If creating content is your passion or if it is your main source of income, then you would definitely understand the importance of publishing relevant content. Imagine that you run a food blog and you forget to post content on 24th Dec that is also known as ‘National Chocolate Day’. It would not only be disappointing for your followers but it would also mean the loss of a revenue generation idea. So, how do you keep track of such days? The answer is quite simple. You can schedule and organize all your content plans using a content calendar!
**What is a Social Media Calendar?**
What does a normal calendar do? Well, it tells us when the holidays are coming up and also if it’s someone’s birthday or a festival. A calendar helps you plan in advance for any festivities and you are never left wearing old clothes on say, Diwali.
A social media calendar works in quite a similar fashion where you can keep a tab on all upcoming holidays, events and plan your content accordingly. With a social media calendar in place, you would never again miss posting a blog on ‘National Chocolate Day.’
Benefits of Creating A Social Media Calendar
Before we try and understand how to make a social media calendar, it is essential to know why we should have one. There are many advantages of having a well-drafted social media calendar and some of them are as below:
Never Forget An Important Date, Ever
Having a social media calendar will help you be abreast of all upcoming holidays and events. This will help you create content well in advance for posting on these special days and you would no longer need to curate content at the last moment.
Time Management
A social media calendar plays an important part in helping you manage your time. With all the important dates and events listed in the calendar, it gives you a better picture of what content you should work on first and thus manage your time effectively.
Keep the Interest Growing
Posting one blog in a month or maybe two short videos in 3 weeks will not help you generate the kind of following you aim for. A social media calendar is great for planning when your posts will be published. They help in drafting a schedule where you have at least one engaging piece of content releasing every week or every month. This, in turn, keeps the audience interested in your website and increases your followers or website visitors.
Increases Collaboration
Many a time, we might plan to publish certain content on a particular day, but we forget to inform our team about the same. This leads to ignorance and confusion but can be resolved with the help of a social media calendar. The calendar can be shared with your team so that everyone has a copy of the content schedule and can then publish accordingly. Having a social media calendar increases transparency and responsibility among teams.
Thus, these are some of the most important reasons which advocate having a social media calendar. Now, as part of this course, let us look at some easy tips to start building your own social media calendar.
**How To Create A Perfect Social Media Calendar?**
Creating a social media calendar is quite a simple process once you prioritize the kind of content and the platforms it will be posted on. Let us look at some easy tips to build a content calendar.
Review and Audit
Firstly, take a step back and review all the platforms where you actively post content. Which platform has the maximum followers? Which social media app gets you the maximum visibility and re-posts? Which platform works best for audience engagement? Once you have the answers to these questions, it becomes quite easy to focus on only those social media platforms which suit your content strategy.
Know Your Audience
Once you have determined the social media apps where you would like to publish your content, the next step is to know your audience. As a writer, it is good to know whom you are writing for. Are they old? Are they young? Are they working? Are they mostly doctors? Carrying out simple analytics on your followers will help you get this data and assist you in writing relevant data for posting on these platforms.
Content Planning
Next in line is content planning, which involves categorizing the kind of content that you would like to publish as blogs, or videos, and tutorials. This helps in planning content generation as you can easily start with posting an article followed by a vlog. This step can be a little time consuming but is worth every second. It also helps you understand your audience’s preferences. Do they like vlogs more than blogs? Or are tutorials easier to understand in comparison with vlogs?
Social Media Calendar Template
We finally come to the step where we choose what the best social media calendar template is. Do we need a template that does not emphasize the details or one which explains every post in detail? For example, some calendars would just mention “post on Mother’s Day” while others would detail it as- “Post a 100 words blog, a short 30-sec vlog, and tutorial for making chocolate cupcakes on Mother’s Day”. This depends completely on the kind of design you prefer and the level of detail you require.
Create Schedules
Now we come to the last and final part where we put in schedules in the calendars, like putting in a reminder on 10th Feb for Valentine’s day blog on 14th. These schedules immensely help in prioritizing the creation and posting of content, meaning that you will never miss out on talking about important things on important days!
To Conclude
So, these are some easy steps in which you can strategize your content. There are many tools available on the internet for creating social media calendars, but the most talked about and used are Google Drive, Hootsuite, and Evernote. So get your hands on one of these today and start building your first social media calendar.
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