Organizing Your Social Media Strategy: How a Content Calendar Can Take You to the Next Level
Social media has become an important part of advertising for businesses. To effectively reach and engage with your target audience, it's essential to consistently post on your social media channels. However, constantly coming up with engaging content on a whim can be very overwhelming. This is where scheduling social media content comes in. By planning and scheduling your social media posts in advance, you can save time, stay organized, and ensure that your content is posted consistently and at optimal times. In this blog post, tips will be provided for getting started on scheduling social media content.
Find a Project Management Software
Project management software helps you keep track of all of your assignments, deadlines, and projects easily and effectively. I was first introduced to project management software in my freshman year of college.
Trello is a project management software that helps you keep track of assignments all in one place. It is also incredibly helpful when you are working with teams because since you can share workspaces, you will know how much progress your team members have made on any given project. It can also be helpful when trying to plan out posts for social media.
Define your objectives
Knowing your objectives is essential for planning out your content calendar. Here are some questions that you should answer for yourself before scheduling out posts:
How often am I going to post? Once a week? Twice a week? A post and a story for each day that I post?
Is this post going to be an Instagram post, reel, or story?
What platforms will I be posting on?
Who is my target audience for each platform?
What type of theme will my account present? Will it be more relatable, or will it be more professional?
How active is my current platform?
How many likes per post do I get currently, and how much do I want to raise that by?
Choose your “Definites”
I like to phrase “Definites” as events that you know for sure you will definitely post for, or ones that are predictable for your company or business. One example of this is holidays that your company can advertise with. Dunkin’ does a good job at this when advertising their Valentine’s Day specials in February. It’s an automatic scheduled post that you can check off on your calendar.
Another example of “Definites” is if your company is known to do any routined posts, like for Employee of the Month, or weekly features where you are highlighting a specific element of your business. For Quinnipiac’s Office of Student Engagement, one of my “Definites” in this case would be where we do weekly “Friday Features” to highlight involved students on campus.
Filling in where needed and adjusting based on results
Here are some other ideas on how you can fill up your content calendar for this year:
Collaborating with other departments
National Days/Months - for example National Make a Friend Day
Live content at events
Participating in hashtags
Giveaways/Challenges for your followers
Highlights about parts of the business
Highlight reel of the previous event
Hopefully, these tips are useful when planning out content for any platform for any occasion!
Hi friends! My full name is Jennifer Noelle McCue, but you can call me Jennifer, or Jen, whichever is easier for you!
I am a Multimedia Designer, Social Media Strategist and Artist. Outside of my freelance opportunities, I work for a benefits administration company called Winston Benefits as a Media Designer.
My goal in every project is to be a designer who positively transforms people’s visions and brings them to life, a designer who is the go-to for visual solutions, and most of all, a resource that all types of individuals looking for creative solutions can count on.
