Managing social media accounts and releasing timely and relevant content can be challenging. While social networks are essential tools for promoting products and interacting with your followers, switching to a social media calendar to manage your workflow can save you much time and effort. A social media calendar is an effective and efficient tool that will help keep you on track.

So how do you create a social media calendar that benefits your business? Without further ado, let’s dive deeper into how you can make a social media calendar that delivers.

What Is A Social Media Content Calendar?

Having an editorial calendar is more important than ever. Basically, because it’s important to connect with your target audience, share content, and receive feedback consistently. Many bloggers start by creating social media strategy to better define how their audience uses social media, what platforms they prefer, and the best-performing content.

A social media planning calendar is a system you use to organize your social media strategy for the upcoming weeks and months. It records dates along with the special events, as well as can be used to schedule posts, and upcoming content deadlines.

Social media calendars can also help you review posts you’ve written in the past or campaigns and their related engagement. A social media editorial calendar allows you to plan in advance and ensures your social media updates are regular and valuable to your social media strategy.

Why Else Is It Important To Have a Social Media Calendar?

First things first, a social media calendar allows you to avoid being anxious and stressed when it comes to creating content. As one of the main elements of a successful social media strategy, it includes the following benefits:

  • Better organization: You can quickly determine an upcoming workload and anticipate any business needs. An editorial calendar helps you maintain a effective publishing frequency and avoid last-minute surprises;
  • Track the engagement rate: As with any marketing strategy, the better you understand how users are interacting with your posts, the faster you’ll learn which content and formats resonate with your audience.

You can run A/B tests or similar experiments to figure out the following:

  • The best times to post on social media;
  • Your target audience’s interest;
  • What pieces of content your audience really wants to see (text, images, or video?);
  • Your top-performing CTAs;
  • The optimal frequency for posting.

The Advantages of Having a Social Media Calendar

If you’re a content creator making money recommending products and services to followers, a social media calendar is a must. Here are just a few reasons why.

A Social Media Calendar Enables You to Plan Ahead

An editorial calendar offers you the convenience of planning what type of content you’ll upload in advance. This also gives you extra time to brainstorm and do the necessary research to come up with incredible content that’s worthy of your audience’s attention.

It’s all about content quality. Making users stop and spend a few more seconds on your post requires creative, informative, and engaging content. So do your best to create content that outperforms others.

Editorial Calendars Help Avoid Duplicate Content

Posting curated content is fine when done from time to time, but not when you’ve uploaded something similar only a few days before. Don’t try to fool your audience, they will most definitely notice it.

An editorial calendar can help you manage this. Listing down all content types you’ll post in one place can help you oversee your accounts better. And since you’re planning in advance, you’ll be able to appropriately set schedules for the curated content, preventing similar posts.

Easily Monitor Performance With a Social Media Calendar

Use editorial calendars to track your social media performance. Since everything that you’ve posted is recorded, you’ll be able to identify what caused your metrics to rise or fall. This makes it easier to make and schedule posts to improve your social media engagement.

How to Create a Social Media Calendar That Makes A Difference

If you need a tool that can help you organise your posting schedule more effectively and provide the results you want, then you have to do it right. While a social media content calendar gives you a greater control over your social media strategy, creating one is more than just adding dates and describing what to post on that date. You need a strategic approach to that.

Here are a few tips to help you create an effective social media calendar:

1. Understand Your Audience And Choose Your Social Media Platforms

Knowing and understanding your target audience is essential in order to make informed decisions about your content. You need to use tools to gather important audience demographics, like their average age, gender, or interests.

Try to determine the social channels people use the most and start creating more content there.

With more than 100 different social media sites out there, you don’t want to be present on all of them. Instead, only pick the ones where your target audience is active. Otherwise, you could risk wasting time and money trying to reach the wrong audience. A good rule of thumb is to include six to eight social media channels in your social media content calendar template.

2. Create a Social Media Calendar Template

A template helps you visualize and plan your content a week, month, or quarter ahead. To start with, you can put together a social media content calendar template for your short-term goals. Include minor and really specific goals, and don’t forget to set a timeframe that’s realistic for achieving.

These are the common categories when creating a social media template: 

  • Social media channel;
  • Content;
  • Followers;
  • Subscribers;
  • Traffic;
  • Sales.

3. Decide on the Type of Social Media Content

One of the biggest challenges in creating an effective and helpful social media content calendar is deciding what to post.

First, analyze what you’ve posted in the past and determine which content aligns with your audience. To increase social media engagement you can research on each platform by searching for relevant keywords, hashtags, and trendy topics that your target audience already follows.

If you’re just starting out, you can conduct your own competitor analysis to find the keywords that are most relevant for your niche and topics your competitors are already targeting.

In addition, you can plan your editorial calendar around seasonal trends, holidays and large events throughout the year. Start adding important dates on your social media calendar, then publishing posts from the key date.

Consider adding the following events to your social media content calendar: national holidays or events, company or local events, sales dates like a Black Friday or Cyber Monday, or even product or feature date launches.

4. Determine the Right Frequency for Social Media Posts

Now that you’ve chosen your social media template and you have an idea of the types of content you’re going to post, it’s time to сhoose the days and times you want to post on each platform. You can define your social media tasks on a monthly, weekly, and daily basis.

While there is a good rule of thumb that says to post one to three times per day, you’ll also need to consider the following factors:

  • Think about your audience: when they are online? What are the best times to post to get more engagement?
  • The best social media platform to target the ideal audiences: What can work for one blogger does not necessarily work for you.

In the vast social media universe content quality trumps quantity. So make sure not to overwhelm your target audience with too much content.

How many social posts each day your social media profiles need to improve engagement and get more followers:

  • Facebook 3 to 10 times each week;
  • LinkedIn 2 to 5 times per week;
  • Pinterest 5 to 10 times a day;
  • Twitter 5 times daily.

5. Track and Understand Social Media Analytics

Once you start using a social media calendar, you’ll want to keep in mind important social media marketing metrics on every platform you use. With the right tool, you’ll be able to see and track important data for your posts, as well as confirm the best times that you should post on social for your target audience.

Now it’s your turn!

With this guide, we hope to help you create the perfect editorial calendar so that you can manage your social media accounts with ease.

We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments: What types of strategies you’ve used to develop your social media calendar? How do you mix up content types to keep your editorial calendar fresh for your audience? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.