Running a marketing campaign nearly often entails coordinating multiple jobs at the same time. Thus, timing is one of the most critical aspects of a successful campaign. A well-designed content calendar will allow you and your team to plan every facet of your upcoming content. What, then, is a content calendar, and how do you create one? Here’s all you need to know about the meaning of a content calendar and how you can create a social media content calendar for your events.
Meaning of Content Calendar
A content calendar (sometimes known as an “editorial calendar”) is a written timetable that details when and where you intend to publish new material. Calendars with upcoming pieces, status updates, planned promotional activity, collaborations, and revisions to existing material are common features of content calendars.
Why Are Content Calendars Necessary?
If your blog is only a pastime where you post once in a while, you generally don’t need a content calendar. However, if you’re using content marketing to promote your internet business, maintaining organized is critical.
Content calendars can benefit your content marketing strategy in three ways:
To begin, a content calendar guarantees that all of your content-related duties are completed. You will forget stuff if your content development timetable is unorganized. Alternatively, you may publish less frequently, or fail to keep outdated articles up to date.
In other words, a calendar ensures that nothing slips through the gaps.
Second, a calendar facilitates collaboration with your staff (and external partners).
If you have a one-person blog, you might not even need a content calendar. If, on the other hand, workers and contractors contribute to your content, you’ll need something to keep everyone on the same page.
Third, a content calendar provides a high-level overview of your forthcoming activities.
What is a Social Media Content Calendar?
A social media content calendar is a chronological list of your upcoming social media updates. Content calendars are used by social marketers to plan posts, manage campaigns, and evaluate current strategies.
Social media calendars come in a variety of shapes and sizes. If you’re utilizing a social media management tool, it may be a spreadsheet, Google calendars, or an interactive dashboard.
For each post, a social media calendar will typically include some mix of the following elements:
- The date and hour when it will be available
- The social media platform and account where it will be shared
- Copy and creative assets (such as photographs or videos)
- Included links and tags
How To Create a Social Media Content Calendar
To create a lean and efficient social media content calendar, follow the steps below.
#1. Audit your social networks and content
Before you can create a social media posting plan, you must first understand your current social media accounts.
Take note of how frequently you’re currently posting on each social network as part of your audit. Examine your analytics for any hints regarding how the frequency or timing of your publishing affects engagement and conversions.
#2. Select your social media outlets and content mix
Choosing what kind of material to share is a critical aspect of your social media strategy — and a necessary step in creating a social media calendar. To get started, there are a couple of typical marketing tactics for content mix that you can use:
The thirds rule in social media
- One-third of your postings should promote your company or drive conversions.
- One-third of your postings have curated information from industry experts.
- Personal engagement with your followers accounts for one-third of your social posts.
The 80-20 principle
- 80% of your postings are informative, educational, or entertaining.
- 20% of your posts should promote your business or drive conversions.
You must also decide which social channels to use for what types of information. Some may not be required at all.
Remember to schedule user-generated and curated content. This way, you won’t become overwhelmed by the prospect of having to create everything yourself.
#3. Determine what should be on your social media calendar.
Your social media calendar will not be identical to anyone else’s. A small business owner, for example, who handles their own social media posts will most likely have a lot simpler calendar than a huge brand with a full social team.
Make a list of the data and functions that are most important to you. This allows you to make the most of your social calendar.
Begin with the fundamentals, such as:
- Platform
- Date and time (including time zone)
- Visuals (photos, videos, illustrations, infographics, gifs, and so forth)
- Link to assets
- Link to the published post, including any tracking information (such as UTM parameters).
You may also want to include more complex information, such as:
- Platform-specific format (feed post, Story, Reel, poll, live broadcast, ad, shoppable post, and so on).
- The connected vertical or campaign (for example, a product launch, a contest, etc.)
- Geographic targeting (global, North America, Europe, and so on)
- Paid or natural? (If paid, extra budget details may be useful.)
- Has it been accepted?
If you’re just starting off, a simple spreadsheet will suffice. If you need a more sophisticated solution, see our list of the best calendar tools at the bottom of this piece.
#4. Invite your team to review and improve based on their input.
Everyone on your marketing team understands the value of an efficient social calendar. Solicit input and ideas from stakeholders and your team to ensure that it meets the needs of everyone.
As you begin to use your calendar, assess how it feels to you and ask the team for regular input. For example, if it feels onerous and picky, you may wish to reduce the level of detail. You may need to add a few columns if it isn’t thorough enough.
Your calendar will most likely evolve in tandem with your business – and that’s perfectly fine!
Social Media Content Calendar Tools Available In 2023
Social media calendars are essential for organizing your social media activities and creating relevant and interesting content. They assist you in planning ahead of time for each social network and avoiding missed opportunities. As a result, it’s critical to invest in social media content calendar tools to help you better plan your publishing schedule. The best combo is a social media scheduling and publishing tool combined with a calendar. Here are some options for you:
#1. Brandwatch Social Media Management
Brandwatch provides social media professionals with a systematic set of capabilities that assist them in listening, engaging, measuring, and publishing content. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, and YouTube are all supported.
