Knowing how to plan your social media content in advance can be a real lifesaver, not to mention a time saver! It not only helps you create better, well thought out content. But in some cases can also prevent minor panic attacks. It sounds like a big commitment at first but trust us, it’s worth the effort!
Whether you create a simple grid with a few links or a bespoke dashboard that is capable of planning dozens of feeds, your social media content calendar can be as simple or as complex as your brand needs it to be.
Below is a guide on how to create your own. But first, let’s review the many compelling reasons to create a social media content calendar.
What is a social media content calendar?
A social media content calendar is an overview of all your upcoming social media posts. It can be in the form of a spreadsheet, google doc, calendar or interactive dashboard, if you choose to use a social media management app.
A social media content calendar usually contains a combination of the following elements:
- The date and time the post is meant to go live
- The social network and account where the post will be published
- The post’s copy and creative assets (i.e. images/videos)
- Links and tags
- Any additional relevant information (i.e, if it’s an Instagram feed post or a Story)
Depending on the scope of your social media strategy, your social media content calendar can include one or many social networks.
Why use social media content calendar?
1. Stay organised and save time
Social media posts take effort and attention every single day. Not just when you’re feeling inspired or when everything else is taken care of. Everyday!
Maintaining a social media content calendar is therefore not only important for saving time, but for planning ahead and batching your work to avoid multitasking.
Pro-tip. It’s also very useful for noting down all your creative brainwaves for later.
It’s the best way to avoid desperately scrolling through bland, uninspired posts, hoping to find something in a pinch.
Even though you may be posting every day, maybe multiple times a day, having a social media content calendar means that you don’t need to constantly babysit your feeds.
Certain social media tools allow you to schedule your social media posts ahead of time and manage all engagement from one place.
2. Post consistently
Whether your trying to grow your Instagram following or your YouTube subscribers, the first tip you’ll hear from experts is to be consistent. There’s just no shortcut around it.
Consistently showing up in your audiences’ news feeds is key to getting their attention and engaging them on social media.
If you manage to engage your audience successfully, you’ll increase your organic reach and your posts will get shown to new eyes and new people will begin following your brand.
Making genuine connections with a growing audience will also go a long way to increasing your conversions.
The bottom line? Filling up your social media content calendar with posts ahead of time allows you to post consistently, regardless of whether work is slow or extremely busy.
3. Reduce the risk of making mistakes
Planning your posts ahead of time means that you can copy-edit the text, fact-check information, and even vet your content with other team members before it goes live. Which is a lot easier when you’re working days or weeks in advance.
A social media content calendar, especially one with other team members’ approval, is the best way to help prevent low-key embarrassment or a full-on social media crisis.
4. Create more complex social media content strategies
Big brands often run multiple social media campaigns at once. Long, medium and short term, paid and organic, and that’s just the day to day posts.
Once you have your social media content schedule all planned out, you’ll be free to tackle bigger social media-related challenges. Like, should you run a Facebook contest? Get your brand on LinkedIn? Or look for an influencer partner?
Whether you’re managing a five-person content team or posting a story about your client’s gorgeous haircut and colour, getting your social media to the next level means getting organised.
How to create a social media content calendar
1. Audit your social media profiles and content
Conducting a social media audit is key to fine-tuning your content strategy and maximising your ROI.
Things to look out for with conducting a social media audit include:
- Impostor social media accounts and outdated profiles
- Account passwords
- Goals and KPIs for each social media account
- Your audience demographics and personas
- Your most successful posts, campaigns and tactics
- Gaps, underwhelming results, and opportunities for improvement
- Key metrics for measuring future success on each social media platform
Dedicate some time to go through all of your social media assets. Then you can rest assured, knowing that you’re able to create a refreshed social media strategy using the best information available.
2. Choose your social media channels
In all the hustle and bustle of the daily grind, it takes a concerted effort to stay abreast of all the latest social media-related developments. Like, should your brand should care about Instagram threads or is your ideal audience is on TikTok?
Even though it may take time out of your day, reviewing best practices for business marketing strategies is worth it.
One way to do this is to take some professional development reading breaks, perhaps after lunch, and you’ll be bubbling with new ideas and insights in no time!
3. Decide what your social media content calendar needs to track
Maybe you’re a newbie with a side hustle, starting fresh and doing social media for your friend’s pet sitting business. In which case, a simple spreadsheet will do.
But if you’re managing a larger team with a dozen consumer-facing brands, you’re going to need something that can tell you who’s doing what, when it’s done, when it’s approved, and when it’s published. Then also, how successful it was.
Let’s start with the basics:
- Platform
- Date
- Time (and time zone)
- Copy
- Visuals (i.e, image, video, infographic, gif, etc.)
- Link to assets
- Link to published post
For more advanced needs, you can add:
- Platform-specific format (i.e. feed post, IGTV, Story, poll, live stream, ads, shoppable posts, etc.)
- Campaign it’s affiliated with (i.e. product launch, event, contest, general brand awareness, customer service, etc.)
- Geographical targeting (i.e. global, South Africa, etc.)
- Value (i.e. short-lived topical post or big-budget evergreen piece that could be recycled or repurposed for parts down the line?)
- Paid or organic? (If paid, then additional budget details should be added)
- Has it been approved?
- Has it been posted? (If so, do you want to include a UTM link?)
- Analytics and results (At this level of complexity you can rely on your analytics reports to contain and explain this information.)
4. Establish a workflow rhythm
Now that you’ve gathered all the relevant information, it’s time to work out your daily, weekly and monthly social media cadence.
To help you, think about:
- How often you want to post on each social media channel
- The best time to post to each channel (based on your analytics)
- What your content ratio will look like (an easy starting point is the rule of thirds)
- ⅓ posts to promote your business, convert readers, and generate profits.
- ⅓ posts of ideas from influencers in your industry (or like-minded businesses).
- ⅓ posts of personal stories to build your brand.
- Who needs to approve your posts (i.e., your copy-editor, legal team, CEO) and how communication between them will work.
- What the process is for brainstorming new content is, as well as assigning and creating it.
5. Begin creating your social media content
At this point, it’s time to start putting together some social media content. As you work, take some time to evaluate how your content sounds and how it comes across to your audience. If it’s too wordy or detailed, dial it back a bit. Or maybe it’s not detailed enough and you find that you need to add a bit more.
6. Ask your team to review and give feedback to improve
Now that you’ve worked on the foundations, it’s time to reveal your work to the world, or at least your colleagues. Ask them for their feedback and schedule a meeting for everyone to state their findings.
At the end of this, you should have an airtight document that even the newest team member can understand.
7. Publish or schedule your social media content
The time has come! Your social media content calendar is done and ready to run.
As you start publishing consistently, you may find that it takes time to manually publish your posts. This will be especially true if you’re working with high volumes of content. In that case, use a calendar that also has scheduling functionality. Some free, native ones include, Creator Studio for Facebook and Instagram and TweetDeck for Twitter.
If you need help with creating social media content for your business, get in touch with us to see how we can help today!
