The benefits of a social media content calendar

09 Sep The benefits of a social media content calendar

Social media marketing is a lot less daunting when you have a plan. And, luckily for us, the best way to succeed with social media is by publishing great content and sticking it in your calendar!

If there’s one thing that can make or break any campaign on social channels (and really all of digital), it’s quality content. Creating engaging posts takes time, but if you’re strategic about how and where they’ll be posted during different times throughout the year then chances are better this effort will pay off big-time – no pun intended.

Sometimes, creating a plan for your business just means taking all of the necessary information and organizing it in one place. It takes into account every channel you have available to use as well as other resources that would come in handy when you need them most.

What is a social media content calendar?

Social media content calendars are extremely important for both curating and creating high-quality, well-written content. A social media calendar can help you allocate your resources wisely so that every piece of published work is successful – allocating time to writing each day without cutting corners on quality in order to produce more posts per week or month than with traditional marketing methods like email blasts.

Your social media content calendar should be well-organized and easy to read without an extensive legend. It is your best way of keeping track of all the necessary information for your strategy, with each month’s activities broken down into monthly or weekday sections depending on how much you plan to publish that particular week. Before you publish your next post, make sure to consult with the copywriters that are responsible for writing and publishing it. This way content marketing can be streamlined on all of your social media channels!

Social media content calendars are an essential tool for any business that has a social media presence, and it’s important to keep up-to-date with the latest posts. A recent study found that businesses who post 4 or more times per week on Facebook saw their reach increase by 18%, whereas companies posting less than once a day only had a 5% rise in exposure. With so many benefits of keeping your calendar updated, there is no reason not to try!

So why does your company need a social media content calendar? We look at some of the consequences if you decide against maintaining one – including how having one can help avoid these issues.

Posting poorly performing content

You have a team of talented writers, a great social media promotion strategy, and an arsenal of interesting topics to cover. Despite all this potential for content marketing success, your company’s efforts are not living up to expectations – the executive staff is questioning whether or not it would be worth investing more in these initiatives.

Content marketing is a tricky task, but many publishers struggle to get it right. It seems like this challenge stems from the lack of understanding of what their target audience needs and wants. These businesses will perform inconsistently if they don’t take the time to listen or find out who exactly they’re trying to reach with new content before diving headfirst into developing these ideas as strategies.

How can a social media calendar help?

The best way to make the most of your content is by making sure you are keeping up with trends and what people want. Check how often certain posts get views, clicks, or shares in order to figure out what kinds of things will be successful for future planning purposes.

Set a time frame where you can compare metrics like unique pageviews, number of clicks/referrals according to inter-post intervals (e.g., week 1 vs week 2).

This data will help you learn which posts generate the most readers, what social channels are generating leads, and where to post your content. This information is vital for marketers in order to adjust their publishing schedule according to not just the type of content but also on specific platforms.

Missing important dates

A Facebook reminder is a great way to remember your friend’s birthday, but it’s not the only one. In fact, when you’re busy and have many projects going on at once, there are plenty of things that can easily slip through the cracks – especially if they happen outside of work hours!

It might be an urgent email from another department about upcoming changes in policy or important deadlines for a project coming up next week; these reminders will help keep you organized whether they come via text message with notifications set up ahead of time or by looking them all over quickly while checking social media during lunch hour.

How can a social media calendar help?

Populate your content calendar by adding any dates pertinent to your business—whether they’re holidays or just significant days for traffic statistics. More insight into when people visit certain pages, areas of interest, etc., can help craft a round-the-year strategy that maximizes readership while minimizing stress on writers and editors alike.

Overwhelming your content producers

You don’t want to be one of those people who run a small business and then just hope it works out. You need the right tools, so you can do your best work every day. If you have people who generate your content they need guidance – social media managers and content writers without direction can be unproductive and inefficient.

How a social media content calendar can fix this:

Use the content calendar as an assignment calendar for your copywriters. As soon as you know the topics you want to cover in your next few posts, start assigning them right away based on their schedule and strengths so they can do a little research beforehand. Be sure that each writer has about three days’ notice before they’re tasked with creating new content because it gives them time to think of engaging ways to frame the topic at hand and ensures that whoever is assigned will be able to see this project through from the beginning until the end without being pulled off other work unexpectedly.

One of the most important aspects of a successful content strategy is making sure you have enough writers on hand. If one person needs time off, make sure there are multiple other people who can step in and take over their projects so that your deadlines don’t suffer from understaffing!

Neglecting social media channels

Once you figured out your publishing schedule, writing and promotion became easy. Every day I would plan content for all of my social media profiles so that they are published at different times: one hour apart on Facebook or Twitter; three hours apart if it were posted to Instagram or Pinterest. This helped me avoid the problem with “audience attention span” where people can only see a post once before moving onto something else in their feed—I was able to keep them engaged by providing fresh, new material multiple times per week!

How a social media content calendar can fix this:

Content calendars allow you to plan the publishing schedule in advance, making it easier for writers who are experts on your brand. If a writer is unavailable or has more research to do, there’s no need for them to disrupt deadlines because of this: they can simply be moved around!

Get in Touch

If you would like to have a chat about getting some digital marketing support for your small business, drop me a line – my details are on the contact page.