Being active on social media is non-negotiable for brands. In fact, consumers are more likely to spend 20-40% more money if a brand interacts with them on social media.
But let’s be honest, posting content consistently on social media is challenging. Many marketing tasks require your attention daily, and managing multiple social media platforms can be chaotic.
Social media calendars can help you stay organized. You can arrange content by audience, industry relevance, and audience interaction—all without the stress.
Let’s learn the basics of building a social media calendar that works.
What is a Social Media Calendar?
A social media calendar is a schedule of planned social media content. It can include posts for a variety of social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. It is used to plan and organize content for a specific time period, such as a week, a month, or a quarter.
A social media calendar is a helpful tool for businesses because it allows them to plan and schedule their social media content in advance. A social media calendar can also help businesses to align their social media content with other marketing and business goals, such as product launches or special promotions. It’s an important tool for businesses looking to effectively manage their social media presence and engage with their audience on social media.
Benefits of Creating a Social Media Calendar
Here are three benefits from creating a social media calendar.
1. Organization
A social media calendar standardizes your process of writing and sharing content. For example, your team can develop specific content ideas using content pillars. A team member can create the content for that topic and track the performance. The calendar helps define each member’s role to keep the content creation process organized.
2. Consistency
Consistency is critical for social media content creation. Sticking to a schedule helps you stay relevant to your audience. That way, you can build topical authority over time.
3. Content goals
A social media calendar helps you allocate your resources to achieve your content goals. With your pillars, you can create content that aligns with your marketing objectives and brand voice.
How to Create a Social Media Calendar
Creating a social media calendar is the foundation for future content performance. Here’s how you can create a social media calendar:
1. Select a layout
Your social media calendar layout can be simple or complex, depending on your needs. Decide whether it’ll be a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar.
Then, you can include the following elements:
- Day
- Time
- Platform
- Content Pillar Type
- Content Type
- KPIs (number of likes, views, sales)
- Attachments (graphics, documents, videos)
- Link to published post
2. Choose your content pillars
Content pillars are broad topics that your brand will consistently post about on social media. These pillars are what will be the basis for all your social media content ideas. For example, a travel vlogger’s content pillars might be travel guides, hotel reviews, and travel tips.
3. Develop a content mix
Variety in your social media content is essential. Without that, your audience will be bored, and you may run out of content ideas. Instead, a content mix ensures that your audience receives your brand information in different formats based on the customer’s journey.
Let’s say you are a content marketing agency posting content on Instagram. You may choose to post:
- Testimonials
- Expert interviews
- Industry news
- Trending topics
4. Determine your KPIs
Establishing key performance indicators is needed if you want to track the performance of your social media content. Using the SMART goals framework, you can create KPIs that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely. Your KPIs could mirror these examples:
- Reach: Likes, followers, shares, engagement
- Conversion: Conversion rate, sales
- Customer Satisfaction: Reviews, net promoter score
5. Stick to your publishing frequency
Your audience will be more likely to notice your content in their feeds if you have a set publishing frequency. They will expect to see your content regularly, similar to a TV show that airs on a specific day.
Platforms require different publishing frequencies. Try this publishing cadence:
- Instagram: Once per day
- LinkedIn: Twice per week
- Twitter: 2-3 times per day
- TikTok: Once per day.
- Facebook: Once a day
6. Invite team members
Invite your team members to add their ideas to the calendar. Your team members also can track the posts, and some members may choose to revise their department’s strategies based on the social analytics. The goal is for all stakeholders to have visibility into the brand’s social media.
Tools for Creating a Social Media Calendar
There are a lot of options when it comes to tools for social media calendars Here are three easy-to-use tools to create a social media calendar.
Trello
Trello is the best tool for a social media team with 5-10 members. This collaborative tool can assign different people to different cards. You can create multiple topics and detail the work to be done for each.
Notion
Notion is a popular tool amongst social media managers. This tool allows you to use tags to assign to each piece of content. Tags will help in differentiating the content types, like carousel posts, video posts, and text posts. You also can add sub-pages within a page to link your content brief to a content idea.
Google Sheets
Google Sheets is one of the easiest ways to build your calendar. It’s easily customizable, and you can add checkboxes, formulas, links, and attachments. You can use checkboxes to mark the status of a post.
Create Your Social Media Calendar
A social media calendar is the foundation to social media content creation. Analyze your objectives to prepare the right calendar for your brand. After all, social media is all about experimenting.
About the Author
Sanjana Sankhyan is a freelance writer and specializes in delivering data-driven blog posts for B2B SaaS brands. She helps businesses attract more audience and sales with her writing. If not writing, you’ll find her helping other freelancers be better at what they do. Find her on LinkedIn or Twitter.
