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Most of the brands I have worked with have adopted a seat-of-the-pants approach to their social calendar. They only post when they remember, and they are constantly scrambling to come up with something at the last minute. To fill their social feed, they rely primarily on blog postings. However, this is not the best technique. Instagram, for example, does not allow you to add links to your material outside of your Stories, and Facebook does not prioritize outbound links. Rather than developing social media material on the spur of the moment or the day before, it is far more helpful to plan and build a balanced social media calendar.
You can make sure you are optimizing for all your social goals, improve the quality and diversity of your material, and create more well-rounded profiles that appeal to a broader percentage of your target audience by doing so. When you are not scrambling at the last minute, it is easier to be strategic, and strategic means obtaining more significant outcomes. Luckily, creating a balanced social calendar in advance is often much easier when you know exactly how to do it and have the necessary tools to assist you. In this piece, we will walk you through eight simple stages for creating a powerful, planned, and balanced social media calendar that gets the job done.
Your Social Strategy Should Be Revised or Created
First and foremost, before you do anything else, you should assess your current social approach. All businesses, brands, and organizations ought to have a well-defined social media strategy based on their individual objectives. This is what it looks like; using growth and visibility-raising methods like location-based hashtags, boosting high-performing posts, and launching social competitions to promote social media discovery. Moreover, nurturing relationships with leads and followers by using strategies like video content, infographics, and insider tips to provide relevant resources.
Also, 1x per month, offer access to “exclusive” discounts, deals, or specials on social media to increase sales. Creating closed groups for your company, especially on Facebook, and providing behind-the-scenes content can help to create a sense of exclusivity. Having your social strategy on paper allows you to focus and guarantees that you’re emphasizing all you need to achieve. Take some time to evaluate your present plan or, if necessary, develop a new one. Even if you wish to handle your own social content development, this just takes a few hours at the most. You may always pay social media professionals to put everything together for you.
Use a Social Media Management and Publication Tool to Get Started
We understand that many people prefer to use free or native technologies whenever available, and we know that. However, believe us when we say that high-quality social media management and publishing solutions are the way to go. It allows you to plan out a month’s worth of content across various platforms with ease. These technologies also include features such as engagement management, team collaboration, in-depth analytics, and more. Whatever technology you choose, make sure it can grow effectively, is adaptable, and allows you to quickly produce, schedule, and reschedule content as needed.
Make a Month's Worth of Preparations
We understand that this is a strange year in which nothing makes sense, but we now have more stability in general, and it is entirely possible to plan your content calendar a month in advance. It’s still achievable; you’ll just have to provide more updates to customers along the road. We strongly advise you to sit down at the beginning of each month (or even slightly before) to plan out your content calendar for the next thirty days or so. This isn’t to say you can’t tweak it or add to it but having a steady stream of awesome content queued up to keep your audience engaged in a way that addresses as many of your goals as possible is essential.
There will be some content that you’ll want to generate and schedule first as you flesh out your content calendar. This is referred to as “priority content” since it should be given priority on your calendar when it comes to announcing, promoting, and facilitating it. The following items could all be included in your company’s priority content: Make significant, time-sensitive statemens like delivering information about a new product or protective measures during COVID In-store or online events you want to lead people to, such as webinars and online flash discounts, Facebook events, contests, or Live Q&As.You want to put this information on the schedule first because it is the most significant. The time must be perfect. You can buikd the rest of the structure around it.
Make Strong Evergreen Content Queues
Having a library of great, evergreen content that aligns with your goals is always a smart idea. Saving this content in your social media management tool so that you can establish queues of fully prepared, only just content to fill in any big gaps in the schedule is a huge plus, and it’s a simple key to a well-balanced social calendar. If you’re stumped for ideas, all the following will make excellent evergreen content for your queue: recaps and links to popular blog posts. Infographics based on research undertaken by your company, even if it has already been posted on your blog or website.
Content that encourages users to participate, such as surveys that ask them what they’d like to see you write about their summer plans are—promotion of resources that you’ve already shared but are still useful today. To keep your audience engaged and brand recognition high, run general product promotions.
Each Month, Use at Least Three Different Types of Media
You’ll need a diversified social media calendar if you want a well-balanced and compelling social media portfolio. Switching up your post kinds, both in terms of subject and media, is the easiest method to do this. Fresh, unique content will pique their interest and keep them coming back for more. If you’re not sure where to start, consider the following different types of media: Posts in plain text (these should be used least frequently, even on platforms that allow it), Photographers and graphic designers contributed to the images. Gifs, video, 3-D pictures, and live broadcasts are all options.
To Provide Value, Include Insider and Industry Tips
Try to post at least four value-oriented conent every month, depending on your business. Many service-based companies, such as marketing agencies, realtors, tutors, and lawn service companies, will likely benefit from providing more information than this. For eCommerce businesses, this may entail offering tips on how to make their product more valuable. Someone selling a pasta maker, for example, could include videos showing how to use, clean, and care for it, as well as a plethora of recipes. They may also offer a video for troubleshooting, such as why your pasta keeps coming apart or why it’s sticky. A lawn service company might produce valuable content such as videos, explaining “How to properly maintain gardens during the summer, a list of the most durable landscaping plants that require the least amount of money and effort to maintain”, and “An explanation of why fertilizing your lawn is supposedly so important”.
Create Unique Content for Each Platform
Each platform has its own quirks, best practices, and usage. While it’s simple to arrange a single post to publish in the same way across all platforms, this isn’t always the best option. Instead, remember this: On Instagram, you can upload up to 10 photographs in one of their multi-slide images, but on Pinterest, you can only upload one image per pin. On Facebook, you can write long, rambling postings (whether that’s a good idea is another topic), but on Twitter, you’re limited to 280 characters. On both Twitter and Instagram, you should utilize hashtags, but just two or three at the most on Twitter, and up to 30 on Instagram. You should tailor your material to each platform separately. This will allow you to see outcomes and increase interaction on each platform individually, bolstering your overall performance.
Conclusion
At first look, social media marketing may appear simple, primarily since so many of us use various platforms regularly. However, like your blog, email list, and any other marketing messaging you’re delivering, your social schedule must be as purposeful and well-planned. Try your best to make a good first impression and keep your audience engaged because it’s always the first point of contact for many potential customers.