CREATING A SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR
In the world of digital media, the thought of staying up to date up can be overwhelming. Maintaining organization with the social platforms, your target audience, and what content to provide them with is the main purpose of having a social media calendar. It helps you plan ahead, manage multiple campaigns, and even track insights. Utilizing a calendar helps you create an overview of upcoming posts and which platforms you want to share them on. It can be as detailed or as simple as you need it to be – there are many different sites that offer a variety of features for you to use. Setting out a clear plan of posting action takes you one step further in reaching your goals.
BENEFITS OF A SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR
Plan Ahead
Aside from staying up to date on what month and day it is, a content calendar helps you plan ahead. The digital world moves fast and having a firm grasp on when things are happening or what needs to happen in the future gives you an advantage. You have the opportunity to pay attention in closer detail to relevant dates and schedule accordingly. Whether it be a company milestone, national holiday, or an employee birthday, this type of content can be scheduled ahead of time to make sure you don’t miss it.
Organize Ideas
Businesses are posting on social media almost every day to boost user engagement and reach a larger audience. Organizing content in a social calendar separates ideas from one another. You can visualize how you want these different elements to exist together on their respective platforms. This includes planning to have a consistent “look” to your feed with on-brand colors and tone, or the repetition of a post that correlates to a specific day (ex: #MeetTheTeamMonday). Consistent posting is beneficial for business growth and will increase your organic reach – so plan those ideas out!
Save Time
Scheduling ahead allows you to save time. With so many posts happening, it’s not enough to create compelling content and post it strategically in just one day. You will find yourself rushing to meet deadlines instead of spending the needed time to compose something your audience will engage with. You don’t need to be exhaustively monitoring your feeds day to day. Most sites that have a social media calendar available for you also provide the option to schedule posts. This saves you time, keeps you prepared, and allows you to focus on more social strategies to implement.
Avoid mistakes
There are many details that go into social posts and it’s important to make sure what you are publishing is correct. Typos are not a good look for a business. Planning out your posts gives you time to double check for any words underlined in red, so that the copy makes sense. You can assign a post to be reviewed by someone else before it’s published. Having the content be reviewed before it’s published also ensures that posts go out on the correct date. You wouldn’t want to post for a big event only on the day it’s happening. Reviewing your content would allow you to notice this flaw in your campaign. You would have time to make several other posts and schedule them ahead of time so that your audience can make plans to attend.
HOW DO I CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR?
Research which scheduling site is the most user friendly for your business. Even using a spreadsheet or your google calendar will also work for a simpler approach. Make sure you have clear goals in mind and the social media calendar will assist you in your planning process. From there you will need to include:
- Specific dates for post
- Time of day post is scheduled to be published
- Image, video or any other content
- Copy associated with post (captions, hashtags)
- Links if applicable
- Social platform post will be shared through
- Whether or not the post needs to be reviewed
Overall, the only way to keep up is to be constantly planning ahead. Utilizing a social media calendar will not only keep you organized but will give you room to make changes and tweak ideas while still staying on track. Stay connected with your audience using a social media calendar that allows them to reach your message at the perfect time. Organization contributes to a successful marketing strategy.