Social media posts are integral to every digital marketing strategy, but it’s still just a part of the process. By now, every social media marketing team knows the importance and the ambiguities of social media posts. Creating content for these posts in a crunch situation is what gets marketers tangled in errors and problems.
Social media content calendars are an effective way to avoid these limitations. Social media algorithms require brands to post relevant and engaging content regularly to stay in the game. But creating compelling content with attractive visuals is no piece of cake.
Juggling between multiple social media platforms, curating content for each platform separately, posting, and measuring success are just a few steps of the process. Most marketers are also focusing on several other tasks, opening the entire campaign to problems and errors.
That is why businesses invest in social media schedulers and content calendars to create and publish content beforehand. If you are a marketer struggling with creating a social media calendar for a month or a small business trying to make both ends with social media postings, this blog will definitely help you.
Why should you invest in content calendars?
Content calendars are templates or forms to organize your social media posts in a posting order based on the date, time, and platform. They allow marketers to create and launch social media posts in advance to post regularly, quickly, and productively.
Apart from that, several other reasons exist to invest in social media calendar templates and schedulers. For better understanding, consider the following upsides of having a content calendar.
Saves time by keeping things organized.
Social media calendars store the upcoming cycle of posts published across several social media accounts. It is a delicate process, as every social media network has unique attributes and specifications.
Even if you create a single post for 6-7 social media accounts, things can get a bit messy. Moreover, several team members are working on the content and visuals of the posts. Spraying content across multiple desks can become a struggle to combine in a single stream.
These processes take copious amounts of time. Contrary to that, if you have a content calendar template, all of this can be done smoothly.
High-quality scalable content.
One cycle of your social media posts is scheduled. You have a lot of time on your hands now. It’s time to use this time to curate high-quality content aligned with your audience’s taste. Start the process with basics, and analyze the market and your company requirements.
Get a clear sight of what to post about and start the content creation process by brainstorming ideas. Create content and proofread it several times to eradicate any spelling or grammar mistakes, and ensure that your tone and message align with your audience and company policy.
Social media content calendars allow marketers to scale their content without any hassle. You can start by posting a week’s worth of content and see how it plays out in the field. You can easily add more content to the scheduler if you get the desired results. Similarly, you can create new content if you do not see any positive engagement.
Posting calendars offers the freedom of scrutinizing your content on several scales, ensuring the success of your content strategy.
Keeping in touch with your audience.
Humongous amounts of data— images, videos, Reels, Stories— are shared on social media platforms every minute of the day. Posting captivating content consistently is the most effective and intelligent way of keeping in touch with your audience.
With content calendars, you can post autonomously, maintaining a consistent outlook on your social media presence. Regular posts create excitement and anticipation in the minds of viewers that can be leveraged to achieve the broader goals of the brand.
Productive collaboration.
Social media management is a team effort combining talented content creators, creative designers, managers, and assistants. Although social media management tools like Adublisher made the process easy, on average, a social media team consists of 4-6 people.
The manager has to assign tasks and finalize a social media post for publishing or scheduling. Sometimes, It can get complicated, especially when working on several social media campaigns.
If you have a posting calendar in place, every team member will know where they need to submit their work orderly. Managers can check the calendar at the end of the day to see what’s done and what’s in the pipeline.
Analyze the content.
A significant benefit of social media calendars is the comprehensive analysis of an entire posting cycle. In a jist, you can see what performed and what went unnoticed in the eyes of viewers. These analytical reports fuel successful social media strategies.
Moreover, marketers can practically show the higher management the fruits of their social media efforts and investments. Social media analytics is being widely utilized by modern businesses to organize data-driven strategies.
How to fill in a social media content calendar?
We have established the benefits of having a social posting calendar, but you might be wondering how to actually fill the calendar; what goes into a social media calendar?
The main components of every social media calendar are,
- Social media platform: The number of social media platforms you want to post on— Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest.
- Copy or Caption: A captivating copy of your social media post caption. Depending on the template, you can add indicators of what’s inside the post for a clear view.
- Visuals: The most essential part of the social media post— images, videos, Slides.
- Posting day and time: The optimal time to post on each social media network.
- UTM: UTM is a tracking code added to the URL to track the performance of any content.
