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How To Create The Perfect Social Media Content Calendar

Social media sites can make it easy to forget just how much content is on your social media accounts. When you’re planning out what to post and on which channel to post, it can be a difficult and complicated process if you don’t have it in a clear view. As a social media marketer, it’s absolutely vital that you utilize a calendar.

Unsure of what benefit a social media content calendar can bring to your workflow? Follow our article for more information, as well as how you can get started with your own calendar.

What Are The Benefits Of A Social Media Content Calendar?

Many social media managers report that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with social media without help from an outside source. A social media content calendar transforms your social media posts into a clear and accessible format. It will allow you to systematically plan upcoming posts in advance of when they are actually needed.

With this process, you can be sure that your messaging is consistent, aligns with any content creation and is always on time while giving your followers a sense of order and anticipation. This is much better than just having random posts that appear one day without warning from your page.

Getting Started With Your Social Media Content Calendar

To get started with your calendar, you’ll first need to come up with ideas on what you’ll want to post. Researching your competitors as well as auditing your own social media profiles are two important ways you’ll want to go about this. Once you get your calendar in a completed state, you’re going to want to utilize a social media management tool to execute.

Research Your Competitors & The Industry

Even if you think you may fully understand the industry you’re a part of and the competition, it’s always important to take a step back so you don’t end up with tunnel vision.

When it comes to creating an editorial calendar for social media, it’s vital you’re checking out the competition. What are they posting on Facebook? Is this similar or different from Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.?

Let’s say you’re Home Depot and you’re trying to create a social editorial calendar for the first quarter of the year. Take a look at your competitors – and I don’t just mean Lowes. Take a look at regional competition as well, such as Menards. What kind of content do they frequently post about? How does it line with the rest of their brand and messaging?

We’d recommend making an Excel or Google Sheet so you can make note of the trends you see. From the type of content posted to the days and times that they post, you want to see what they’re having success with and see what tactics could apply to your business.

Along with that, make sure you’re staying ahead of the curve with industry research. What new trends are up and coming in your space? Is there anything that your business has come up down the line that’s noteworthy and should be talked about?

Not only does this help provide additional content for you to publish, but it also lets you diversify what your audience is seeing so they don’t get bored of your output.

Setting Up Your Social Calendar

Get started with your calendar by choosing a tool or app that will help you template out an outline of the calendar before you put it into action. There are dozens of these platforms, including Loomly, Airtable and even standard Excel/Google Sheets.

We recommend Airtable, which is a cloud-based collaboration service. While the platform is robust and can be used for tracking projects, launching products and so much more, it’s an excellent way to make social media content calendars.

Not only that, but it allows you to coordinate and brainstorm with other departments, team members and clients. This ensures that your content strategy aligns with other marketing objectives and important dates.

To start, you’ll want to go through each social media platform one by one – filling in broader content ideas first before discussing with your team or client about the nitty-gritty.

As you learn more about specific details (post information, hashtags, pictures, etc.) you’re able to share out on social media, you can slowly start drawing in the blanks on your calendar. By the end, you should be looking at a near-complete posting schedule (with some buffer for any new content that may come down the line).

Implementing & Executing Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

Once you have your calendar template set up, you’ll then want to transfer all of this into scheduled posts on each social media channel. You can do this through several social media management platforms, such as Sprout Social, AgoraPulse and Hootsuite.

Each management platform has its own unique features, but they are by and large the same. They will let you set up a social media workflow through the ability to schedule out posts, listen for certain keywords or phrases you want to be notified about (such as a brand name) and directly message others from within the platform.

The heavy lifting of conceptualizing the content for social networks has already been done, so now it’s all about implementation. Start scheduling everything out, while leaving open areas for you to share out any organic content or catch on to emerging trends.

Tips To Help Your Social Media Content Calendar

There are tons of ways to help improve the results you see from your social media efforts. Make sure you’re receiving the level of engagement you expect and want with these helpful tips.

Focus On The Channels That Matter

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to have a consistent presence everywhere. There are certain platforms that you should prioritize, and that is based on the demographic makeup of your audience. If your brand is focused on older adults in their 40s-50s, you’ll want to spend most of your time on Facebook as opposed to TikTok or Snapchat.

Have Goals In Mind Per Channel

Make sure that you’re not just posting on social for frivolous metrics that don’t matter to your company’s goal. If you’re a direct-to-consumer brand, you ultimately want your prospective customers to buy your product. Make sure that you know the relevant metrics for each channel you’re on that’s going to push those users further down the sales funnel.

Optimize Your Content Continuously

While we’ve driven home the point of having as much of your social media content planned out, it’s important that you do not close yourself off from optimizing the content plan you have in place. If you notice that a certain type of post doesn’t garner the same level of engagement as others, optimize and adjust. Don’t continually do the same thing wrong several times – that gives your audience more opportunity to disengage with the brand.

Mix Media Types In Social

Make sure that you’re keeping your content fresh on social media. It’s not enough to just make a simple text post once a day. Make sure you mix in different types of content (static/animated imagery, video, etc.) to ensure that fans and followers see the new content you post. Along with that, make sure the assets you use for posts are high-quality to ensure high engagement.

Organize Your Social Media Strategy With A Content Calendar Today

Social media content calendars are vital to any modern marketing strategy. They help save time and resources so you can focus on producing quality content to post that will receive high engagement and push people to convert.

Using a calendar tool such as Airtable to coordinate your marketing efforts and then executing through a social media management platform can help provide a seamless process.

For small businesses without social media teams, it can be tricky trying to find the time to post and respond on social networks without sacrificing the quality of your normal work.

To that end, work with a team of social media marketing experts today. We can help research, create and execute social media campaigns that are guaranteed to take your business to the next level.