When it comes to growing a successful social media strategy, it’s important to be organized and create a content calendar to schedule out the majority of your content. Content calendars don’t only help you stay ahead of your competitors, but they make it easier for you to know what content you are posting and to be able make any adjustments needed.
A social media content calendar can make or break your social campaigns. They help you develop a strategic plan for creating, distributing and measuring everything you share on social media. In this article, you will learn why it’s important to have a content calendar and how to create a successful social media calendar that keeps you organized and helps you continuously improve your strategy.
What is a Content Calendar?
This type of calendar is a way to plan out and organize future content. Content calendars can come in several forms. For example, a social media content calendar is a place to plan all content that will be placed on social media channels. An editorial content calendar is meant to plan out specific marketing assets such as blog posts, videos, or infographics.
Your content calendar makes sure that all marketing efforts have the same end goal in mind, so make sure it’s easily accessible for your whole team. Google Sheets and Trello are great places to keep your calendar that allow multiple people to access your calendar and update it in real time. In fact, a well-maintained content calendar allows marketers to view all campaigns to get an all-encompassing plan of action for marketing execution.
Why is it Important?
Creating a social media content calendar is a great way to plan and schedule your content in advance so you know exactly what content you need to create and when and where to publish it. Keeping a social media content calendar allows you to:
- Stay Organized. Without a content calendar to guide the process, your social strategy can become inconsistent.
- Maintain Accountability. Calendars are great for setting deadlines. Taking the time to build a comprehensive social content calendar removes the friction that comes with managing social channels including the oh-so-common issue of not knowing what to post.
- Save Time. A social media calendar allows you to ensure that you allocate your time and resources wisely; you’ll always have quality content on hand and won’t spend your days scrambling to find trending topics.
- Create a Consistent Brand Voice. When you plan ahead, you’re working with a big-picture view and plenty of lead time. This allows you to put together a tight editorial strategy
- Measure & Improve Your Performance. A social media calendar will save you time and allow you to track and test different strategies to see what resonates most with your audience.
What to Add in Your Content Calendar?
Content calendars are the place where ideas, topics, and dates are stored. While this is a great first step in organization, a successful content calendar will go above and beyond to include the following:
- Topics with an assigned owner
- Prioritized list of what topics should be executed first
- List (and links) to channels the content will be posted on
- Incorporating the above items will help to create a functional content calendar that will help your team stay on track and focused.
Finally
Remember, the first step to seeing success on your social media platforms is to start somewhere. By creating a social media content calendar you’ll be able to map out your strategy for weeks, or even months, to come. A content calendar is the source of truth for a company’s marketing strategy. It provides a great tool and resource for organizing both short-term and long-term goals. Choosing the right tool and process for your team can be beneficial for your company while producing content that’s aligned with your business goals.
