Writing a social media calendar for your brand?
Planning it out months ahead is a must to save you from the unnecessary stress of browsing the net for new post ideas every day.
Also, having a well-planned calendar gives you more time to build greater consistency in terms of brand voice and style.
So, let’s learn how to create a social media content calendar the right way.
In this guide, we’ll go over these steps:
Analyze previous social media campaigns for insights
Decide calendar format for ease of use
Organize content in your calendar
Plan the posting schedule for maximum engagement
Define visuals for posts
Plan inspirations quotes for content variety
Create a content development process.
1. Analyze Previous Campaigns
Are you writing a content plan to start your first social media campaign?
Read this section – it’ll help you a lot in the future.
Run campaigns before?
Great, they’ll help you one more time.
Past social media marketing campaigns are a great source of information to boost your next ones. Take a look at their performance data in your social media analytics tools and look for these:
The best-performing types of posts
The most popular content types
The times and dates of peak of content engagement
Data on demographics and interests of the users who interacted with content.
Consider these insights when planning your calendar. For example, if infographics generated a lot of engagement for you in the past, ensure that the future campaigns include them, too.
With this in mind, let’s plan some content.
2. Decide Calendar Format
Your social media content calendar is going to be a living document. Graphics designers, marketers, copywriters, and other folks in your team will be visiting it and making updates.
So making it accessible is a good idea.
A Google spreadsheet is the most common format for calendars. It’s easily sharable, plus everyone can make updates at any time.
Share this spreadsheet with your team and ask for feedback. You can improve it as you go to cover all bases.
3. Put Ideas in Your Calendar
Done with creating a spreadsheet for your calendar?
Excellent, time to put in some amazing ideas!
Gather from your team for the first brainstorming session. Your task is to come up with ideas for posts and add them to the calendar.
Places to look for good ideas:
Previous campaigns
Customer research findings
Competitors’ social media profiles
Social media content discovery tools
Content from successful social media influencers from your industry.
Challenge yourself to plan content ideas for a few weeks. This timeframe will give you just enough time to see what works.
4. Define Posting Schedule
Every social media platform has the so-called “peak engagement” times when posts get the most views, likes, comments, and shares.
For example, folks check out Facebook during launch to see updates from friends. Professionals return to LinkedIn to get some innovative business ideas and do some networking throughout the day.
That’s why you need to decide when to post.
Sit down with your marketing team to decide:
Posting times for each social media platform
Which content pieces to post on those dates.
Social Media Today reported these dates and times to be the best for engagement:
Facebook – Wednesday, between 11 am and 12 pm
Instagram – Wednesday and Friday, around 10 am
Twitter – Wednesday and Friday, between 9 am and 12 pm
LinkedIn – Wednesday between 8 and 10 am and Friday at 9 am.
Treat these as a starting point for your future campaigns, though.
Every brand’s “peak engagement times” are unique, so begin with these times and experiment as you go.
5. Visuals, Visuals, Visuals
Want to get 2.3 times more engagement from your posts?
Then add visuals.
Can’t stress this enough, really.
Social media posts with visuals are more engaging, compelling, and plain nicer, which is exactly what you need to promote your brand.
The best visual content for social media platforms?
Here you go.
Facebook–infographics, memes, charts, photos, quotes, blog headers
Instagram–product images, photos, quotes
LinkedIn–photos of people, blog headers, banners
Twitter–GIFs, photos of people, blog headers, quotes.
A great advantage of using visuals is their ability to make information digestible and attract attention.
This Instagram post, for example, grabs the attention with the visual first to generate interest. After reading the text on the visual, social media users get essential information about the competition.
Source: Hototaco, Instagram
That’s why try to plan a visual for most of the content in your social media calendar. A good way to make planning visuals easier is to describe them.
Try writing a concise description like this.
The descriptions of visuals will help your social manager and graphic designer to work together to plan content when the campaign goes live.
Pro tip: Don’t spend too much time creating unique visuals from scratch. With free tools to create unique social media graphics, you can do unique designs in seconds.
6. Plan Inspirational Quotes
Writing for social media is essentially writing for scrollers or skimmers.
Whether it’s a professional looking for a freelance developer resume tips on LinkedIn or a famous singer just checking out Instagram, people spend seconds looking at posts. So, the more concise posts you plan in your calendar, the better.
So, you need social media content that’s concise, memorable, resonates with your followers, engages, and refocuses their attention. Like an irresistible headline that people stop and read before scrolling down their newsfeed.
You know what fits these requirements perfectly?
A quote.
From small brands to large companies like Forbes, social media managers like to share quotes on social media.
You, too, try engaging followers with:
Inspirational quotes
Quotes of people you target audience treats as thought leaders
Positive quotes to start the day.
Tips to maximize social media engagement with quotes:
Create your own graphics for quote post backgrounds—original content is a better way to build your brand
Share quotes that support your brand’s mission and values–stay on point and relevant to resonate with your audience
Don’t spam–avoid overwhelming people, try posting only one quote a week.
The bottom line is that by creating quotes for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms, you’re making it easier to consume and engage with your content.
7. Create Content Development Process
Now, you know what content to post and when.
The next step is to create a workflow with your team. It’s better to plan this ahead and document the process step by step, so everyone knows their duties.
The most important points to plan:
Weekly or bi-weekly content brainstorming sessions with your team
Appropriate visuals for every post
Content writing process (who writes social media copy and when)
Content review process (who reviews posts before publishing and when)
How much content should you plan ahead?
A month is a good idea.
This time gives you an opportunity to see how your content performs, what works, and what could be improved.
Also, be sure to monitor social media trends – it’s a must to keep yourself updated on events in your industry. You never know when you’ll need to make an unplanned post.
Social Media Content Calendar: Summary
A well-planned and documented content calendar is a powerful tool for boosting the awareness of your brand. It keeps your social media presence consistent and well-thought-out.
Plus, it puts you ahead of many competitors. Publish great content regularly, and you’ll get more of your content in front of potential customers.
Additionnaly, if you’re interested in posting more articles to boost your reach even more, you can delegate the writing of amazing posts to writing agencies. Here is a great essayservice reviews by NoCramming.com to let you discover the best players.
Remember, victory loves preparation, so creating a plan is a good start. Fingers crossed for your success!
AUTHOR BIO
Dorian Martin’s digital marketing experience extends from blog writing to link building with expertise in both B2C and B2B industries. Whether he’s writing a piece on how to find leads with chatbots or essay writers for hire, his research skills result in value-packed articles. To balance her lively personality, Dorian does yoga and public speaking classes.