It takes considerable effort to run one or more social media accounts. You probably balance several job streams to keep your social media accounts active, including planning new content, responding to audience comments, and internal company promotions.
Furthermore, creating and posting content on the fly is challenging, with more chances of typos, tone issues, and other errors. Creating a social media calendar ahead of time is much more efficient. You will have more time to make, tweak, proofread, and schedule posts this way.
Making a social media calendar is straightforward, but the outcomes can be astounding. Consider a social media content calendar as a quick reference guide. With it, you can schedule posts in advance and keep up an uncomplicated flow of high-quality material.
What is a social media calendar?
A social media calendar is essentially a calendar of all your social media updates with a list of dates for all upcoming social media posts. Social media marketers use them to schedule posts, oversee campaigns, and evaluate current strategies.
You may plan upcoming posts, keep track of uploaded content, and collaborate with cross-functional teams by establishing and managing a social media content calendar.
If you manage numerous social media accounts across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and other platforms, a calendar of this kind can be handy. A social media content schedule can assist you in choosing what to post on each account, managing various copies of each post, and posting in your distinctive style.
Social media calendars come in a variety of formats. It may be a Google calendar, interactive dashboard, or spreadsheet.
Components of a social media calendar
Your social media schedule can be as simple as listing the dates you’ll post, or it can be very complex. An effective social media content calendar will provide high-level information to help you receive more from each post. A social media schedule typically includes a combination of the following for each post:
- Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn
- Date & Time: Date and time on which the post will go live.
- Type of Content: Testimonial, Products, Services, etc.
- Title: The post title.
- Post Description: Post description and caption.
- Creative assets: Required artwork/videos for content.
- Visuals’ description: A description of any visual/artwork you want to use.
- URL & Tags: Links and tags you want to use in the post.
This information provides a fundamental infrastructure for creating and posting each post.
How to plan a social media calendar
Making a successful social media content plan doesn’t require any expensive software. Just open a spreadsheet and carry out the following steps to complete the task.
1. Identify your social media channels and review your goals.
You must have a distinct understanding of your goals before drafting any plans. We all have some objective in mind when we post something on social media, but it pays to focus on this and make it much more implicit. It will be a lot simpler to create material that will assist you in achieving your goals if you are clear about your aims.
Even though it can seem like a simple first step, this is one of the most crucial but frequently skipped actions you can take. Take a step back with your social media team to determine your social media goals and which platforms you should be on before you start focusing on specific social posts and channel-specific techniques.
The first step to developing platform-specific content strategies—and genuinely producing material that shines for your audience—is narrowing down your platforms with knowledge of where your audience resides. It’s crucial to comprehend the KPIs you’ll use to evaluate your progress toward your objectives.
2. Audit your social media platforms.
Once you clearly understand what success looks like, it’s time to assess your present performance. This data is crucial because it will act as your starting point. Once you have this information, it will be much simpler to test your adjustments and modify your strategy as necessary.
To monitor this and ensure you are consistently trying to enhance your procedures, you can include a document for each of your KPIs in your social media content calendar. Assemble the necessary data and make it accessible:
- Account passwords and details
- Specific goals for each social media platform
- Responsibilities of every team member
- Audience demographics across platforms
- Shortcomings, inconsistencies in your content, and subpar outcomes
- Information about your most successful campaigns and posts
- Platform-specific KPIs to gauge success in the future
- Comparison of different types of posts (e.g., images and videos, posts and blogs, etc.)
One of the main reasons for developing a social media content calendar is to ensure you’re providing your audience with the content they want. For this, you need to be aware of your prior performance.
3. Determine what your social media calendar should include.
Now that you know which channels to prioritize and what is the performance of your current posts, it is time to create your social media content calendar. Make a list of the data and functions that are most important to you. It allows you to make the most of your social calendar.
You can start with adding basics like platform, data, time & date, visuals & artwork, and links to published posts (including any tracking info). Use the metadata in your social media calendar tool to keep track of extra information, such as the hashtags you’re using, the channels you’re posting on, the precise time the posts will go live, the audience you’re aiming for, and more.
If you are just getting started, a straightforward spreadsheet will work nicely. You can use calendar tools if you want a more robust solution.
4. Highlight how often you will post.
A social media content planner’s ability to help you be more consistent is one of its chief advantages, but the question of how frequently to post remains. For each business, the answer will be different.
There is no reason why you can’t post more than once a day if you have a sizable marketing team working on various elements, including photographs, video, copy, in-person interactions with followers, and everything else. It is probably not realistic, though, if you run your business by yourself.
After all, it is about effectively using your resources to strike a balance between quantity and quality. But if you publish subpar content one engages with, it serves no purpose.
5. Decide the type of content for posting.
Organizing your posts into categories can help you give your audience a variety of content types. There are two well-known for this, and following them will help you offer diversity and ease your own life a little.
The 80/20 Rule
This rule enables you to create a balance between appealing to your audience and attempting to sell them your goods. According to it, you should use 20% of your posts for advertising your company, and the remaining 80% of your posts should engage, inform, and educate the audience.
People do not use social media to get inundated with advertisements, so this technique will help you strike the appropriate balance between increasing sales and preserving your brand’s reputation.
The social media Rule of Thirds
It might become monotonous quickly if you consistently post the same category content. Because of this, many brands include the social media Rule of Thirds in their content schedules.
According to the rule, one-third of your postings should promote your original material, one-third should offer curated content, and one-third should feature direct communications with your followers.
6. Ask your team to review and use their feedback to improve.
An effective calendar is one that everyone on your marketing team can easily understand! Solicit feedback and ideas from partners and your team to ensure that it meets everyone’s needs.
As you begin working with your calendar, assess your thoughts and ask for ongoing feedback from the team. For example, if it feels arduous to manage, you might want to reduce the level of detail. You may need to add a few columns if it’s not detailed enough.
Conclusion
An effective social media content calendar will make it much easier to organize your marketing efforts and help you engage your audience, regardless of whether you are a big social media team or a lone marketer.
Hashe is one of the leading software companies in Pakistan, which aims to provide top-notch software, mobile app, and web development. For more information about what we do and how we do it and for top-notch IT consultancy, contact Hashe Computer Solutions!
Keep following us for more tech news! Check out our Social Media Pages
Was this helpful?
Last Modified: July 19, 2024 at 5:36 am
333 views
