7 Steps To Build A Powerful Social Media Calendar For Your Business

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It would not be wrong to say that today, in terms of marketing, social media is the biggest game-changer. With its massive reach and a plethora of integrated marketing tools, it has defined digital marketing on an altogether different level. Hence, it is only obvious for organizations to have dedicated social media marketing strategies.

A social media content calendar comes in handy in managing social media marketing. Having a social media content calendar to schedule posts, remind you of constant posting, and keeping a track of your progress contributes to meeting your social media goals. Moreover, amidst the chaos of posting new content, interacting with the audience, and creating marketing campaigns, social media calendar keeps you organized and focused.

Build A Powerful Social Media Calendar For Your Business

Here is how to create a powerful social media calendar for your business.

Step #1: Identify the Channels that Work for You

Before you invest your energy in creating a social media content calendar, determine the channels that work for you because working on creating social media posts and strategies that are not relevant to your audience will be a waste of time, energy, and resources.

Hence, the first step is to check which social media platform is more popular with your target demographics and can serve your purpose.

Sit with your social media team and find out where your audience is. Rule out irrelevant platforms and then begin with setting up your calendar.

Step #2: Audit Your Social Media Platforms

You can easily track your progress with a social media calendar. It allows you to trace the areas that require improvement. But creating and monitoring your track record is only possible if you know your current status. It is the reason why auditing your social media platforms is necessary before creating a social media calendar.

To understand the baseline of where you started, answer the following questions-

Who is your target audience? What are their demographics?
What types of posts are more popular among your audience?
What are your most successful social media campaigns?
At what time is your audience more active?
What are your goals and KPIs for each social media platform?
What types of posts (video, images, company blogs, guest posts, etc.) work for you?
What are the key metrics to measure the success of each platform?

Also, keep a note of your account security and passwords, your outdated accounts and profiles, etc.

Knowing the current scenario of your social media will help you identify the areas requiring improvement. Moreover, with it, you can easily track data on your calendar and fine-tune your strategies accordingly.

Step #3: Determine the Variables You Want to Track

The third step is to figure out the variables you want to keep a tab of through your social media calendar. For this, you can use the metadata in the social media calendar tool. You will be able to track additional information, such as the channels you are posting on, the hashtags, the time to make the post live, target audience, specific mentions, etc.

You can also add basic details, such as date, time, and time zone, link to the published posts, link to assets, photos, videos, infographics, illustrations, etc.

Step #4: Create a Digital Asset Bank

Also called a media resource database, having a content library for your assets is a prospect laden with benefits. It keeps you from the hassle of looking for the right visual content to post across your social media.

Use Google Drive, Dropbox, or specific database software to create your digital asset bank. Ensure your content library is spacious enough to accommodate large files, shareable with your team members, has privacy features, accessible from your mobile phone, and provides you links to individual files.

Step #5: Plan the Posting Time

Now that you have the essential information and a content library ready, plan the posting time for your posts. Chalk out a daily, weekly, and monthly cadence.

For instance, create an Instagram or Twitter post schedule comprising the details such as how frequently you want to post content on these social media platforms, the best time to post content on different channels, how much in advance you want those posts, who will retrieve and approve the posts, and who will create new content.

All this information will help you line out your social media workflow. Furthermore, make it a point to document all these details.

Step #6: Create a Review Schedule

Gather the people who will use this social media calendar daily and create a review schedule. Determine who will review the posts and when, and whether or not your posts require approval from legal teams?

Your social calendar will provide you with a universal place to keep track of your content reviews. Also, at this point, take feedback from your colleagues and fix loopholes in the calendar, if any.

Step #7: Start Publishing

As your social media calendar is ready, start publishing content consistently. To make your work easy, use a calendar with a scheduling function that snatches the worries of publishing your posts manually.

The Bottom Line

Your social media calendar will provide you with a central source for tracking your posts. Review your past posts and use social media analytics data to track what worked and what did not work for you. Use the findings to hone your current social media campaigns.