with others, and users gravitate towards fresh, timely, relevant content.
Mixing content and strategy
Getting started is going to take some set up on your part. Before you dive into planning, be sure to gather all of the data on each of your social media accounts. That will give a data-driven understanding of which platforms are performing best and where there are opportunities to improve.
Timing is everything with social media. It is important to pay attention to the timing and frequency of posts that get the most engagement. There are certain platforms that encourage posting at specific times of the day in order to get more engagement. Facebook users might be more active during a weekday lunch hour, while Twitter or Pinterest followers are more active in the evening.
Content calendars show you how to distribute the same piece of content at different times and in slightly different ways to best meet the needs of users on each of your social media platforms.
Setting up long-term success
In the sports world, the terms “long game” and “short game” are thrown around a lot, and those terms can be translated into digital marketing. When speaking about someone’s short game, it refers to the skills needed that are more finesse-related due to the need for accuracy. Someone’s long game is all about power and distance, and that is exactly what you want in social media content planning. Also in regard to leads it might be leads we get today versus tomorrow. The power and distance, in regards to digital marketing, is about creating a strategy that focuses on short and long-term goals of the plan and how effective they will be.
Here are a few tips for creating a content calendar:
- Define your goals: Start by asking yourself “what is my main goal?” The answer should determine what platforms, format, and frequency you should use.
- Create a calendar template: There are numerous calendar templates available online to choose from. Pick the one that best fits your strategy.
- Choose your channels: Know your audience and establish the type of content you should be focusing on.
- Start with the calendar year: Use the calendar year as a base for your strategy. Select the important events or holidays that you need to build your content around.
- Add your own content: Once the events have been chosen, start to add the relevant content ideas.
- Store evergreen content: Content that isn’t tied to a certain date or time is considered “evergreen” content. The content should benefit you and the customer, and it should continue to receive clicks well after it has been posted.
- Utilize old content: Don’t go back to square one. Old blogs can be turned into short videos or you could use past analytics and data to write a blog post.
- Determine publishing frequency: Be realistic about how often you can conceivably publish fresh content. Content-creation is time consuming and it is important to set realistic goals by knowing your own limits. Set time limits, as well.
- Review and update your strategy: It is a good rule to set the main content for the calendar year. Then, you should strategize your monthly and weekly publishing goals around a month later. Allow your main content schedule to marinate a bit and then start a more focused approach.
Monitor how you receive content: In digital marketing, everything can be tracked. Be sure to take the time to monitor and examine your own strategies and data, and then put that information to use when updating your plans.
The bottom line
A content calendar is an easy way to combat this issue and to make the most of your company’s scarce resources. It is an effective tool for coordinating content creation and helps divide your team’s upcoming workload into clear, easily manageable units.
By implementing this tool to your planning process, you will have to spend less time on wondering what to write, and instead focus on the creation itself.
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