Are you putting off creating your social media calendar? Don’t worry, here are the steps to create a social media calendar.
Social media managers will be relieved to hear that two things are guaranteed to make them sigh: creating social media KPIs, and a social media schedule. Your social media calendar organizes your channels, keeps them busy with content and makes them ready for future events.
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The problem is that everyone tells us we need one, but no one tells us how to get it.
What should you include? What content should you include? How do you plan ahead?
This article will share my tips on creating a social media calendar.
What is a Social Media Calendar?
You will need to create a calendar if you are responsible for managing social media channels for a digital agency or social media marketing agency.
Contentworks Agency is a company that creates a social media calendar. It saves us a lot of time and helps us stay sane. This is done for both our clients and for our own social accounts.
It will be a great help to have a social media calendar if you manage social media channels for a brand or marketing agency.
My company, Contentworks Agency creates a social media calendar four weeks in advance. This is done for both our clients and ourselves.
Here are some benefits to creating one:
You can go on a vacation, yes, you can!
It’s a wonderful feeling to know you have control over your social media content and calendar. You are in control of what’s coming up and what’s not.
How do you make a social media calendar for your business?
Let’s get started.
What does a Social Media Calendar look like?
You can store your social media calendar in many places and different ways.
These are the key points to remember:
You can give permissions to edit the file and allow clients or other team members to access it. You don’t have to edit it all. It should be simple to read and understand.
A social media calendar gives you a snapshot of the posts that are coming up on social media. It can be stored in a Google Drive spreadsheet, interactive dashboard or Google Drive.
These are just a few of the fields that you can include.
The purpose of a social media schedule is to simplify your life, not to make it more complicated. Don’t add a field if you don’t use it.
Name of the channel (Facebook or Twitter, TikTok etc. )Region(s). You can have multiple pages, or target posts to different areas, by adding a checkbox. If you wish to include times/time zones, please specify the date. You will need to include hashtags and links. Additional columns can be added for languages other than English. These may change for different types of post or regions. They will need to be approved and amended. Are you looking for evergreen or a trending topic? To make sure that the team is aware of the possibility of reuse, I highlight evergreen posts using green. This can be added to a column.
Social media calendar tip
For certain clients, it may be possible to schedule directly into Agorapulse. It will depend on how complex the client’s calendar is and the level of approvals required. This may happen after the probation period is over and the client is satisfied with your work.
Agorapulse allows you to share your calendar with clients and colleagues by creating a link.
You can create social media content, and share it with others who don’t have Agorapulse. They can see the content you have assigned to them and accept or reject it. You can also add comments to the schedule, which they will then assign back to yourself. This works well for agencies with multiple clients who want their clients to review the content that you schedule.
The best part is that users of a Shared calendar can’t delete or create content. They can only reject posts with comments, leaving you full control.
1. Make a posting schedule
A social media calendar helps you to adhere to a posting schedule on all social media channels.
Inconsistency can lead to poor results. Infrequent posting can lead to a drop in brand awareness, web traffic and sales. Too many posts at once will cause fans to become annoyed and unfollow you.
Here’s my posting schedule. Yours will look different depending upon your resources, industry, and audience demographic.
This is my weekly schedule template
Facebook pages: 3 per Week-Mondays, Wednesdays, FridayTwitter 5+ Times per Day-EverydayInstagram: 1-3 Times per Day-Weekends, and 1 weekdayLinkedIn 3 per Week-Mondays, Wednesdays, Friday
Expert tips for creating a posting calendar
Curate content. Don’t forget that content doesn’t have to belong only to you. You can include content curation in your content calendar. You can find reputable websites that you trust and from which to share content. Agorapulse can be used to find top microinfluencers and top fans who will share your content.
Vary the times. Repeat content at different times. This is one of my favorite ways to create evergreen content. Agorapulse makes this so simple. An evergreen blog post is one that can be used throughout the year. It’s not time-sensitive and won’t go obsolete. You can repeat the content one time or schedule it frequently, such as every 10 days to up to 5. (Not convinced? These are some reasons to repost on Instagram or republish content on LinkedIn.
Use a digital calendar. It’s not necessary to write everything down on a piece of paper or a notepad. (I see that you!) You can use an online calendar such as the Agorapulse to organize your work. You can also add your team members, compliance or legal and any other person who may need a quick snapshot of your planning. Later, you will also be accountable.
Pay attention to time zones and cultural differences. The time and location of your target audience (country and time zone), their behavior and the nature and purpose of your business will all affect your posting schedule. Always remember your target audience!
Let’s say that I’m currently in Europe and want to promote a Sydney restaurant. I will need to work at Sydney time, and create content that people see when they think about food. For lunch, it’s 11AM and dinner is at 4PM. It’s not a good idea to post about your delicious burger at 3 AM.
Example: This Burger King post was sent just before Thanksgiving to remind customers that there is an alternative to traditional turkey.
Agorapulse reports will show you when your followers are most active. If you spot a pattern, make use of it and schedule posts at those times.
Your most popular content can also be viewed. You can also see the most popular content and plan posts to coincide with those times. This is what Contentworks looks like:
Then, we can focus on popular posts such as this one from November 9, and see that a Tiktok AMA published to Facebook receives great engagement!
