Intro

Welcome my fellow Social Media Managers or soon-to-be managers.  We all know social media is hard. Especially if you are managing multiple social accounts on multiple platforms. It’s easy to feel like you are stretched thin and/or borderline burnt out between new posts, audience interactions, and content creation, but hard does not mean impossible.

Let’s make you a rockstar social media manager.

Are you currently publishing posts on the fly? Publishing whenever you feel inspired? This may work for your personal social accounts, but if you are running one – or even multiple – business accounts, this method will not produce consistent results. We suggest creating a Social Media Content Calendar to help.

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Table of Contents

1. What is a Social Media Content Calendar

2. The benefits of a Social Media Content Calendar

3. Free Social Media Content Calendar template

4. How to load your Social Media Content Calendar in Hootsuite

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What is a Social Media Content Calendar?

At its most basic level, a Social Media Content Calendar is a collection of all of your client’s social media posts. By creating and curating a Social Media Content Calendar, you’re also creating a central source of truth where you can plan upcoming posts, track what’s been posted, and coordinate your efforts with cross-functional teams.

This type of calendar can be especially helpful if you’re managing multiple social media accounts across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more. A Social Media Content Calendar can help you post with a unique voice, manage multiple versions of each post, and decide what to post on each account.

A Social Media Content Calendar typically includes the following details:

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• Date and Time your post will go live
• Which social network and account where your post will be published
• Social copy and creative assets (image or video to be published)
• Links and tags to be used

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The benefits of a Social Media Content Calendar

1. Get organized and save yourself some precious time

A Social Media Content Calendar lets you plan ahead, group your work, and jot down all of your content ideas for a later time. Social media planning calendars, like Hootsuite, which is what we use, even allow you to schedule your social media posts ahead of time to post automatically using a publisher (see image below). This will enable you to share content at any day or time without logging into all of your platforms every time.

Putting a little work in upfront to plan your content frees up time to use your creativity and plan for campaigns.

2. Stay consistent

There is no rule that says how many times per week or month you should publish to your accounts. The most important rule, no matter how many times YOU choose to publish, is to publish consistently. You do not have to publish at a certain time just because the analytics tell you to. Your client may simply want you to post at that time of day, just because. Your posting schedule is 100% totally up to you. Posting consistently will allow your fans and followers to log in and know they will see your content.

3. Gather and organize your thoughts

As you are thinking and creating your content ideas, a content calendar should be your destination for all of your thoughts.

This is where you organize the platform you want to publish to, the date, the time, the content type (evergreen post, curated content, original image, live video, promotion, new blog post, etc.), the topic, the social copy, the link (if you have one), and the notes (including the specific image) of every post.

4. Get familiar with reading the analytics

The work is not over after creating your Social Media Content Calendar. You still have to monitor your progress constantly by checking your analytics.

Want to stay relevant? You have to adjust and improve your strategy as you go.

Here are some social media KPIs for reach, engagement, and conversions, you have to track in order to evaluate your social media performance:

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• Reach
  • Post Reach
  • Impressions
  • Total Number of Followers
  • Audience Growth

• Engagement
  • Clicks
  • Likes
  • Comments
  • Shares
  • Mentions

• Conversions
  • Click-Through-Rate
  • Cost per Click
  • Social Media Conversion Rate
  • Bounce Rate

Source: Hootsuite

5. Nail the timing of every post

Using analytics, you will be able to identify the best possible time for you to publish your content. You can choose to schedule your posts by choosing between three parameters:

1. Build Awareness

You want to get your content in front of the right people and at the right times. Brand awareness tells you how likely people are to know about your brand. This allows you to find the best time to publish so your posts are seen more often by friends and followers.

2. Increase Engagement

Engagement refers to any form of interaction with your posts on social media. Spark conversations with the community you have been working so hatred to build. This allows you to see the right times to publish in order for more people to like, comment, and share your content.

3. Drive Traffic

Drive action beyond social by adding links to your posts that encourage people to visit your website or online shop, download a resource, or sign up for your email newsletter. See the best times to publish to get more visitors and generate more revenue for your business.

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