A social media content calendar is essential to manage your social media. It enables you to plan and schedule your content in advance making the management of your social media activity so much easier. Plus, it helps to reduce writer’s block as you have planned the subjects for your content ahead.
Why use a social media content calendar
As our social media news feeds become overloaded with content it makes it more difficult for businesses to stand out. Business can no longer afford to post impromptu content in an unplanned way. To have the best opportunity to be successful with your social media plan ahead.
Don’t miss important dates
Your social media content calendar means you can schedule key dates and events that are important for your business. For example, if you are in the hospitality industry you may wish to post on National Stout day 7th November.
Post regularly
Posting regularly demonstrates to your audience and followers that you have invested time and understand the importance of social media. People will not want to follow your business if your last post was three months ago. Posting regularly, you are likely to gain more followers as they will feel your business is worth following. By consistent posting your followers will be expecting your posts and are more likely to engage with your content. Providing opportunities to establish relationships with your followers which can generate sales.
Discover your perfect content mix
If you only post one type of content like your monthly offer this becomes boring and your followers want to read different content so mix it up a bit. Company and industry news items, videos and infographics that provide valuable quality content to your audience. Once you decide on the type of content you can test it and you can understand which content helps to achieve your objectives. Industry recommendations are 80% content should be interesting and helpful information and 20% of your content focused on selling. Planning your content in advance means you can get a good content balance.
Save time
By planning and creating your content in advance will save you time and free up time for other activities. Once you have created your content you can schedule your posts in advance using a tool such as Hootsuite or Tweet deck. This means your business will share posts even if you are on holiday.
Record your content
As well as planning tool a content calendar is a record of what content you have posted. This has several benefits:
- You can avoid duplication of content
- You can record the engagement and success of your content
By documenting the engagement of each piece of content will provide an understanding of what works and what does not. This information is valuable for planning and creating future content.
If you have any questions on social media content calendars or any other marketing activity please get in touch.
