Looking to Increase Social Media Productivity? You Need a Content Calendar – Reade Milner

Promoting content is already a daunting task. Having everything strewn all over the place could make it even more so. Between strategy planning and creating content, there is just so much that goes on in a social media setting that it’s hard to keep everything organized and running smoothly. And even worse, all the effort you pour into the task may be put to waste as inefficiency crawls in with all the chaos.

But, what if you had a way to keep everything flowing smoothly with a seamless rhythm that puts everything in its proper place? Say hello to your social media content calendar.

What It Is and What It Does

A social media content calendar is something that your entire team can use to plan every single activity that involves your content. It gives a clear timeline on what topics to discuss, what days these topics should be posted, and when they will be distributed on your social media pages.

It could be something as detailed as this from Hootsuite:

Or it could also be something as straightforward as this, from CoSchedule:

What does this content calendar do?

• It helps you plan topics in advance, coinciding with special events or industry news that you may want to talk about and integrate this into your regular flow of topics.
• It shows you if there are gaps between posts that you would have to fill.
• It gives you enough time for content creation, revision, and publishing which eliminates the stress that comes with rush work and backlogs.
• It allows you to revisit previous topics and posting schedules and check if there’s anything that needs to be tweaked.
• It helps you avoid spamming certain social media networks and forgetting about all the others.

It’s the perfect tool for any effective social media team. It lays out every single plan in place, allowing you to just jump from one step to another with very little disruption in the middle of a workflow sequence. You can finally eliminate those last-minute and sudden brainstorming sessions that eat up so much of your time.

How It’s Done

So, how do you create an effective social media calendar? Here are a few useful tips:

• Look for patterns. Do studies show that your audience opens Facebook during their lunch break? Does the age group that you cater to tweet at least 5 times a day? Are there specific holidays in the past that they seem to be more interested in over the others? This kind of information would be the perfect basis for your content calendar.

• Create your own pattern. If your research shows that teenagers often check their social media pages after dinner time and this is the audience you are after, then do a bulk of your posting around these times. You can also create specific patterns for recurring topics. For example, you can post about lifestyle on Mondays, beauty on Tuesdays, and fashion on Wednesdays.

• Make it reasonable. Some social media calendars become ineffective because they only address the demand for the posts and not the resources needed to make it happen. Always think about how much time a writer needs for research and content creation and figure out how long it usually takes to revise and edit the content. Consider these before posting anything on the calendar.

Give it a try. Create your own social media content calendar and see how a few ounces of stress suddenly vanishes into thin air.