Developing a Social Media Calendar

Social media marketing may seem like it only consists of posting messages and engaging in conversations, but as a company with marketing goals and objectives, simply publishing random content and chatting will not serve you well. Managing consistent marketing messages across multiple social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, not to mention Pinterest, and YouTube, among others, can be challenging for any sized company.

In print publishing, editors use editorial calendars to plan out content weeks or months in advance. A social media editorial calendar is a useful tool that helps you spell out your messaging and the timing you’ll use to post those messages across your social media accounts.

There are many ways to plan for and organize social media content. Some social media editorial calendars can be created using spreadsheets, often as shared documents like Google Spreadsheets. There is also software that helps with content planning such as Planoly. Some social media management tools include a content planning tool such as the Instagram Grid Planner on Sprout Social and the Hootsuite Planner along with scheduling tools. Facebook provides a post Planner built into its Meta Business Suite.

Regardless of which social media calendar or planning tool or tools you use, being strategic is the name of the game. Your social media editorial calendar should track any content your company plans to publish online including blog posts, articles, social network posts, image and video uploads, even online press releases.

Before you use your social media editorial calendar, ask yourself some basic marketing questions:

• What are your marketing objectives?
• Who is your audience (target market)?
• What do you want them to do (participate, sign up for something, contact you, buy something)?
• How will you get them to do that?
• How will you measure the effectiveness of your posts and determine success?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you should have a better sense of how to approach your social media messaging. While an overarching business goal might be sales or other tangible transactions, a daily goal might be to provide customer service and cultivate a community of customers and prospects.

Social media editorial calendars shouldn’t limit how often you post to your social networks. Your posting frequency should be based on your resources, what works best for each network, and even how often your audience expects to hear from you. Not everything you post is time-sensitive or date-specific, so prepare to be flexible. Social media calendars are strategic planning tools but are not a replacement for in-the-moment conversations and posts.

Some elements of a social media editorial calendar include:

Dates. Your calendar should break messaging down to the day since social media marketing is a daily activity.

Assignments. Make sure you clearly assign responsibility for crafting posts, editing, and publishing. You need a process in place that may include copyediting and approvals to ensure the content you post best reflects your company’s brand. You can manage this in some calendaring and planning tools as well as social media management tools or more general project management tools such as Basecamp and Asana.

Themes. Consider assigning themes to each month or each week. Themes can be “hooks” that inform daily messaging for a particular time frame. A theme might be based on specific company events and news or tied to current events, seasons, holidays, or other relevant topics.

Press Releases. Your company’s marketing efforts may include sending out a traditional press release. To ensure that your social media marketing efforts support your public relations, make note of the dates and topics of planned releases in your social media calendar to guide the content you publish around the same time.

Blog Posts and Articles. Social media posts are more often short messages while blog posts tend to be longer content. If you have a promotion, contest, event, or news, a blog post can provide more details while social media posts attract attention and drive actions. You may also write bylined articles and distribute them to media outlets for publication or publish them on your website. Any longer-form content should be tracked on your social media calendar.

Messaging. Your social media editorial calendar should include drafts and actual post text to ensure what you publish online is consistent with your brand voice, clearly conveys your key messages, and appeals to your target market. Decide how much you or your team members can ad lib from pre-crafted messaging.

Provide training to anyone responsible for managing your social media editorial calendar and the content within it. A well-maintained social media calendar should be detailed enough to be a clear a roadmap for anyone who steps in to help with your social media marketing.

While planning is important, don’t let your editorial calendar kill spontaneity or your brand’s personality. Be conversational. Be engaging. Use your social media editorial calendar to keep your messaging on track with your company goals and help you measure the success of your online marketing efforts.