When it comes to a marketing strategy, many marketers, bloggers, and business owners join in the social media hype without a second thought. For some reason, there’s a common belief that social media only involves taking pictures, writing a quick, thoughtless caption, and then publishing it.
While starting out on social media is relatively easy, it’s important for first-timers to note that this branch of marketing requires strategic planning and consistency. These key elements to social media marketing can be tricky to keep up with, but fortunately, a social media calendar is there to help you!
A social media calendar is a calendar that documents the content your organization plans to post on social media channels, such as videos, pictures, and articles. Essentially, it helps you organize your ideas into one cohesive plan.
Here are 5 tips to keep in mind when creating your social media calendar.
1. Evaluate your objectives
The first rule to creating a social media calendar is knowing your overall goals. Do you want to grow your visibility? Produce leads? Gain new followers? Whichever the case, it’s crucial to identify and evaluate your objectives to have a clear idea on why you are producing content.
Your goals provide you with information on your target audience and how often to publish content on your profiles. Knowing your goals can also help you decide which social media platforms are the best for your content and business.
2. Plan ahead and post accordingly
A good social media calendar has engaging content. A great social media calendar, on the other hand, has engaging content that’s strategically planned ahead and tracked. With the prevalence of social media use across multiple companies, it isn’t enough to just post content and hope for the best.
The content on your social media calendar should be mapped out and organized before it’s posted. You can use helpful tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to help you plan out your content (picture and captions included!) ahead of time.
It’s also highly important to track and evaluate how your posts are doing after they are posted. These insights can help you see what content interests your audience so that you can focus on creating similar posts and adding these ideas to your calendar. Be sure to keep in mind that some content may be insensitive in light of a sudden tragedy. Many situations can arise in a span of a few months and staying ahead allows you to hold off or delete posts that are inappropriate.
3. Decide how often to post
Think about how often you would like to post content on social media. Despite popular belief, curating content for any social channel is very time-consuming. As such, you need to decide on a publishing frequency that suits you and your business profile the best.
A social media calendar that’s too packed with content can lead to posts that perform poorly. The same result can happen if your calendar is too empty. Instead, evaluate your limits, choose the best time slots to post, and evaluate performance.
4. Choose the right platforms
When publishing content on social media, it’s important to decide which social platforms to focus on. That way you can create and optimize content on platforms that reach the bulk of your audience, leading to new followers and (possibly) customers!
We also recommend staying up-to-date on each platform’s features and policy updates (keep these in mind when putting your calendar together).
Instagram, for instance, has recently gained a viral sensation with their filters, especially the popular “Which ____ Are You?” quizzes in Stories. On YouTube, massive changes to certain policies have changed the landscape on what creators can include in their video content. Staying up-to-date on what each platform offers gives you the chance to get the most of your social network experience.
5. Use the right tools
There are a few different approaches you can try when creating your social media calendar. You may decide to create a physical calendar that you can organize with a paper organizer.
An alternative option is creating a digital calendar with an Excel spreadsheet or Google Calendar. Some social media specialists use special softwares or tools to create one that best fits their goals.
Social media is most effective when used correctly. It isn’t just about posting pictures—there must be a purpose behind each piece of content on your social channels. A social media calendar is crucial to implementing your social strategy since it allows you to organize, stay updated on trends, and communicate your brand’s message in a consistent manner. If you would like to learn more about social media, check out our blog, 10 Best Free Social Media Monitoring Tools for the best tools you will need to track your progress!