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First off, it seems pretty important to explain what exactly a social media content calendar is.
In today’s media filled society, where the job title of “Instagram Influencer” actually exists, it is beneficial for companies, and above mentioned influencers, to plan out their content in advance. Regularly sharing new and exciting content is key for companies and individuals to engage with their followers and potentially attract new followers.
Content calendars are extremely beneficial for a multitude of reasons:
- It allows companies and individuals to stay organized
- It’s easy to forget the plethora of holidays, events and product launches now that “National Pizza Day” and “National Ice Cream Day” have become essential days to post new and relevant content. Therefore, content calendars help ensure that you are not missing any of these occasions.
- It allows you to save time and energy in the future, considering posts will be readily available at the necessary posting time.
- It helps companies and individuals collaborate more easily because they can coordinate schedules and make sure that the content matches their desires.
So now that we’ve covered why content calendars are important, it’s time to discuss the how.
- Decide what platforms you are going to be posting on- which have the highest engagement rates? A social media audit might be a sound place to start before diving head first into the content plan.
- Next, it’s important to determine how often you are going to be posting on each platform.
- Here’s an great infographic that provides some valuable information if you’ve caught yourself questioning: “What should I post on each platform?” or “How often is too often, or not enough?”
- photo by Constant Contact
- Here’s an great infographic that provides some valuable information if you’ve caught yourself questioning: “What should I post on each platform?” or “How often is too often, or not enough?”
- Gather links, photos, videos or any other relevant content that you intend on using. It’s also helpful to craft those catchy and attention grabbing captions now so that posts are ready to go when the time comes! There is no such thing as having “too much content”- you can always omit something when the time comes, but there is nothing worse than struggling to find content when you needed it like, an hour ago!
- Now that you’ve done all the prep work, it’s time to actually create your calendar. This means finding a calendar online (or creating your own) that fits your wants, needs and desires and filling that sucker out! One website I suggest checking out is this template!
This calendar from popular international women’s magazine, Cosmopolitan, is a great example of a visually appealing, yet efficient way to plan content.
- Photo by: Cosmopolitan
Twitter: @SouryEmily
Linkedin: Emily Soury
Instagram: @EmilySoury
This is an awesome blog! It is so important for companies to have a post calendar for their content so they are able to keep a forward momentum. However, knowing the sweet spot for how far in advanced they have their posts is very important because they still need to stay relevant. Love the post!
I appreciate the breakdown of how to create a calendar. It’s a good resource to go back to the basics of a content calendar—especially with the added infographics.
Definitely interesting to see the step-by-step process of how to create a content calendar! I agree that these tools are essential for companies to use to expand their brands and maintain engagement with their followers. This definitely ensures that no holidays or events will be missed and the company will have have a social media presence during all of those events. It is interesting to see all of the steps companies have to go through to maintain their fan-base now during the digital age.
Talking about the content calendar in class and seeing some of the examples made me a bit nervous. I have a personal blog that I try really hard to keep updated with posts and I always struggle finding what to post about. This post has some helpful tools that am going to bookmark and try for not only myself but for my class client. Thanks for this awesome post!
What a great practical guide to planning posts in regards to each platform! Thanks for the share 🙂
Before it was mentioned in class, I had no idea what a social media content calendar was or who would use one. This post does a great job of explaining and highlighting the benefits of using social media content calendars. I am not as active on social media as I would like to be because I find consistent posting to be exhausting and overly time consuming. If I planned out my posts ahead of time and arranged everything before, I would be much more likely to actually post a throwback on Thursday or a selfie on Sunday. I didn’t get a cell phone until college, so the innate need to post isn’t something I embody. Throughout high school when everyone was building Instagram aesthetics and gathering Snapchat friends, I hadn’t even experienced having a Razor. Social media content calendars are useful for influencers and business wanting to keep their presence consistent and organized, but they are also great tools for helping people like myself become more active on social media.
I really enjoyed reading your post, you brought up a lot of important and insightful ideas. From a small business to a large business, a content calendar would without a doubt be necessary. For example, a small business with only one person running its social media plan- would be more organized and less overwhelmed. On the other hand, a large business would be able to use the content calendar as a way to keep the company organized, and it would work like a well-oiled machine. In the social media realm, a content calendar is like a defibrillator: it saves lives. In addition, I also love how you included a website that shows different templates. I think a company should pick out a template that reflects the personality of their brand. Also, even if a person hates planning (like me) who could really loathe creating a calendar just involving social media posts?
After creating a social media content calendar, it is important to think about the fact that the client has a lot of other things going on. Social media content calendars allow companies and individuals to stay organized and have a clear plan of posting on each social for the month. It is time efficient and thoughtful, meaning you know it will look good and target the right audience if you planned correctly!
Emily, I so appreciated you first explaining the content calendar, and then getting into why it’s important! Such a helpful way to not only attract readers but set the stage for your post as well. I love that you included the fact that influencers need to plan out their social calendars too, not just companies. Since “influencer” is officially a job as you mentioned, it takes a lot of work! Social media calendars are a simple way that companies can really upgrade their status online, just through some organizing. Knowledge of social media calendars is one of the most beneficial things we learned in sojcssm and I think will help us all in the professional world. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!