Stay on top of social media for your business with a content calendar. Even the best social media marketers use it. It’s a balancing act, staying on top of social media. You’ve got to know when to post to which platform, what kind of great content to post, and how often to post.

Content calendars – What? Why? How?

Content calendars are essential organisational tools that can help you strategically plan all the content ideas that you have in mind for your business. Save the stress and create better quality content by working ahead of schedule.

A content calendar organises your ideas, your publishing schedule by date and maintains transparency between you and your content creation team. If you wish, you can even use the content calendar as a means of tracking the engagement rating of your social posts so that you’ll never be scrambling with last-minute posts and publishing only relevant content that yields the most result.

Why we use a content calendar for our social media

A content calendar is an essential tool for managing your social media – whether it be a 5 person business or a multi-million dollar business. 

At EasiSell, we use it to: 

• Manage our social media calendar and content creation team. 
• Organise all of our content creation projects by various stages, such as research, creation, social promotion, and tagging.
• Schedule post creation and sharing for all our social media accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube. 
• Create reporting metrics.  

Why you should use a content calendar for your social media

As social media has such a short shelf life, you need to organise all the content you create and schedule your posts with care. If you wait until the last minute to post and update your social media, you risk missing out on an opportunity. Content calendars help you manage the content you produce to post effectively and move forward with your social media strategy. 

Benefits of a social media calendar

• Keeps your content organised 

• Customizes your social media schedule for you and your team 

• Builds trust with your clients, your team, and influencers you work with

• Helps you prioritise the content you publish 

• Delivers maximum ROI – whether it be engagement with your posts, the amount of reach or if there were any conversions that occured

How we stay on top of social media for our business

It’s important to set an appointment with your content creation team once a month to review your content calendar. Pick a time of the month when you can spend time deep in thought on your social media marketing plan and where you want to go with it. Consider what you want to achieve from your social media marketing plan. Is it for engagement or reach? Are you using your social media platform as a means to educate your followers on new and exciting products and services? Or purely as a platform to increase sales and acquire new leads?

Decide too on how much time you would like to commit to your preferred social media platform, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or LinkedIn. Some platforms may be more effective than others –  for instance, Gen Z users prefer TikTok, (Forbes,2020) whereas boomers and seniors are more likely to use Facebook over other platforms (Statista, 2020). Create a user persona of the kind of customers your business is providing solutions for (Interaction Design Foundation, 2021). By creating content that resonates strongly with the user persona you have identified as your customer or follower base – you are almost guaranteed to connect better with your audience. After a few months (or at your discretion) – review your social media performance. Are some posts (static post or video post) returning better ROI than others? How many people started to follow/unfollow after a certain social media post? Do most of your followers engage with your social media platform more during a certain time of day vs another?

I want a social media content calendar too. Help?

There are plenty of online tools to help you create a content calendar – but the best ones are always free! Download our complimentary content calendar template courtesy of Easisell today. Our free social media scheduler is simple to use, and has the basic categories and requirements any small business might need to stay ahead on the digital sphere. We recommend planning a month or two ahead -so that it will give you plenty of time to prepare your assets and coordinate that photoshoot you’ve been meaning to plan.  A fresh pair of eyes may also help you with your planning, and we would be pleased to offer a complimentary 30-min look-through of your social media plan (really, no strings attached!). 

Just remember – consistency is key in social media marketing. It is better to post once a week consistently than not posting at all ☝

Conclusion

You’re on social media for one reason: to stay in touch with customers. But with that comes the risk of getting behind on posts or letting your voice get lost in the crowd. The goal is to be consistent with your social media presence to keep your followers engaged, improving your brand image, and staying on top of your content marketing strategy.

TL;DR:

You’ve heard it before: You need to be on social media if you want to grow your business. Here’s how to stay on top of social media and still have a life:

1. Schedule posts in advance

2. Pick your social media channels wisely

3. Use social media scheduling tools

4. Get Help (We’re Here!)