If you want to generate a large audience on social media, then you need to create as much content as possible. People always expect fresh, high quality content, so you do need to establish a dependable, easy to use social media calendar. At first, the idea of creating something like this might be daunting and filled with challenges. But it’s certainly something that becomes very appealing and interesting. Which makes you wonder, how can you start creating your own social media planner and calendar? Let’s find out.
Start auditing your social networks and content
Before you create a social media calendar, you want to figure out what areas can be improved and what needs to be adapted in an adequate manner. Doing an audit helps a lot because you can fine-tune the content you create and actually target the right audience. You don’t want to just write content. You want to know what content is needed, how often people read it, and what they ignore. These things help quite a bit, and they can make quite the difference.
A social media audit will give you info like what posts are great, what tactics work, who is your audience and what demographic are you serving, etc. You can also understand key metrics that you must follow in order to grow your presence on the selected social media channel.
Decide what you should post
Once you see what’s successful, what doesn’t work and what content is usually ignored, you will have a good idea of what you can post. Use the Twitter or Facebook insights and see what’s popular right now in your industry. Even something as simple as studying the competitors can give you an idea of what to post. It’s important to listen to the audience too. Many times, you will have audience members asking for certain content, and you should try to offer that to them as fast as possible.
Ideally, you want to create content that’s up to date and which caters to the industry requirements. There are all kinds of content you can post. You can have a case study for example, or you can share a blog post that shares your opinion about the industry. Or you can share news style posts, how-to articles, etc. You are free to choose the format, depending on what’s relevant for your audience.
Establish a goal for your posts
When you create a social media planner, you always want to ensure that your posts have a goal. Normally, they should either convey information, boost your brand awareness, create conversions or generate engagement. Some posts will do more than one thing, but generally you want to have a single goal and stick to that.
How often should you post?
The main thing to consider when you create the social media calendar is to manage and organize a posting schedule. You can use automated posting tools to schedule things in advance, that’s not a problem. The thing is that you don’t want to oversaturate people one day only to let them starve without content for the next 2 days for example. That’s why you need to figure out how often you should post on social media, depending on the platform.
According to studies, if you have a Facebook page you want to post 1-2 times per day. Twitter users should post 3-10 times per day, however it’s important to keep the content relevant. Don’t post just for the sake of posting. On Instagram it’s ok to post 1-2 times per day, for Instagram Stories you can do 2-5 per day. Pinterest users have an average of 3-20 posts per day. On LinkedIn you want to have a professional presence, but you don’t want to post more than 1-2 times per week.
Depending on the platform, you will notice that the ideal time to post is anywhere from 9 AM to 3 PM or noon. That’s when people tend to post on social media the most, and they are quite active. Depending on your audience, it might be ok to post during the evening too, but that varies quite a bit according to the industry.
Stay consistent
Once you start using the social media calendar and start posting content, make sure that you stick to that program. So if you use Facebook and want to post 1-2 times per day (which is ideal), stick to that and it will help more than you might imagine. Consistency is key for social media success, and you can’t really achieve success without it.
Bring in more variety to your posts
You don’t want your posts to look the same or cover the same topic over and over. People want variety, something fresh and unique, so it’s a good idea to experiment and try out new stuff on social media. This can help quite a bit, it encourages you to figure out new things and ideas, and in the end you will be incredibly happy with the results. For example, if you have a mostly text based piece today, you should have one with more videos and images for tomorrow to balance things out.
Maintain flexibility
Sometimes you need to make a few last minute changes because the content can’t go out right now. So you need to stay flexible and take your time to adapt the schedule. Even if you have a social media calendar, you can modify it from time to time.
If you find it hard to create a social media calendar or planner, we are here to help. We created a social media calendar that you can use right away. It’s always a very good idea to have a proper social media planner which helps you manage your content adequately and in a professional manner. Take your time, avoid any rush and make sure that you always optimize the calendar based on your needs. Even if it might take a bit to create a good social media calendar, you always want to improve and learn from the previous content’s performance! You can download a copy of social media planner for your business below.