2. Get to know your sector events
Your sector will determine the content you include in your calendar.
Each sector has its own hashtags and events.
If, for example, your clients are primarily in the finance industry, then you should consider hashtag days, regular monthly events, one-off events and trending.
Events are held regularly. Nonfarm Payroll Announcements, Monetary Policy Meetings, Consumer Confidence, and ECB meetingsHashtag Days. #WorldMathsDay #financialawarenessday #FibonacciDay (yes, it’s a thing)One-off events. Presidential Elections, Brexit, or a finance conference/expoTrending. These are not things you can plan for. Trends are constantly changing and you’ll decide if they are important and appropriate to include in your social media.
Many weeks of content and posts can be planned for big events, such as the presidential election. Some events are only available for a day. hbspt.forms.create({ region: “na1”, portalId: “8477337”, formId: “7b5bb39f-cd97-4a83-9934-a41acb1ccb5e”>
To see the hashtag days in the future, you can use Days of the Year for free. These hashtag days can be relevant to your brand. This post from Canva is great for Fibonacci Day.
Bookmark websites that offer information on events in your industry. It might display an economic calendar, for instance.
You should make sure they are checked on at least one month ahead of time.
You can schedule and create the right social media content by knowing the key events within your sector.
You can create a collection of images to be used for recurring events and general purposes. Here’s one of our “trending” images. This allows us create text quickly and add great images without having to wait. If you don’t have an online designer, you can create images and scale them to fit different channels.
3. Factor in Trending and Live Content
Live posts and tweets should be included in your content calendar every week, if possible.
They could include:
News that is breaking (retweeted, curated from reputable websites) Funny trends, memes or challenges that you would like to take part inLive videos from the company (Perhaps an unexpected event has occurred or your marketing team wants to challenge you with a dance routine! Flash sales and promotions (can sometimes be schedule but not actual photos)Crisis management and company responses to a crisis. You can be the first to know about it by opening a Twitter trending tab. You can also use Google Alerts to monitor media or listen via Agorapulse.
4. Listen to Your Audience
Preparing content for a social media calendar requires planning. You don’t have to stop looking back for inspiration. Your audience metrics can be a great help.
Agorapulse is a great social media scheduling tool. In just 2 minutes, I can find the top performing posts from each channel over the past year, six months, or any other period. I can see organic reach, paid reach and click throughs as well as engaged users.
Below is an example of our top 5 Facebook posts that have performed well over the past year. This allows us to gain a better understanding of our audience and create more content.
Follow the lead of your audience. Repeat a successful piece of content or a post if it works. You can reuse old articles by adding new images, GIFs or a rewrite. Slideshare the best-performing ebooks and share them.
Use hashtag research. Look for keywords or hashtags in your industry to find out what content is attracting the most attention.
Ask your audience questions and comment. To assist you, you can use competitor analysis techniques.
Create posts that are relevant to your audience. Ask your customer service or sales team what questions customers are asking. Maybe they want to know how to do something or when the store opens.
Make a FAQ. To fill out your social media calendar, answer frequent customer questions.
Social media managers who have experience know how important it is to work with their team. Your content writers, video editors, SEO managers, Ad buyers, and all other staff members may play vital roles in the success of your posts.
Communication is key to reducing mistakes and speeding up processes. It is easy to make mistakes like the one with the McDonalds Black Friday calendar. Never forget.
Each week, start by looking at the calendar to see what’s up. This will help you remember any assets or outstanding actions. Double-check that all posts have been sent and that there are no delays. If a platform error occurs, this can occur. Establish a clear chain. Social media manager Sophia creates posts on Wednesday and Jack, the compliance officer, approves them every other Thursday. Jessica, the graphic designer, will add images to Sophia’s posts on Friday. Sophia will begin posting on Monday. You should know who is responsible for what. Agorapulse allows you to clearly define roles in the content calendar. This allows you to easily document actions and track approvals. You need to let them know what’s up and which videos or designs they will be creating. You will likely need to send an email about the event. Add your writers to this calendar, even if they don’t create social media posts. Your writer might want to write a blog article about Halloween that you can link to if you are planning to create several posts. You need to plan ahead as the blog link will be required. Share your success stories and reporting with others. This will boost confidence, strengthen your strategy, and highlight your expertise. You can prepare your template responses ahead of time and have them approved before you send them. This will help you save a lot of time later. You might need to reply about shipping times or how to return products. Ask other departments for their feedback. These replies don’t have to be added to your social calendar but may help you to create it. Human Resources could be hosting a recruitment day. You might also have a bug fix or product update coming up. Access to your social media calendar is not required for all employees. The compliance and legal departments don’t have to be able to edit the content. Instead, allow them to create their own columns for comments and warnings. You will never get approved, and your schedule will always be behind if everyone has edit access. This is what I am claiming.
In conclusion
Social media calendars are your best planning and organization tool. It helps you keep your posts consistent, your approvals on time, and your content engaging and relevant.
Start saving time and energy with your social media management. Get a free trial of Agorapulse, which will help you plan, track, measure, and measure your social media efforts.
