How to create a social media calendar for any business in 5 simple steps. When companies think about their social media strategy, they often think in silos.
The team responsible for registrations must attract and engage potential customers. Another team must keep current customers and partners informed. And communications and IT must use the power of social media to showcase what they can do.
But this isolated approach does not create a uniform brand message that engages all target groups. And for most companies, this can lead to an incoherent strategy and cross-departmental disagreements.
By creating a social media calendar with content for a month, a quarter or even a year, you can create a more coherent social media approach that increases engagement and reaches all your target audience segments in the right way.
Tips for creating a social media calendar for your business
- Understand the key performance indicator (KPI) for posting social media content.
- Determine the ‘content rule’ for social media content and always follow it.
- Determine a rhythm for posting on social media.
- Determine whether and where social media advertisements are appropriate.
- Develop and plan social media content with all departments.
Tips for creating a powerful social media calendar
Engage all target audience segments throughout the year.
Ensure consistent engagement.
Provide diverse content on the most relevant networks.
Consider what your target audience wants to engage with, not just what you want to share.
Optimise content based on each network’s algorithms.
There are five steps to creating a professional social media calendar for your business. And there are five simple exercises to help you do so. Work closely with all departments to plan content on time. See what content works best for you. Let’s take a closer look at each of these steps.
Step 1: Understand the right amount of content for each social media channel
One of the most frequently asked questions we receive about social media is ‘how do we schedule content for marketing, development, and sales on the content calendar?’ This question is actually quite simple to answer when you consider it in terms of numbers.
If your company uses Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, you can post a total of 12-18 posts per day – that’s 84-126 posts per week (taking into account all seven days, not just the five working days) to share with all your departments.
This breaks down to:
1-2 posts per day on Facebook
1 post per day on Instagram
10-15 posts per day on Twitter
But you may be wondering: what if I want to post 3-4 times a day on Facebook, or two to three times a day on Instagram, to meet the needs of our departments?
The short answer is ‘don’t do it!’
The long answer is: ‘Don’t do it, because you will come across as “spammy” to the picky algorithms of Instagram and Facebook, and the more content you post on the same day, the less likely it is to be seen by your target audience!’
The content allowed on social media is quite strict but varies from platform to platform. These ‘best practices’ are called ‘best practices’ for a reason. If you want to optimise your organic reach, you need to follow the ‘rules’ set by the algorithms of the social media platforms. Save that ‘extra’ content for a day during the week when you have nothing to post. You can also make smart use of the ‘story feature’ on Instagram and Facebook to post extra content outside of your timeline.
Of course, what matters here is not what the departments want to post, but rather what is relevant to the target audience or target audience segment.
Step 2: Establish a ‘Content rule’ for your social media content
So there are actually three types of content:
Promotional content is content that promotes your brand, service or event.
Curated content is original content that you create yourself. This can be a blog, a video or even just an image with a hashtag.
Shared content is content that you share, such as blogs from other industry experts, partners within the sector or even content from news websites.
Rule 70-20-10: 70% of your content should be original, relevant and engaging (think photos, videos, etc.); 20% of your content should come from other sources (such as industry blogs) and only 10% of your content should be promotional (think of purely promoting products or services).
Rule of 1/3: This rule states that ⅓ of your content may be promotional, ⅓ should have shared content value, and the other ⅓ of the time should be spent interacting with your followers. In other words, this rule states that you can have as much promotional content as informative content, as long as you stay in touch with your followers to create a balanced message.
Rule of 1/3: This rule states that ⅓ of your content may be promotional, ⅓ must have shared content value, and the other ⅓ of the time should be spent interacting with your followers. Rule of 1/3: This rule states that ⅓ of your content can be promotional, ⅓ should have shared content value, and the other ⅓ of the time should be spent interacting with your followers. In other words, this rule states that you can have as much promotional content as informative content, as long as you stay in touch with your followers to create a balanced message.
Step 3: Determine a cadence for posting messages on social media
Apart from respecting social media algorithms, this is perhaps the most important step in creating a good social media calendar. A cadence is a rhythm for posting on social media. These are your own rules that determine how often you will promote a piece of content, an event, important information, etc.
One of the main reasons why a company’s social media calendar can become very messy is the lack of structure for posting content. For example, when you decide that an event will be promoted three weeks in advance, one week in advance, and two days in advance, planning content in your calendar becomes a lot easier. It also means you’ll spend less time debating with your colleagues about when and where to post something.
Consider the following questions to create your own cadence for posting on social media:
- How often do you promote an event before it takes place?
- How often do you post a blog?
- How often do you post important information?
- How will you share information after an event? How quickly?
- How will you use “stories” and live video to supplement content in your feed?
- Which platforms make sense for what we are trying to promote?
- Who is the target audience for a particular piece of content?
Step 4: Determine where social media ads fit in
Nowadays, most companies will need to invest some of their budget in social media advertising to increase awareness. This is especially true for promotional content, which naturally generates less organic engagement.
When putting together your social media calendar, decide which events or content you want to allocate your advertising budget to and how much. Make sure to include advertisements in your social media calendar so that you can take them into account. This can boost your advertisements.
If you need help developing a social media calendar for your company, request our free OneTap social media calendar starter kit!
Step 5: Develop and plan the outcomes of all steps in a single Excel sheet
Social media communication must be coordinated, so you will work together with the departments (or functions) that want to post content on the following areas:
- Decide which platforms you will use.
- Choose a social media content rule that works best for you.
- Create cadences for social media content.
- Plan content together on an annual, quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis.
- Decide whether you will use social media ads (boosts) to increase awareness and engagement.
By creating a planned social media calendar, you save time, create more overview and clarity for all parties involved, and can respond smartly to national holidays as well as events and other occasions.
