How To Plan And Organize Your Social Media Content Calendar
Only uploading a post on every national or international holiday is the outcome of an inefficient social media content calendar. Your brand and its audience deserve better.
A good, well-planned social media content calendar is supposed to do so much more than just be a part of the crowd and upload repetitive creatives. Planning and organizing your calendar demands attention to detail and good research. Simply knowing what occasion falls on which day isn’t enough anymore; it is necessary to understand when your target audience is most active and what content they will resonate the most with on that day.
A social media content calendar spans 30 to 31 days, eleven months of the year, or 28 to 29 days during February. Banking posts when topical content makes all the noise are crucial since they allow you to plan and upload when everything else fails.
But how does one plan and organize their social media content calendar, you ask? Here is how:
- Finalize your social media channels
Figure out and cement the social media platforms through which you want to amplify your content. You can not have a content strategy in place without deciding where the content will show up.
- Perform a social media audit
Audit. Audit. Audit. Having a clean slate and a clear idea of where your social media presence stands now will allow you to measure your potential growth. Post this; your content strategy will have a different perspective now that you know where you’re lacking and what needs more attention.
- Create a content library
While it may not seem like much, having one place to store all your content banked up for the month is a must-have. Instead of scrawling through your files on the day of uploading the post, it is wiser to have it easily accessible on your content library. This promotes ease of use and saves you time.
- Jot down creative ideas for your social media content calendar
It is called a “creative” for a reason; the posts need to stay in the minds of your audience. Having a creative post that could be witty, topical, funny, or even serious as long as it is crafted well could do wonders for your brand.
- Get feedback and review.
Feedback from your team on the content calendar is crucial. It offers perspectives other than your own and lets you collaborate with different ideas to polish further your content and the time it is uploaded.
But why are we stressing so much about these 5 points? Because they make the basic foundation of a well-organized social media content calendar. To efficiently amplify your brand’s reach, it is essential to decide when and where to post your content, not just create it.
To get a clearer picture, a social media content calendar is a marketing tool used to schedule and plan your posts ahead of time; it allows you to stick to your deadlines while also consistently churning out quality content in advance. It’s a sigh of relief compared to last-minute social media posts that don’t generate the desired engagement. Instead of digging a well every day to access water, a social media content calendar is a way to bank your resources in advance and use them gradually. This helps your brand have a consistent image and creates a uniform framework for your content.
Most importantly, a social media content calendar enables you to stay organized and on the right track. Very few things are as bad as thinking of a post 5 minutes before the scheduled upload time. You can also customize your content based on the different social media platforms you are using. For instance, you will consider the audience on Instagram algorithm, LinkedIn, and Facebook; see the kind of content the audience likes and engages with and then create content that will bear similar results for your brand in advance. This allows your brand to grow exponentially over various platforms without creating generic content.
But to plan and organize a social media content calendar, you need the right tools; here are a few online applications that allow you to do so seamlessly.
- Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the most popular social media management platforms on the internet. It allows you to monitor your brand’s progress and measure your posts’ success and help you track several social media platforms together without getting overwhelmed.
- Buffer
Founded in 2010, before social media content calendar even generated the buzz it does now. It gave the concept its due attention and created tools to effectively do so. You can plan and schedule posts for Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and Google+ on Buffer.
- ContentCal
ContentCal is a software launched in 2014 with the intent to help brands not merely amplify their reach but create better and consistent content. It allows you to publish, plan, and analyze all your content.
- Loomly
Loomly is an all-in-one content planning and organizing tool. It streamlines the process of social media content calendar planning by facilitating an environment of working together and getting approval that allows the team to submit their content and thrive on comments and discussions. However, it doesn’t limit its services to just that, Loomly guides you and your brand to create better content with the feedback and review mentioned earlier.
- SproutSocial
A software launched in 2010 is an old player in the game of content planning and organizing. SproutSocial not just teams but individuals as well to plan their content ahead of time. It allows the user to add notes for better feedback and automatically post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.
With the aid of these software applications, any brand or individual can create a superior quality social media content calendar and boost their social media presence. To amplify your brand message and retain consistency, it is crucial for your team to not slack off in terms of the social media content calendar. You’re getting late for your next post! What are you waiting for?