There is a vast amount of social media calendar templates available online. The above-mentioned critical elements are common among all of them.
How to create a social media calendar to boost productivity?
We know what a social media calendar is, what are its components and benefits, and let’s see what goes into crafting a winsome posting calendar.
Inspect past performances.
Crafting a social media calendar full of possibilities and high engagements begins with an audit of past social media efforts. Keep in mind your company’s goals while you put your social media performances under the microscope.
When analyzing the reports, look out for the following KPIs,
- Which type of content works well?
- Which content style is resonating with the audience?
- Which social media platforms bring the best results?
- Which content works for a specific platform?
- Which is your best and worst social media post?
- Are you getting your separate social media platform goals and overall brand goals?
- How is your target audience behaving?
Once you have the answer to these questions, you can get a contextual understanding of your social media needs for the next posting cycle.
Set clear goals.
Based on past performances and after consulting with your executives, create a clear set of goals. These goals will act as milestones and the guiding star of your social media efforts. Marketers use the SMART goals— Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Timely— framework to create goals for their social media campaigns.
You can set different goals for different social media platforms, all combined towards a common company goal. Some common goals associated with social media are,
- Maximum reach
- Engagements
- Website Traffic
- Conversions
- Click-Through-Rate, CTR
- And Sales for social commerce and ecommerce websites.
Assign Tasks.
Don’t be a do-it-all, especially in the advanced digital marketing world. As a social media manager, it’s essential to assign proper tasks to your social media team and ensure that they know their role. It’s necessary to remember that talent can’t be taught.
If you have talented and professional content creators, harness their creativity to create persuasive captions. In the same vein, utilize your designers to generate mesmerizing graphics. Since short videos are on the rise and will continue to do so, it’s a safe investment to hire a professional videographer.
Work as a team and cut the social media giant to size by dividing the tasks and achieving small milestones, gradually taking you to your success.
Download a content calendar template.
Marketers can find hundreds of free and paid social media calendar templates. Content templates come in various sizes and designs, from simple Google spreadsheets to visually appealing templates from Buffer, Hubspot, etc.
A word of advice: start with Google products, and once you get a hold of the entire process, you can invest in paid templates.
Diversity is the best policy.
Modern social media users are very picky and moody. If you bombard them with promotional posts all year long, they will leave after a couple of posts. It’s critical to keep in mind that social media is a source of business for you, not everyone. Most monthly active social media users log in to their accounts to socialize and enjoy.
Successful marketers consider diversifying content to capture social media users’ attention. Marketing experts advise creating a mix of promotional, educational, informative, funny, entertaining and shared pots.
So, when filling your content calendar, add a few original unique posts, a few shared posts that align with your goals, a lot of educational posts, a cherry topping of funny posts, and finally, a small amount of directed and clear promotional posts about the brand or some product.
A mix of social media platforms and their respective best time.
The internet is flooded with social media platforms; it’s up to you to see which one is the best for you. The social media audit is pivotal in finalizing an optimal mix of social media platforms based on past performances and product needs.
Once you finalize the set of social media platforms, it’s time to find the optimal time to post on these networks. Each social media network —Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.— has its own unique formats and peak times. To get the best visibility and maximum audience reach, finding the best posting day and time is inevitable.
Insert a UTM tracker.
UTM trackers are a line of code added to the URL to help track the social media post performances. Although social media schedulers, like Adublisher, have built-in Google Analytics, adding a UTM tracker gives more accurate and real-time analytics.
Get a social media scheduler.
You have done the hard work, and it’s time to schedule posting calendars on social media with a scheduler like Adublisher. You can’t schedule a posting calendar with native social media schedulers.
Find a social media management tool, see which can meet your needs, get a test trail, and analyze every aspect of the software before making a final decision. Social media schedulers come with a lot of valuable benefits like bulk scheduling, RSS Feed scheduling, messaging, and Google Analytics.
Schedule calendar on social media.
At this point in the journey, you have everything from content to scheduler. All that’s left to do is schedule the calendar. Social media schedulers are tools that will free up time by automatically posting content across multiple social media platforms.
You can focus on more concerning matters while your content is published in the background by a reliable tool doing all the grunt work. Once scheduled, marketers can overview their content and see what changes must be made. Another benefit of content calendars is that you can pause the publishing for the time being and resume if required.
