How to Create an Effective Social Media Calendar

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What is a social media calendar, and how can it improve your online marketing campaign? Here are reasons why you should create a social media calendar right now.

How was life like for busy entrepreneurs before the social media calendar became a thing? Gone are the days of uploading content manually; you can now streamline your social media posting schedules to manage and organize your promotion campaign! 

Posting content on social media sites takes a lot of time. If you’re a busy entrepreneur, you want to focus more on your core business than organizing your social media tasks to maximize what little time you have to grow a business. A social media calendar can help you with that. 

In this guide, let’s talk about ways to maximize your social media calendar for better marketing:

What is a Social Media Calendar?

A social media calendar is a calendar that outlines your social media posts. With this calendar, you can plan, create, and curate your upcoming social media posts and track all the published posts to plan and produce cohesive and high-quality content to your viewers. You can also use the calendar to coordinate your tasks with cross-functional teams. 

Think of a social media calendar as a cheat sheet of sorts – you can plan your social media posts well in advance to build a steady stream of high-quality and unique content. With a social media calendar, you can plan your posts 30 days to a year in advance. It lets you create quality posts with a distinct voice. And if you have several marketing campaigns or businesses, a social media calendar enables you to handle the postings simultaneously. 

You can create a social media calendar on different platforms – on a spreadsheet, Google Calendar, or a social media management application. The simplest and earliest form of social media calendar is a spreadsheet; it doesn’t come with any features that automatically post the content you’ve delegated on a specific date. These days, most businesses prefer using a social media management app to schedule and publish social media posts (we’ll get to that later).

What to Write on Your Social Media Calendar

To organize your task, you’ll need to create an entry to the calendar. The entry may include some of the following: 

• Social Media Platform
• Date
• Time 
• Copy
• Visuals (photo, video, illustration, infographic, .gif)
• Link to assets
• Link to published post

How to Create a Social Media Calendar

Now that you know what a social media calendar is, you’re ready to make one to organize your marketing efforts! Here’s a step by step guide on creating a social media calendar:

Choose the Right Social Media Platform

The essential step in building a successful marketing campaign is to figure out the platform that your viewers frequent. You don’t want to bark at the wrong tree! There are dozens of social media platforms right now, the biggest of which are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, and TikTok. 

Different age groups prefer different social media platforms, so you'll need to study your target demographics to see which social media networks they use the most. 

Assuming that your target demographics are people within the 20-35 age range – most hang out on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Facebook is surprisingly popular among senior citizens, people within the 50-65 age groups. On the other hand, people who are aged 30 to 40 years old LOVE Instagram.

Determine What Content to Create

The kind of content that you'll publish should be three things: it should be relevant to your target audience, it should be in line with your business, and well suited for your chosen social media network. 

To create content that will appeal to your target audience, you’ll need to check out the trending or popular topics in a specific age group or industry that your business is a part of. You can also check out the competition to see which topics to cover. 

The social media content that you should feature on your business accounts should be relevant to your business. And to convey a consistent message, don’t forget to add your branding elements to the content. 

As for the formats, YouTube is all about videos, while Twitter is better known for text-based content. Instagram is all about images and videos, while Facebook embraces all sorts of content formats. Once you’re done figuring out the kind of content to push for your social networks, you’re ready to create a schedule.

Create a Schedule

You can create a schedule using the following tools and apps:

Tools

• MS Excel
• Google Sheets
• Google Calendar

Applications

• Hootsuite 
• Hubspot
• Solo PR Pro
• LocalVox 
• Later

Team Management Platforms

• Trello
• Asana
• Clickup
• Basecamp

You'll need to figure out the frequency of the postings, along with the best time to post your social media content, who needs to handle the content (your writer, virtual assistant, or webmaster), and list down potential content for future postings.

If you are working within a team, you’ll need to share the social media calendar with your team members, so everyone’s on the same page. Then, you can start assigning the content at specific dates for publishing. 

5 Benefits of Using a Social Media Calendar

Better Productivity

Laying out your content strategy in advance lets you publish posts consistently. You’ve already done with the brainstorming way, way in advance so the focus is to execute your plan on autopilot (assuming that you are using a scheduler to publish your social media content). By planning your content efforts using a social media calendar, you’ll tick more tasks off your to-do list. 

Organized Workflow

When you’ve planned out your social media marketing efforts in advance, you’re freeing yourself from multitasking. And while multitasking is a great skill to have, it can be a burden when you’re a busy entrepreneur who wears so many hats. You have to set up a workflow that works well with every team member to make any project a success. 

Organizing your workflow means all the essential tasks for the day are taken care of. With a social media calendar, you can provide high-quality content that people will love while also managing a growing business. 

Prevent (Avoidable) Mistakes

When you’re planning your social media efforts, you have more time to think and re-think every strategy. And if a post has a typo or you’ve missed a low-res image, you’ll easily spot these mistakes and avoid a potentially embarrassing situation that’ll ruin your brand. With more time perfecting your social media tasks, you can also set up failsafes into your workflow so that your business processes work smoothly every day and avoid potential crises. 

Get Creative with Your Marketing Strategies

Nailing down your social media content schedules means you have more free time to explore different ideas to improve your marketing results. You have more time to brainstorm ideas with your team, look for influencers for collab opportunities, introduce advocacy that will appeal to your target audience, and find other platforms to grow your business. Using a social media calendar, you can finally take your social game to the next level. 

Track Your Metrics

Tracking your metrics is a critical part of your marketing effort. By analyzing the analytics, you’ll know which topics or strategies are getting more attention from followers, which format is not getting the results you expected, and when’s the best time to post your social media content. Checking the insights will also clue you in on the wants and needs of your ideal customer. All of the data in the insights will help you develop the best marketing strategies that’ll take you closer to your business goals.

Every business that’s on different social media channels should have a social media calendar. If you don’t have one today, now’s the best time to get crackin’. Use our guide to create your first social media calendar, and pretty soon, you’ll reap the rewards of your efforts. 

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