Master Your Social Media with a Content Calendar!

Approach to Creating and Implementing a Basic Social Media Plan

In the context of social media, where things change in extremely rapid pace, the most important thing is to be consistent. Recognize your content calendar as your ultimate shield that sort of prevents whining in the middle of one or another week from the lack of ideas for new posts. In any way if you are in charge of the particular brand or personal business application of the social media marketing you will find that having a good patterned format of the given content schedule will help you do it best and faster.

What is a Content Calendar and why does one need it?

A content calendar is a plan which shows when and where the new content along with its type will be posted. It ranges all the way from a simple Google Sheet to something as complicated as Trello or Asana for project management. It usually involves the kind of content to be shared (for instance, blog, social media updates, videos), the channels that will be used in sharing the content and any important date or events that may appeal to your audience.

As to why you need to use content calendar:

Consistency in Posting: People also stay abreast with your page or profile and this helps in improving the audience reach. It also helps one not to forget to post on some very crucial days in the year or the month.

• Efficiency and Time Management: In this way, instead of brainstorming for content ideas on daily basis, you can designate time periods for this activity.
• Better Content Variety: A calendar enables you to plan the content that you post and it assists you in posting a variety of content type, for instance informational, recreational and commercial.
• Alignment with Marketing Goals: You can link your social media with business goals where all posts will reflect broader marketing strategies, company’s new products or services, or events like holidays etc.

let’s look at the steps that will have to be taken in order to create a content calendar.

1. Define Your Goals

Typically before starting with the calendar you should define what want to accomplish. Do you want to Get Response? Increase your website’s popularity? Grow your following? It means that depending on your goals you will include certain types of content to your blog.

For example, if your goal is to increase engagement, some of the important post types could be poll, question or a giveaway. If you want to drive traffic, it will be more effective to share the blog posts or post informative topics.

2. Choose Your Platforms

It is worth to notice that one content type is effective on one platform and rather ineffective on another. For instance, Instagram is a visually orientated platform and prefers posts that contain numerous images; therefore, a post in LinkedIn will be more suitable for professional articles that are more elaborate in content. Decide which ones specifically you will be using and which kind of content is effective on each type.

3. Plan Your Content Types

This is a great reason to consider while designing a content calendar. Often, you just want to combat the feeling of posting something ‘same’ and varying the content you post. Consider these content types:

• Informative Posts: Anything informative in form of tips, how-to or industry news related to education.
• Entertaining Posts: Information sharing such as donation, money trading, jokes and riddles, promotions and challenges.
• Promotional Posts: Such events like new products release or sales, promotions or appeals to customers, for instance.
• User-Generated Content: This includes posts that document the customers, whether in pictures, or in words stating their experiences.

4. Set a Posting Frequency

Choose the frequency of your posts on each kind of platform. A common approach is:

• Facebook: Once or more frequently – during the daytime, 1- 2 times per day.
• Instagram: One blog post per day, with daily Stories before this format was shifted to a weekly schedule.
• Twitter: 3-5 tweets a day
• LinkedIn: It is 2-3 times of that, or two to three times per week.

Balance is key. It is too much as it may interfere with your followers’ interest when you keep on posting time times within a short time span and it is too little, your engagement level reduces again.

5. Organize Your Calendar

You have defined your content types and the frequency of the posts, it is high time to arrange all of this into a calendar.

You can use tools like:

• Google Sheets: Good for quick and base level teamwork.
• Trello: Posts should be displayed as cards to make their status traceability possible.
• Hootsuite or Buffer: Social media management platforms which come equipped with packages for scheduling and auto-posting content.

Your calendar should include the following information

• Date and Time: The time that it will be posted.
• Content Type: Any form of writing such as a blog post, an infographic, meme, and so on.
• Platform: I. e. Instagram, Facebook, Linked and other social networks.
• Caption/Description: The content of the post message to be delivered to the followers.
• Links/Media: All related pictures, clips or any other links.

6. Time-Based Planning: Plan Spring-Summer Increased Expenses With Big Ticket Items

This is the best time to include milestones such as holidays, particular products’ launches, or other significant events for the given audience. Scheduling content based on such dates would assist one be relevant always and most of the time, such dates promote promotion.

7. Track and Adjust

You should also take some time periodically and review how your posts are performing after you have been using your calendar regularly. Such metrics as likes, shares, clicks, and conversions should be measure and the best method determined. This data can then be used in revising the content that is being posted in the future and the strategic approach to be taken.