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How to Create a Social Media Calendar to Plan Your Content

Everybody is engaged in social media nowadays. Some to keep in touch with friends, others to teach, etc. Regardless, one thing is sure: adjusting social media to the needs of your business is not an easy task, especially marketing. Well-developed plan and strategy stand behind every good social media marketing model. This article aims to teach you how to create social media calendar to plan your content within a certain period of time and get the best results.

What Is a Social Media Content Plan

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The social media content plan reflects your strategic approach to posting throughout time. The idea of social media content plan and calendar is to allow content creators to plan the topics in advance, which allows them more time to research an upcoming hot topic for instance. Scheduling posts comes hand in hand with planning topics since it contributes to the consistency of quality posts delivered to your audience. That way, the audience can rely on the content you deliver.

The Idea Behind

The whole idea of planning and scheduling content is also important for analytic purposes. It allows users to measure the performance of the posts. Once you have the right insights, you can develop new ideas that will increase engagement. Many similar businesses aspire to create time and space for planning content that fits the upcoming events in the community. This method ensures better visibility and contributes to the recognition of the brand inside the targeted audience.

What to Include

Social Media Calendar

A well-composed social content calendar should provide easy access to upcoming content organized by category and publishing time. If you view your posts and content as assets, creating a social content calendar comes in handy for the organization of assets and campaign management. Do not forget to include other materials that will contribute to your reach such as links, high-quality images, videos, captions, etc. Also, keep in mind that different forms are supported by such calendars.

Use the Help of Tools

There are several tools that can help you with the creation of a content calendar. Lots of users rely on Google Sheets as one of the most popular social content planning tools because of its simplicity and user-friendly nature. Nonetheless, there are other popular tools available, such as Loomly, Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.

80:20 or the Rule of the Third

In other words, experts suggest that 80% of content published should aim to provide information or entertain the audience while only 20% should be promoting your business and brand. That will give additional value to your content that your readers or viewers can absorb. This is applicable to spheres such as tutorials, writing, or other educational or informative content. However, some rely on the Rule of Thirds strategy. In terms of a content matrix, it means that all the content should be categorized into three groups:

  • business promotional
  • posts from a leader in the industry
  • interaction-encouraging

A healthy mix of content types reflects well-balanced content, that is not only promotional. Think about the ways you can build trust with your target groups as well as the ways to increase engagement.

Track Social Media Insights

One should never neglect the analytics for social media campaigns. The effectiveness is measured by the performance of the content published, in terms of engagement, conversions, etc. Different social media platforms utilize different tools for measuring insights. However, third-party solutions for tracking performance are a good idea to consider too. A good tool will collect quality metrics for likes, clicks, comments, etc.