Running an engaging campaign on social media networks is a must if you want to grow your business in the 21st century. However, it takes a lot of effort, time, and energy to upload new posts and engage your audience daily. The good news is that you don’t have to do everything yourself.
The social media content calendar is an excellent feature that allows you to schedule posting and other social media activities in advance. It’s a technique used by most successful online businesses, and this article will tell you how to create your version.
Social Media Calendar Definition
A social media calendar is a straightforward app that works as a planner for all social media posts and interactions. It’s widely used by businesses and social media marketing experts across all industries because it offers all kinds of benefits. A simple social media calendar can help you stay organized in real-time. Here are some applications where it makes the most difference:
- Planning posts in advance
- Brainstorming potential social media posts
- Notifications on important dates
- Balancing evergreen and timely content
- Constant update on trending hashtags
- Influencer post coordination
- Social media metrics reporting
All actions above are a must if you want to create a prominent social media network presence. A social media calendar will give you a visual approach to social media management, allowing you to time every post perfectly to get the best results.
Benefits of Using a Social Media Content Calendar
Using a social media calendar is a good idea because you’ll have more time to focus on building the best online presence. The calendar offers an ideal platform for planning posts and building a well-performing social strategy using accurate performance metrics. However, these calendars provide other benefits that will undoubtedly help your efforts.
1. Keep Your Posts Consistent
The social media calendar is ideal for posting on multiple accounts and social media networks. The software connects all accounts into one dashboard, making it easier to track every channel. That way, you can ensure that you put the same effort into every post across all networks. Moreover, a calendar can help you see how a post will look before going live, which allows you to correct errors and find the ideal photos for every post.
2. Error Prevention
Errors can damage your post engagement rates and brand reputation. People can’t take you seriously if your posts have typos, misspelled words, and poor grammar. When you use a calendar, you will have to predefine posts days, weeks, or months ahead. Since you can review every post before it goes live, you’ll have another chance to proofread everything, ensure that all links are working correctly, and double-check that all images are related to the right posts.
3. Time Every Post Perfectly
Social post engagement rates depend on multiple factors. For example, if you post something at the wrong time of the day, your content won’t give you the results you want. However, a content calendar can help you get the most out of every post. You can pre-define the best posting times, areas, and other details to ensure that the content reaches your targeted audience. Moreover, you can use it to boost post-performance and increase engagement rates with zero effort.
4. Centralized Content Planner
There are many different types of posts. Some focus on videos, other use images to promote products. Many businesses use social media networks to share blog links, customer reviews, etc. They also use other methods for building trust and increasing audience engagement. A calendar can help you there as well. It offers an excellent platform that connects all social media networks and accounts into one dashboard.
That way, your team members will always stay one step ahead of every post, and it will make it easier to track all accounts. Moreover, it allows you to make changes quickly, switch posts, and list materials according to the situation at hand.
5. Cross-Functionality on a New Level
You likely have multiple team members taking care of your social media accounts. A social media calendar can make things easier by creating a single post database all team members can use to create better social media posts. Moreover, it will ensure that every member is on track with sharing posts, leaving likes, etc. The best part is that you’ll have control over every post and every team member.
Creating Social Media Content
Now that you understand how a social media calendar helps your effort, here’s a step-by-step explanation of how to organize your calendar, so it offers the best results.
1. Pick the Social Media Channels You Will Use
Choosing the right social media channels for your marketing plans is the key step in organizing any online marketing campaign. You have to find channels that fit your targeted audience. For example, if you provide graphic design or other visual services, Instagram is your best choice.
On the other hand, if you’re looking to promote products and grow a strong community around your brand, you should aim your efforts on Twitter and Facebook.
2. See Which Channels Perform Best
You likely post content on multiple channels, so it’s important to see which one engages the most people. Try to find the most successful posts on every channel by seeing what type of post engages your audience. Also, figure out when your audience is active, look into the demographics, and find other useful information.
An audit will help you figure out which posts work and which ones don’t. Once you know that, you can organize your social media calendar posting according to what your audience expects.
3. Figure Out Which Posts Are Worth Tracking
A social media calendar can help you track the performance of each post to increase its reach. The calendar will generate metadata you can use to track post details and see how they perform. That includes monitoring trending hashtags, posts, audience, mentions, and much more.
4. Plan Your Posting
The next step is to figure out how frequent you’ll be posting and how many posts you want to create in advance. Start by creating an asset library with all potential posts, texts, photos, etc. Then, optimize your cadence to avoid overloading the posting process.
5. Track Content and Create Reports
Once you get everything going, you’ll want to track every post using the calendar. It can help you find trends, generate media analytics data on previous posts to see how many impressions they got. The key here is to track all posts to see what works and what doesn’t. Keep only the type of posts that work, and you’ll be able to improve your social media campaigns in no time.
Final Words
The bottom line is that a social media calendar can help you get the most out of every post. It’s a versatile tool that allows you to bring your social media marketing to a whole new level. Once you master how everything works, you’ll be able to increase engagement and ROI with every future online marketing campaign.
Author
Danny Wilson is a digital marketing specialist and a content writer at DigitalStrategyOne.
Focused around SEO, he is also dedicated to creating high quality content for social media.