The Information used in this blog was taken from Semrush, Social Media Examiner, and Hubspot.
There are many different tools that can help you put together an effective marketing plan. One of the most effective is a social media calendar.
Why A Social Media Calendar Is Important
Putting together a social media marketing plan isn't easy. It takes a lot of time and effort to make sure everything that needs to get done is finished on time. A social media calendar helps you keep track of everything that you have to work on.
One of the main advantages is the improved organization of your content. if you're creating a lot of different content especially with various platforms involved it will help you keep track of everything you're working on and when you need it completed.
With everything organized in your calendar it allows you to save time when it comes to creating and posting content. This helps you get stuff done faster and make sure everything gets done on time.
Improved organization of your content can be broad, but there are many specifics as to how that is beneficial. Some of the notable ways include; ensure all platforms are being promoted as they should and keeps track of everything you post in one place which makes it easier to find things and track post analytics.
When working on a social media plan it's important to understand you're goals going into it. A social media calendar allows you to keep track of every specific statistic you want as you try and reach all of your goals.
Keeping track of everything is important, but how you put your calendar together is based on a lot of factors. Make sure you include all the information you need for your marketing plan to be successful.
Some effective social media calendars include in-depth information about each and every single post that you will have on all of your platforms.
Ways In Which You Can Create Your Social Media Calendar
When creating a social media calendar, it's important to make it in the way that's best for you and your team. It doesn't have to be some fancy platform; it can just be a detailed spreadsheet even.
The information you include is up to you, but extra details for each post will come in handy in the future. Some of those details include time and date the post was made, the platform it was posted on, and the format of the post.
Those are just some of the basic details you likely want to include for every post. You can also add some more specific details about the post such as the media you used as well as the hashtags you used in the post.
Having all of this information right there on one spreadsheet makes it easy to track your content. It allows all everything to be in one spot rather than making you look through your website and social media pages to find all the details.
Once you decide all the information you want to include it's important to develop an effective way to put it onto your calendar. You have to organize it in a way that makes it easier for you to read and understand it.
There will be a lot of information so putting it together where it's easy to find everything you're looking for is important. One suggestion would be to organize it week by week and color code things in a way that you'll understand.
You could do a specific color for each social platform or make a specific type of content piece a color. For example, if you go by platform; you can make twitter content show up in blue with snapchat content yellow. If you go by content type you could make a blog post red while you make a story/reel post green.
There's a lot of ways you can go even deeper into these specific categories as well so understand how to put all of that together effectively. Making sure everything is to your liking is important and it will allow you to benefit from your calendar more in the long run.
How To Use A Social Media Calendar To Your Advantage
A social media calendar allows you to track the best-performing content and break down it more specifically so you can utilize those same strategies content. On the flip side, you also see the content that isn't performing well, and you can decide how to tweak those strategies moving forward.
Social media content is all about generating engagement. For a specific post or platform, you'll have a more specific goal you're hoping for, but at the end of the day if people aren't seeing and engaging with the content you post things likely aren't as effective as they could be.
One way you can use this is to decide what type of content you should post. The 80/20 rule is a good one to follow and this calendar will help you track that to a tee and understand any changes you should make. The 80/20 rule states that 80% of your content should be informative while the other 20% is promotion.
The rule of thirds is a good one to utilize as well which states that three categories should each take up 1/3 of your content. Those categories are; curating your content from followers, interacting with your followers, and promoting your products and services.
A social media calendar will go a long way to ensuring you have success with your marketing plan. These tools and strategies will help you make the most of your time.
Resources
Clayton, Sandra. “How to Create a Social Media Calendar: A Template for Marketers.” Social Media Examiner, 27 July 2021, https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-social-media-calendar-template-marketers/
Coleman, Basha. “The Social Media Content Calendar Template Every Marketer Needs [Free Template].” HubSpot Blog, HubSpot, 29 Dec. 2022, https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33415/the-social-media-publishing-schedule-every-marketer-needs-template.aspx
Team, Semrush. “How to Build a Social Media Content Calendar in 2023 (+ Template).” Semrush Blog, 13 Feb. 2023, https://www.semrush.com/blog/social-media-calendar/
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