So, you want to be a #influencer? Or maybe you are getting into the realm of social media management, and want to be as efficient for you and your clients as possible. Creating a content calendar is the best way to do that for so many reasons:
- It allows you to plan ahead and figure out what to post.
- Avoids multitasking
- You get an idea for how your feed will look for the month
- You aren’t stressed out every day figuring out what to post for content
- Content Calendars are a great way to show your clients what you have planned for them and their brand
- It’s the best way to be consistent on your feed, which is known to improve engagement
A content calendar can be as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Social media can seem overwhelming, but follow these steps on how to make a social media content calendar and see how simplifying it can be!
Decide which Social Channel to Target
Whether a content calendar is for you or your clients, figure out where your best target market is located. Take a look at your current demographics, and then check out the demographics for each social platform. Once you figure out what lines up best with your audience, you can now focus on a specific social media channel.
Create a Brand Strategy
The next thing you’ll want to consider is how often you’ll need to post, what time to post, and who, if anyone, needs to approve the post before it is published.
Again, the purpose of a content calendar is to make your life simple. If you need to only post 5 days a week, You’ll have to generate about 20 days of content. You can then map out those specific days in the calendar, figure out what time to post based on your analytics, and there’s the outline of the calendar.
Here our list of recommended social media content calendars:
- Buffer
- Hootsuite
- Facebook Creator Studio
- Preview
- Plann
- Airtable
Designing Posts
Now that you have your outline for when to post, now comes the fun part! If you have those photos ready to edit, there are so many apps to use to get those perfect edits in.
Once you have all your pictures how you want them, You can place them in the calendar and rearrange them how you see fit. With a content calendar, you can see how your social media feed will look in advance, which is great for creating a perfect aesthetic look and feel to your or your client’s page.
Review and Schedule
Once you are happy with the look of the content calendar, your pictures and captions are up, and you have everything arranged appropriately, you can share your calendar for final approval from your client. Most content calendars allow for a team of people to edit and view, otherwise, you can share the link for them to preview.
Once you get the ok, you are ready to start scheduling them out. Some content calendars do not allow you to pre-post directly through them, so you will either want to try an application that does, like Facebook creator studio, or you can manually publish them. Either way, the chore of creating a new post every day is off the table when you create a social media content calendar, which is what we want, right?
If you are looking to simplify your life on social media, creating a content calendar is the first and arguably the most important step in maintaining order and growing a following! Looking for more social media tips? Check out our blogs filled with tips and ideas to grow your social media channels!