Content Calendar
Read on and we’ll guide you through the steps necessary to know why a content calendar is a business priority.
Oh, and as a huge thank you for your continued support we are giving you one for FREE a social media calendar to get you started, 30 days of all topics covered to drive your social media platforms to the next level
But first, let’s review the reasons why having a content calendar will work for YOU;
Why use a social media content calendar?
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An absolute social media must, a content calendar! Scheduling for the month ahead will ensure you stay consistent, organised and overall improves the performance of your social media platforms. It sounds like a big commitment at first, but you can rest assured it’ll pay that time back in the future.
1. To save yourself time – get organised!
Maintaining a social media calendar allows you to plan ahead, batch create your work, avoid distractions, multitask, and to note down all your creative brainwaves for later. And let me tell you this, your social media marketing goals requires a lot of effort and attention. On a daily basis, not just when you are feeling inspired or when you have ticked off everything on your to-do list at 10pm.
And even though you’ll be posting every day and you could even be posting multiple times a day, having a social media schedule means you won’t have to search the explore page or babysit your feeds constantly scrolling through trying to find inspiration. Social media calendar tools allow you to schedule social media posts ahead of time, and to manage audience engagement all from one place. Ensuring that you stay organised and are maximising your time schedule.
2. Post consistently
Whether you’re trying to increase your Instagram audience, your YouTube listeners, or you’ve implemented a social media marketing goal, as I’m sure you have heard many time, the first tip from experts will always be “post consistently.” There’s just no shortcut around it. It really is that simple.
Consistently showing up in your audience’s feed is the absolute key to engaging them on social media. Impressive engagement increases your organic reach via the platform’s algorithm, meaning your posts will be pushed out for new eyes to see, new people to interact and ultimately new people start following your account. All whilst making genuine connections with a growing audience of like-minded followers/subscribers. It’s the true path to lifting your analytics and growing your account.
Populating your social media calendar with posts ahead of time allows you to post consistently whether it’s a slow week, or the busiest time of the year.
3. Reduce the risk of typos/mistakes.
Planning your posts ahead of time means that you have TIME, time to create in-depth headlines/captions and to build safe havens into your workflow. Fact-checking, copy-editing information is a lot easier when you’re working days or weeks ahead of time.
A social media schedule is the best way to prevent a low-level embarrassing spelling mistake or even a high level social media crisis. And plus, when you have time to step away from your work and come back you will usually notice errors that you beforehand didn’t notice.
4. Think BIG!
That’s right, once you have a schedule in place, you can think BIG, your brain is no longer tackling the smaller questions – it now has time to face the bigger questions! Like ‘should you run a Instagram giveaways? Search for Brand Ambassadors/Influencer partners? Maybe it’s time to optimise another platform, linked in? Twitter? Or introduce a marketing affiliate’s programme?
The world’s biggest social media brands are often running multiple campaigns at once—long, medium and short-term, paid and organic. And that’s just the day-to-day posts. That will be you too!
Whether you’re posting your Story while preparing for your 3pm client or managing a four-person team, getting your social game to the level up means getting organised and having a schedule.
5. Don’t miss out!
A social media calendar allows you to strategically plan and observe, national days, worldwide global moments that are relevant to your brand’s audience! Never forget about the key events again.
Like, for instance, February 19th - NATIONAL LASH DAY HISTORY
Also, with your day-to-day schedule covered, if something does crop up—like the latest Tiktok trend—you have the creative and logistical time to engage in the moment.
6. Make higher-quality content
Social media production values have skyrocketed this past year, it’s important to consider what your readers/audience want to read about. What interests do they have? What events/news do they follow? How can you relate this to your business? The first step in creating high quality content is to make sure it contains information your target audience is looking for.
Which is why a social media calendar is vital to this. It helps you allocate your content to become readable, relatable and engaging. Something that your audience/followers will appreciate. This in turn will have a positive effect on your status as a business and a consistent brand voice creating content that supports your marketing goals.
7. Track what works, and then improve it
What gets scheduled gets done, and what gets measured gets improved. Something to live by in today’s business world. This simple yet effective mantra is something you should and will live by!
Your social media analytics have a lot of insights for you, check them out and see what has received the most attentions, what has drawn your customers in? What posts have done well this week? What hasn’t done as well? You should be tracking your insights on a weekly basis to ensure you are doing what needs to be done to grow. A social media content calendar provides you with that opportunity, your experiments are schedule and you are on the right track towards improvement. Plan out you’re A and B tests until you find the right recipe for the type of content, format, post frequency, and best time of day to post for each social platform.
CREATE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR…
Here are 8 steps to creating an effective social media calendar:
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Go through your social networks and current content (what has worked well? What hasn’t worked so well?
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Choose your social channels – (2/3 to optimise)
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Decide what your calendar needs to track – (what are your marketing goals, what do you want to see?)
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Make a content library (batch create your content)
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Establish your workflow (go into your zone, take regular water breaks, and enjoy your creative flow)
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Start preparing your posts (writing out your captions, hashtags, questions to ask your audience)
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Invite someone to review and feedback their opinion
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Happy scheduling!
Pro Tip: If this is your first time making a calendar for social media, you might want to crack open our guide to creating a 5-day marketing plan first. Your calendar will be all the better for having clear goals to drive your business in the direction you want!