Are you looking to deliver compelling content to your audience and grow your social media efforts? Social media marketing is an important tool for any brand but doing so successfully is not always easy. At Clearbridge Branding Agency, we customize our clients’ content calendars for optimal reach and impact for their respective audiences—and with a little preplanning, you can do the same. A content calendar can be kept digitally in an Excel Spreadsheet and contain links, copy, and even analytics.
Here’s how utilizing a content calendar can help your social media marketing efforts.
Why create a content calendar? Creating a content calendar for your brand’s various social accounts will help you keep on top of your social media marketing efforts and create a framework for your business pages. Consistency is important on social media, so creating a plan in advance in the form of a content calendar will make content generation and posting more streamlined, organized, and consistent.
It’s a best practice to create content for your social accounts two weeks to one month out from the time the first post goes live. This will give you plenty of time to create engaging posts and revisit your content before it goes live. Use the calendar to input the copy that will be used in your posts and tweets. The calendar can also be used as part of the approval processes, by providing the calendar to management for sign-off. The best part about the calendar is that you can customize it based on your business needs. The calendar should contain copy for each social platform you use. Pro Tip: Separate the copy per platform by using separate tabs within the Excel spreadsheet.
How often should you post? When creating your content calendar, you’ll need to consider post frequency. Should you post five days a week? Seven? Three? How much is too much, and how few is too few? Every industry is different. Some brands benefit from posting five days a week, while others excel by posting two to three times per week. Consider how often you currently post. What kind of engagement are you receiving when you pop into Facebook Insights? Is it staggeringly low or is engagement up? Audit your page before making a decision on how often you should post on your accounts. Your audience and your Insights will help you make an informed decision.
How can you vary content? Creating compelling content starts by introducing variety to your posts. If you’re a restaurateur and all you post on your Facebook page are daily specials, you’re missing a huge opportunity. After you decide how frequently you’ll post when creating your content calendar, now you can think about the posts individually. Take it week by week. Let’s say you post three times in a seven-day period. One post should be promotional. One should not be promotional. And one should be a live video or behind-the-scenes peek at your brand.
By striking a balance, you’ll be more inviting to your audience. You want to inform them of your product or service, but you don’t want to beat their heads in with sales. No one enjoys the car salesman approach.
Another way to vary your content across different social platforms is to change up your posts. Avoid copycatting yourself by changing your verbiage or shuffling your content calendar for different platforms by week. One post goes out on a Monday for Facebook, but a different post goes out the same day for your Instagram. That way, your audience has a reason to view each social platform to see something new from your brand.
As originally published on Forbes.com. Clearbridge Branding Agency is a digital marketing agency located in Glassboro. Visit ClearBridgeMedia.com.
