Owning and running a business is never very easy, especially when you think about having to manage your own social media account. Balancing your time on your company’s social media between new posts, audience engagement, and social media marketing, there’s hardly enough time left for anything else. Thankfully, there is a way to make things easier and more manageable. Here we will lay out for you the 10 tips for how to create a social media calendar.
With a well-thought-out content calendar for social media, you can plan, collaborate and organize everything in no time at all. This guarantees that your brand stays abreast with the latest craze and even upcoming trends. You can be better prepared to synergize your products and/or services with approaching holidays and other public events, ensuring that your brand stays at the forefront of the social scene.
This is probably the most important part of any plan. Before you move forward with researching how to create a social media calendar, you need to ask yourself and your team the following questions:
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What do you wish to accomplish with a content calendar for social media?
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Why do you need to be creating a social media calendar?
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Who is responsible for your social media marketing calendar?
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What is your schedule for your social media calendar for small businesses?
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Which social media platforms will you be using?
Gather a wealth of social media calendar ideas not only from your own team but also from other accounts that you follow. Network with other small business owners to find out what works for them and what does not. Find out which initiatives you can try and which ones you can stick to for the long run.
There are tools that you can use to integrate your social media accounts with your CRM. You can drive sales more effectively and build stronger ties with your audience – whether they are existing or future customers – through the use of social CRM.
2. Audit your current social media content
After getting a clear picture of what social media success looks like for your small business, it’s time to move on to the next step in how to create a social media calendar which is auditing your current content. Doing this can be a good way of getting to know your audience, what they like, and what makes them want to check your store out more.
Take a look at your ads as well to see which ones have performed well in the past. What makes these ads successful? Can you reuse them? If you’re just starting out with your business and using a social media calendar, you need to be able to manage your budget (both money and time) and reuse your old content. There’s no reason to acquire new images or even captions, especially if a past post has done well. You can make minor edits and changes before posting them if you so choose.
3. Select your types of posts and formats
If you’re unsure as to what your social media should include, remember the rule of content mixes (images, videos, gifs, articles, reposts) and content formats (carousel, reels, polls, stories, and live videos). When it comes to how to create a social media calendar, it’s best to start with published holidays for your country, like Black Friday, Christmas, or Boxing Day, as well as special events and festivities for your particular area of business. You can plan your content, promos, and even giveaways around these dates.
The rest of your social media marketing calendar can be filled with:
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Product features or launches
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Special sales - GratiTuesday to thank your most engaging followers, Flash Sale Friday, or any concept you come up with
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Company news – Nothing makes your audience feel like your community better than keeping them updated with the goings-on in your business
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Q&As – Let your audience get to know you and the rest of your team. Make it as informative and as fun as you can
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Weekly roundups – Summarize your news and happenings for the past week
Utilizing more than one platform means being able to reach more than one demographic. More than 58% of the world is on social media, but that doesn’t mean all of them are on all platforms. For example, some people might visit Instagram or Tiktok often because of the entertainment value but not Twitter because it’s often viewed as a noisy place.
Survey which platforms are available to you and which ones are the best for your purpose and needs. If you really want to use your platform for marketing and selling, Facebook can be a good option to try. If you want to market and bring your products or services to the forefront, clever and creative posts on Instagram and Tiktok would be the way to go.
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5. Set up your posting frequency
After sorting out what you will be posting and where you will be posting them, the next item to focus on in the list of how to create a social media calendar is when and how often to post. You certainly do not want to overwhelm your audience with a barrage of posts. Anyone – even that one person who really loves your brand – will grow weary in no time at all. You can’t post too little either and risk losing the interest of your followers. You want to always have an online presence because your audience will forget about your brand in due time if you don’t.
The execution of your social media calendar ideas depends on your engagement trends, goals, and resources. Various social media gurus recommend the following breakdown of posting frequencies:
INSTAGRAM
Posts: 3 to 5 times a week
Reels: 5 to 7 a week
Stories: 7 to 15 a week
FACEBOOK
Posts: 3 to 5 a week
Ads: 2 to 3 a week
TIKTOK
Posts: 3 to 5 a week
TWITTER
Posts: 10 to 20 tweets per week
NOTE: This should not include your replies to mentions on the platform.
LINKEDIN
Posts: 3 to 5 a week
GOOGLE MY BUSINESS
Posts: 1 to 3 a week
Take note that these are just recommendations. Your posting frequency should be dependent on how well you know your audience. Make sure that there’s a balance so they’re not overwhelmed by too many posts or underwhelmed by the inconsistency of your content.
6. Choose the right template for your content calendar for social media
The easiest of all templates to use when you’re getting through your checklist for how to create a social media calendar is an online shared calendar so it can be accessed in real-time by anyone from your social media or marketing teams. This online calendar can be uploaded to a central drive so all the people responsible for it, even those who are working remotely, can make changes and updates to your social media marketing calendar.