The Essentials subscription is available to single users and small teams and includes a content calendar and campaign planner, as well as extensive analytics dashboards and a consolidated inbox for all social interactions. Larger businesses with many teams and markets are more likely to select the Full Suite package, which includes everything in the Essentials plan plus unlimited use of channels, reports, and teams, social media advertising, and competitor benchmarking.
One of the most crucial features of Brandwatch is your content calendar. It displays all of your scheduled stuff. Your posts are planned by date and clearly marked by social platforms. You may plan, schedule, modify, and post to your social media accounts. Campaign Planner allows you to map, write a brief, roll out, and collaborate on campaigns.
#2. Loomly
Loomly is a social media content management application that allows you to easily organize your publishing schedule in the form of calendars. If you’re new to social media marketing, this tool is a wonderful place to start. It interacts with major social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest, allowing you to manage everything from one location.
Loomly also allows you to plan posts and offers ideas and recommendations for optimizing your posts so you can get the most out of social media. One of the primary features of this technology is the efficient approval workflow. It ensures that your posts are approved by the appropriate individuals and that everyone on the team is on board.
#3. Iconosquare
Although Iconosquare is primarily a social analytics tool, it can also be used to schedule Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter posts, as well as monitor Facebook and Instagram mentions. Although you cannot yet plan LinkedIn posts, you can connect your LinkedIn account to uncover useful analytics.
The social publishing tool from Iconosquare is versatile and simple to use. It makes ordering content simple by utilizing drag-and-drop capability. It allows you to schedule Instagram posts, Carousels, and Stories, as well as Facebook statuses and tweets.
You can upload photographs to Iconosquare’s Media Library using Dropbox or OneDrive. You can categorize your content to make it easier to find photographs. It even marks your used photographs to prevent you from publishing the same stuff twice.
It allows you to preview your Instagram feed so you can see what it will look like before you submit your stuff. You may even plan your initial comment, including hashtags, ahead of time for increased reach and engagement.
#4. Agorapulse
Businesses and marketing organizations use Agorapulse, a full-featured social media management platform. Its built-in calendar enables all users to view which scheduled and queued items are ready to be published later, which published posts have already gone live, and which posts are still awaiting approval.
Agorapulse offers a shared calendar add-on for firms that require client permission on scheduled material. Clients can view and approve (or reject) scheduled content via the shared calendar without access to other elements of the Agorapulse dashboard.
#5. Sprout Social
Sprout Social is an all-in-one social media marketing platform featuring a robust calendar feature. The “Compose” window includes all of the advanced publishing tools and straightforward workflows that can assist you in more efficiently planning and scheduling your posts. The software includes a visual publication calendar for seeing and managing posts for many profiles, campaigns, and social networks. It enables you to queue your posts for automatic delivery in the future.
It even assists you in determining the optimal times to publish on various social networks, allowing you to optimize your social media calendar for increased engagement.
#6. CoSchedule
CoSchedule is a good choice if you want to organize both your blog and social media calendars in one place. This makes planning ahead lot easier, even for blog entries you haven’t yet published. It also allows you to develop social templates that you may reuse for crafting promotional messages in a matter of seconds.
ReQueue is ideal for keeping a continuous social media presence. It reshares your top-performing content at the optimal moments to increase interaction.
#7. Buffer
When it comes to social media management tools, Buffer is a pioneer. It includes a powerful planning and scheduling capability. If you manage many social media accounts, you can set up a separate publication schedule for each one. Buffer is therefore an ideal solution for marketers or agencies that must handle several client accounts.
You may draft posts, personalize them for each social network, send them for approval, and manage everything from a single dashboard. The calendar tool allows you to visualize the posts you’ve planned and make revisions or optimizations as needed.
What Should A Content Calendar Include?
The content calendar should also include important dates and events related to the business. This can include industry conventions, product launches, and other major events. If you’re planning any sales or promotions, make sure to schedule relevant material.
How Important Is A Content Calendar?
A content calendar is essential for keeping your content marketing on schedule and organized. It assists you with initial brainstorming, which protects you from last-minute disastrous planning and allows you to regularly deliver material.
What Is The Difference Between Content Plan And Calendar?
A content plan reflects the type of content and themes that must be produced in order to achieve the strategy. (It may also clarify how you want to develop content.) A content calendar specifies when you will publish and market the information in your plan.
In Conclusion
In an era when people are doing more research before purchasing anything, investing in a technology that allows you to manage your social media presence can be a very rewarding option for your company. By ensuring that each post is optimally crystallized in substance with good timing, using a content calendar will boost the effectiveness of every campaign across all channels.
Using a social media content calendar to schedule social media posts ahead of time can relieve some of the strain on you and your team while still ensuring that your social media channels are updated on a regular basis. Examine each platform’s detailed features and pricing to pick one that works for you. Even if you have limited resources, you may make a social media calendar using the following form and keep it in an Excel file.
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