The Social Media Calendar is an overview of your upcoming social media posts. It can be organized into a spreadsheet, Google Calendar or interactive dashboard (if you’re using a social media management app).
Each entry in the social media calendar usually includes some combination of these elements:
- The exact date and time the post goes live
- Social network and account publishing the post
- Post copy and creative assets (ie photos or videos)
- Links and tags to be included in a post
- Any additional related information (eg is it an Instagram feed post or a story?)
Benefits of Social Media Calendar
- Save time by organizing
- Post consistently
- Make fewer typo, and reduce the risk are big mistakes
- Get more ambitious with your social strategies
- Don’t miss the relevant moments
- Make good quality stuff
- Track what works and improve it
Save time by organizing
Your social media marketing goals have a common key in common with many other goals in your day planner: they take effort and attention every day. Not just when you are inspired (or staying at 11PM when all is taken care of).
This is a great way to ensure that you will never find yourself desperately scrolling through generic inspirational quotes in the hopes of finding something to post.
Post consistently
Whether you’re trying to increase your Instagram likes, your YouTube subscribers, or you incorporate social media KPIs, the expert’s first suggestion is always “consistently post”. There is no shortcut around it.
Constantly appearing in your audience’s feed is key to engaging them socially. Impressive engagement increases your organic reach through the platform’s algorithm, so your posts are shown to new eyes and new people start following your brand.
Populating your social media calendar ahead of time allows you to post consistently whether it’s a slow news week or your biggest campaign of the year.
Make fewer typo, and reduce the risk are big mistakes
Planning your posts ahead of time means you can build failures in your workflow. Copying text, fact-checking information, or reviewing it with corporate partners, such as the legal team or C-suite, is all very easy when you’re working days or weeks in advance.
Get more ambitious with your social strategies
The world’s largest social media brands run multiple campaigns simultaneously – long, medium and short term, paid and organic. And that’s just the daily posts.
Once you put your schedule down, your amazing brain is open to dealing with even bigger questions. Should You Run an Instagram Contest? Start looking for influential partners? It’s time to get your brand on LinkedIn or introduce a social media employee advocacy program.
Don’t miss the relevant moments
The social media calendar allows you to strategically view global moments related to your brand’s audience.
Also, with your daily schedule, if something topical appears — perhaps Jennifer Aniston joins Instagram or the egg is bigger than before — you have the creative and logistical bandwidth to engage the moment in an on-brand way.
Make good quality stuff
Social media production values have skyrocketed since the early days, and the idea of single-wolf millennial tweeting memes from their beanbag chairs is on the path to jogging.
Today, a single social media post has a whole team of creatives behind it: copywriters, designers, video editors, photographers. And asking your hard-working artist team to drop everything for an emergency Instagram story is not going to win heart or mind
Track what works and improve it
What is done is done, and what is measured is improved.
Your social media analytics have plenty of insights for you. The social media content calendar provides an opportunity to schedule your experiments for improvement. Plan your A / B tests until you find the right recipe for content, format, post frequency, and the best time of day to post to every social platform.