What is a Social Media Calendar?
A social media calendar is a tool used to help manage and plan one's social media activity. It can include dates for posts, upcoming events, and other information about the individual's planned social media presence. Businesses should seek to have a basic calendar on which they place important dates like company-wide events with heavy metrics attached.
Why is a Social Media Calendar necessary?
A social media calendar is necessary because it keeps track of the different posts you make on different social media platforms. You need to be strategic when posting so that you are reaching your target audience. This can be done by using keywords and phrases in your posts, as well as scheduling posts ahead of time. A social media calendar is a useful tool because it can help you understand the flow of your content, as well as how to post in various forums during any given period. Our schedules dictate what we do everyday whether that be work, meetings or other activities and so keeping up with our posting schedule helps us make sure we are always producing content while also allowing us to get ahead on those dreaded timelines.
Social Media Calendar Ideas
1. Upload a gallery of your favorite images from your social media feeds throughout the year.
2. Capture a snapshot of each event you participated in throughout the year, including photos and thoughts about what happened.
3. Create a timeline of your favorite social media posts, with descriptions of why that post is meaningful to you.
4. Declare a streak for the coming year by breaking your activities into yearly sections (for example, one day a month), to get yourself motivated and excited about what you plan to accomplish this upcoming year.
5. Use one date in each week of 2022 as reminders that it is social media-related activity day for you. The idea here is not just about reminding people via Facebook and Twitter, but also participating in all those other platforms like Instagram or LinkedIn that you use regularly.
There are so many tools and resources can help you create a powerful social media calendar including G Suite calendars, except they all charge monthly than yearly. There is also the capability of using Google Calendars to schedule individual appointments but it is not very user-friendly as well since there are limitations due to license agreement for free platform it uses by default - at least I couldn't find any solution that does what I needed.
Planning a Social Media Calendar
It can be helpful to plan a social media calendar in order to methodically post content on various days and times throughout the week. This way, your followers will know when you’ll be publishing new material and they won’t have to wonder where you disappeared to!
Some tips for planning a social media calendar:
•Start by identifying the days of the week you would like to focus on posting content
•Decide on a schedule that works for you, from four days per week to six
•Ensure there are posts scheduled when it won't be challenging for you to complete them. Avoid scheduling too many posts at once or posting only sporadically as this will probably result in lower engagement rates and fewer followers following your social media channels in the long run.
Free Social Media Calendars
The following are social media calendars to help you keep track of the latest posts on various social media platforms.
HubSpot Social Media Calendar Template
-The free calendar that is built into HubSpot has features like event management, image galleries and the ability to add new posts from external sites.
It allows you to create your own schedule within a few minutes of first use via its intuitive design; there are many other enhancements as well - it's an overall social media template!
Each week presents a different color and layout so keywords can be easily noticed based on where they take place in each month .
If your business has more than one social channel you will also be able to differentiate between them based on their color. The designer of the calendar is amazingly responsive and allows for customization as well; it's a high-quality template that everyone should get!
Google Drive Content Calendar
-Gives you all that Google Drive has to offer and it is completely free! The calendar will be a visual representation of your content postings, which can greatly help promote the exposure of potential interest. Because it's so visually striking, there are tutorials available for people who want to get started quickly after first use - in addition to other advantages found with this platform.
The downloadable spreadsheet includes options like being able to choose how many photos and links from Google Docs to include in the calendar. You can also pick what days of the week post information into your content calendars, which means you will have no empty space due to it being on holidays!
CoSchedule Social Media Content Calendar
CoSchedule Social Media Content Calendar is one of the best tools to use if you are looking for a tool to help your content marketing efforts, they take the guess work out and provide some very straightforward instructions on how much time needs be spent per day.
They do suggest guidelines , but in my opinion these should only come from you when trying new social media services and it might not always seem plausible that every single post will have been written at the exact same time. It is ideal to work with one or two social media platforms that you feel would be the most beneficial as your main goal are building brand awareness/brand followership and service revenues .
One of the challenges when using CoSchedule Social Media Content Calendar is creating up a content schedule without knowing what kind of exposure or audience size each post will showcase. Also, once entered into CoSchedule account it is hard for others to see what content is being posted and this transparency does makes it easier for them to maximize the content so you should always request a breakdown of which posts are slated where.
These tools also make it really simple for other managers/marketers to see your progress through social media postings, some plans such as Facebook Manager keeps everything inside the CoSchedule app on certain platforms meaning not many can access or validate each others efforts.
How can business owners benefit from using a social media content calendar?
-Depending on the amount and type of social media for your business, it can either boost or hinder content exposure in which you should consider before using.
-Content calendars can be viewed from any device so there's nothing more than just browsing them -perfect for places without internet access!
Considerations when creating a calendar
Research your niche. Begin by brainstorming the types of posts you want to include in the calendar, discuss with others about what they want or need from a content calendar and then choose a planner based on their input. Consider including videos and pictures to single out promotion that would be beneficial for specific audiences (expert advice)
The key is recognizing which posts will truly help promote business and their success! By creating a content calendar, you are automatically helping your customers stay updated on the latest offerings of products and services. Not only does this promote freshness in their minds, but also helps provide consistency throughout marketing efforts. If a customer has set up regular expectations for what they could expect as part of their account or provide specific instructions, then any recommendations should be received easily by them - all while being able to use it later!
Of course, as content calendars are not a necessity for representation, you can use your social media profile to communicate with others on the days that work best and during those times. This is great way to learn more about what other people in your niche want out of their schedules as long as no rules or regulations are being put forth!
Social Media Writers such at BloggerWords provide useful information on how much time should be spent maximum on accounts each year. However, the majority of social media users seem to agree that a 30 minute hour is not sufficient for business growth. As you see from our example, this clearly shows us how much time should be devoted to each type of content and what platforms might move people faster or slower through material such as blogs.
If your goal really is to promote website use, then forget about being perfect in every single post and instead look at which posts will truly bring them over the top of their competitors! This might seem obvious, but you can get sidetracked and lose customers from your end if any posts give off the illusion that you prioritize website usage over other types.
Examples of an Ideal Social Media Calendar
Conclusion
Social media monitoring and execution can be a daunting process but these various tools help to make it easier as well as some powerful streamlining of your social media marketing efforts. There are tons more ways you could use all the above in conjunction with each other at once, especially if using CoSchedule's Social Media Content Calendar monthly template which is fully customizable and easy on budgeting.
Social Signals give executives an early warning system that enables them to track the success of their marketing efforts by capturing the information right on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
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