Having a content calendar for your social media is one of the best marketing tools you can use in the new year. By doing so, it creates organization, cohesive themes, and you’ll never miss a content opportunity like #NationalBestFriendDay again!
The steps to follow for creating a successful content calendar are simple, yet require attention and work. In the long run the calendar will benefit your business by a landslide and make your life easier (trust me).
- Why use a Content Calendar?
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 92 percent of content marketers use social media to distribute their content. Many people look to social media to get their content, which means that your business should be on their feeds regularly to stay memorable and relevant. And believe it or not, sometimes it is as simple as posting a picture for a national day, like #NationalPizzaDay, or something else that shows the consumers your personality as a company.
Good content starts with organization and consistency. Start with a 3 times per week, per platform posting schedule and then go from there as you grow. No one will continue to follow you if your posts are irregular and irrelevant.
Finding ideal content that connects your brand to its followers is also key. By doing so it will create engagement and interest in the content you’re publishing. Use articles that are relevant, quotes, and other personal stories to tie in the personal aspect of the company.
- Getting started
To start off, completing a content audit and a social media audit allows you to see from a business standpoint what must go into your content in order to make it successful. Here is a link to how to get started on a content audit. After that, you’re ready to continue by getting to know the demographics of each social platform. It’s best to know your audience on each platform before you post your content so that you can cater the content to each platform.
Creating a content calendar can be done in Excel. You just create columns for each platform and day of the week, separated per week. By doing this, it shows you in full what you have planned for each week. For the first few weeks play around with posting times throughout the day to see which works best. Certain times have higher engagement rates so keep an eye out for that and adjust your posting times. From here, you can also determine your calendars needs, and if you need more detail, just add more columns such as Hashtags to use with each post, date of post, themes, etc. Anything to help make you more organized, DO IT!
From here, you’ll begin to establish a process. You can either post the social posts organically on each platform or you can use a service, such as Hootsuite, where you upload your content in advance and it’s automatically posted for you.