Information for this blog was obtained from socialmediatoday.com, hubspot.com, and hootsuite.com
Posting on social media seems extremely simple; you just need to pick a picture and press post. But what separates a successful social media post from the average post? Anyone can pick a series of pictures, come up with a caption, and touch a button. It is consistent content curated toward a target audience that will help your social media be elevated to the next level. There are many complicated pieces to it, but it can be made simple.
What is the best way to make sure you are making the content you need to optimize your social media? A social media calendar is the tool that you need. This simple content will keep you organized, your content consistent, and everyone in your company or marketing department up to date on what is happening on the different social media platforms.
A social media content calendar, according to HubSpot, is a document organizing all aspects of your social media posts across all platforms. This organization is going to be the key to simplifying your social media posts.
Why is a Content Calendar Important?
As mentioned above, a social media content calendar will greatly help with your organization! The calendar can be color coded events such as holiday, campaign, blog post, product launch, etc. This color coding will help you see what the goal or purpose behind each post is. In addition, it will allow anyone in the organization to see the calendar and know exactly what each post on every platform is for.
Social media content calendars are organized by date and time. With a simple glance, anyone can see when a post is being made. Having the color coded events help people see what the purpose of the post is. HubSpot notes that having a social media calendar helps your marketing team to have a perspective of what their goals and tasks are. This will help with overall productivity and make sure that all deadlines are met.
It will also help create higher quality content! Planning your posts out ahead of time ensures that you and your team can have each one prepared. It gives you time to get photos, shoot video, edit the content, find a caption, pick good hashtags, and any other efforts toward boosting the post. Especially as social media grows and a generation of consumers have grown up online, having high quality content is extremely important! Users can tell when content is rushed and are more likely to engage with high quality content.
Another major benefit of a social media content calendar is that it is almost a safety net of sorts. The posts can be scheduled weeks ahead of time, so there is no need to rush and worry about having something posted. It can be done plenty of time in advance
There is one important piece to note with a content calendar, and that would be social media trends, especially on TikTok. These trends move fast and can get extremely high engagement rates. Because of that, some content cannot be planned out as well as others. When there is a trend that your target audience is responding to and that fits your brand image- be flexible! The content calendar is there to help with consistency, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t make a post that isn’t on there.
How Do You Start a Social Media Content Calendar?
Just like businesses can’t just press post on any photo at any time and be successful, you can’t just simply list your posts on your content calendar. Research needs to go into it so that you can best optimize your posts. Hootsuite gives the following steps to establishing your social media calendar:
Conduct a social media audit
A social media audit is going to give you all the information you need about your accounts current performance. This includes follower count, engagement rate, how often you are posting, and recognizing what posts were most successful and the common elements that they have.
Social media audits are extremely beneficial, and you can often find tools online to audit your profile for you for free! This will help you to recognize what you are doing well and where there is need for improvement. I would also recommend conducting an audit on your competitors' social media accounts. This can help you recognize more opportunities and potential threats.
Pick what social media platforms you will be using and how to divide your content
Selecting what social media platforms you are going to use is extremely important. It is best to pick 2-3 platforms to focus on rather than spreading yourself thin over too many platforms and not having your posts perform well.
It is also important to pick your content mix. Hootsuite recommends breaking your content up into thirds. One for posts to promote your business, one for sharing curated content, and the final third for responding to users and making personalized content. There is also the 80-20 rule where 80% of your posts are to entertain and 20% are to promote your business.
Determine what your social media calendar will include
This point goes back to HubSpot's recommendation to have a key! You can include as much or as little information related to a post as you would like. Some basics include date, time, platform, media, and caption. I would also recommend including the post if part of a promotion, social media campaign, product launch, or for a holiday.
Collaborate with your team
Social media marketing is a team effort. It is important to get the feedback from your coworkers to determine where improvements can be made. It can also be refreshing to users to see posts that differentiate from each other. Posts can still fit the brand image and aesthetic with each member of the marketing team putting their own spin on it.
In addition, as your business grows and changes, so will your content calendar! What worked at first may not be successful in the long term. Having multiple people work on social media and the content calendar will ensure that your social media does not remain stagnant.
What Types of Posts are Best?
Knowing what types of posts perform best can be difficult. While a social media audit will help you with this, creating a variety of posts and tracking the analytics can help you to determine what content performs best.
Social Media Today gives a list of content that bloggers and businesses should post. At the top of their list, they have inspirational quotes, videos, blogs, and challenges. Some content ideas they have to engage users include surveys, answering questions, creating polls on stories, and creating promotions. They also recommend doing short videos, finding ways to highlight the different customers, and doing holiday and promotional specials.
A social media content calendar is an extremely beneficial tool that business should utilize. Organization is one of the keys to social media marketing success. Posts need to be curated to fit the brand image, encourage engagement, and remain consistent. A content calendar will help achieve this.
Remember to utilize collaboration and to not continue to find ways to upgrade your calendar system. Social media is always evolving and as marketers we need to evolve with it. Take advantage of all the opportunities that social media presents.
Once you have your content planned on, you should check out my colleagues post here! This post has some great tips for boosting your engagement and making the most out of your social media posts. You can also check out this blog from HubSpot and this one from Hootsuite to find a template to make your own social media calendar!
Resources
Coleman, B. (2023, May 18). The social media content calendar template every marketer needs [free template]. HubSpot Blog. https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33415/the-social-media-publishing-schedule-every-marketer-needs-template.aspx?hubs_content=blog.hubspot.com%2Fmarketing&hubs_content-cta=The+Social+Media+Content+Calendar+Template+Every+Marketer+Ne%E2%80%A6
Newberry, C. (2023, September 12). How to create a social media calendar and stay organized. Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard. https://blog.hootsuite.com/how-to-create-a-social-media-content-calendar/
Walker-Ford, M. (2022, February 20). Social media content calendar: 24 types of post to share with your followers [infographic]. Social Media Today. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/social-media-content-calendar-24-types-of-post-to-share-with-your-follower/619173/
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