Split your calendar into weekly increments when plotting your content. You can use color coding to keep everything organized and minimize thumbnails to have a preview of what the post would look like. Your content calendar for social media should include these categories:
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Type of content – Is this a video, photo, reel, or something else?
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Platform – Where is this being posted?
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Time – This is important to note if you want to monitor how it’s received by your followers
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Caption – A good one tells a story or provides a hook to create a sense of FOMO for the rest of the post
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Hashtags – These can be a blanket set of hashtags for all of your other posts on any given platform
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Links – If the post is lifted from a long-form video or blog, include the link so people can also see the whole content
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Thumbnail – A minimized screenshot will suffice
Even though the calendar is accessible to all, give scheduling and posting permission. to only a couple of people. The same goes for responding to comments and forwarding concerns to the department concerned. This helps ensure that errors are minimized and that the voice of your brand is consistent throughout.
Social media is a melting pot of different voices, viewpoints, influences, and cultures. You need a bigger, wider perspective if you want to be able to come up with ideas that will reach and impact everyone in your follower list. To do this, you need to get your team together to deliberate on your outgoing social media posts. Ideally, tap a representative from Sales and another from Marketing, and then Customer Service and so on just to get a feel for what customers are talking about and looking for pertaining to your brand.
You can also gather from your team to learn more about current trends, whether it’s fashion, home décor, DIY, etc. In time you will also be able to predict or at least anticipate future interests and fads if you have the proper tools and resources. You can then plan your content around these emerging or rising interests of your audience.
When it comes to social media and how to create a social media calendar, you can’t afford to miss a beat and be late, especially if you’re hoping to capitalize on the latest buzz or newest craze. That’s why you need to get a hold of a reliable social media scheduling tool where you can plug in all of your planned content, schedule a date and time for each one to go out, and save. From there, your posts will go up automatically, and you and your team can then focus on the outcome.
It's always worth it to check on your scheduled posts to make sure they’re going out when they’re supposed to. There are also scheduling apps that allow you to send a test of the post to selected recipients to get a preview of the finished look. You can then go back for updates and changes should you see fit.
9. Track the results of your social media posts
We all want our social media content to be engaging, fun, and overall conversation starters, but, alas, we can’t have everything we want all the time. This is why posts should be monitored closely for how they perform. Some social media platforms have a reporting protocol on share rates, likes, views, and other analytics data that may be essential to your brand. Bitrix24 has tools that will not only help you interact with your audience but track and furnish you with any report you might need.
Use these reports as a chance to look back on trends and fads to compare them side by side with your posts to see which ones did well and which need a little bit of tweaking. Are there any notable behaviors or responses from your audience? Is there anything that you can do to replicate the positive response? How can you bounce back from a somewhat flat or lackluster response from your followers? Take note of their comments as well. There are a lot of nuggets of wisdom and helpful feedback from your audience’s remarks, and you can grab a chance to answer their questions.
There’s always room for improvement, especially when it comes to how to create a social media calendar. Having to do this month after month affords you a great opportunity to level up your content creation game by backlinking, diversifying your content, and presenting your content from another angle. By maintaining a social media calendar on a monthly basis, you can keep track of your content quality, consistency, and performance.
Using analytics data and your team’s observation, you can pick out what works for your followers and set aside what does not so you can rework these for future use. You can also use your planning time to your advantage by planning how you can transition into approaching holidays or events.
Here are some things you can put into practice to keep your profile clean, well-curated, and aesthetically-pleasing:
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Avoid second-hand embarrassment by checking your grammar, phrasing, and word choice
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Fact-check details, no matter how big or small
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Stay away from posts that “throw shade” or make fun of competitors
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Focus on your brand, and highlight what makes your products and/or services stand out without putting other businesses down
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Keep your business profile about the business
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Be prepared for anything by assigning someone to be at the helm of your social media accounts at all times. You can give your social media team rotating schedules
Maintaining an online presence for your business should be a little bit easier compared to your other tasks as a business owner. That’s where your social media marketing calendar comes in. With the help of a few key people, you can enjoy more business opportunities with a practical and powerful social media calendar.
Bitrix24 can help you where online tools may be needed. If you’re curious to find out what we have to offer, schedule a demo today, and we will be more than happy to not only walk you through our suite of solutions but address your questions or concerns as well.
Sign up today to enjoy the benefits of worry-free social media marketing with Bitrix24!
FAQ
What is a good social media calendar?
A good social media calendar is one that helps you post more consistently to increase engagement and boost traffic to your business website. It echoes your marketing objectives and supports your initiatives to drive the business by engaging your audience on social media.
How often should you post on social media?
How often you should post on social media depends on the amount of engagement and traffic you need to grow your business. You should also think about your audience if they will have enough time to really pay attention to what you post.
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