How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar That Works

Did you know that 70% of Americans are on social media, and spend an average of two hours a day on their favorite social media websites? If your business isn’t on social media, then you’re missing out on a huge segment of the population.

Regardless of the demographic that you serve in your business, chances are high that they are on social media of some kind. The best way to grow your following and increase your business on social media is through regular, consistent posts. If you’re having a hard time posting regularly, then you need a social media content calendar.

Don’t worry if you’re struggling to really understand what that means, or how to create one. We’re going to walk you through step-by-step exactly how you can create the perfect planning tool to help increase your consistency and drive targeted traffic to your website. By focusing on a specific audience, you will be able to increase your conversions once you’ve utilized the power of social media to connect with your audience.

With that being said, here is everything you need to know about how to create the best planning calendar for your social media marketing strategy.

Create a Theme for Your Social Media Content Calendar

You need to have a long term plan if you want to serve your audience and create posts that get engagement. To do this, you need to have themes for your content. Don’t sit down each day and wonder what you’re going to post about that day.

Instead, sit down once a year and plan out your themes for your content. We suggest that you create one umbrella theme that all your content will follow throughout that time. So, your social media posts, your emails, and your blog posts.

You can create your themes by day, week, or month. For example, every Monday you talk about marketing, and every Tuesday you talk about strategy, etc. You can also theme each week, such as week one is how to build your brand, and week two is all about lead generation. Regardless of how you establish your theme, you need to create one, so you know what to publish each day and you aren’t left staring at a blank screen.

Create a Posting Schedule for Each Platform

There are so many social media platforms these days it’s impossible to be on all of them. However, the main platforms continue to stay at the top year after year so stick with those.

Each platform has different optimized publishing schedules. Instagram isn’t necessary to publish more than once per day, but Twitter should be multiple times every day. Likewise, Facebook will need several posts, while LinkedIn can be as little as once per week.

Your email can be every day, once a week, or once a month depending on the goals of your business. Additionally, your long-form content, whether it’s video, audio, or text can be three times a week, three times a month, or any schedule that works for your business and goals.

Regardless of how often you publish to each platform, you need to choose a schedule and then stick with it. Consistency and quantity are more important than quality, so choose a schedule you can adhere to and still provide quality content.

Identify Your Ideal Target Audience

Who are you targeting for your business? If you don’t know before you start, you risk engaging with the wrong audience who isn’t interested in the product or service you offer.

You need to know your ideal audience better than they know themselves. What do they worry about late at night? What questions do they have about your product or service? When you know this information, you can create targeted posts that will get engagement.

Spend some time on this step before you ever create a single post on social media, and you will ensure that you’re creating the content that will attract and engage with your perfect future prospects.

Choose Your End Goal for Each Post

Again, just like you need to know who you’re targeting, you need to know what you’re driving them towards. Are you building your following and brand? Are you growing your email list and targeting lead generation?

Unless you know the next steps you want your audience to take, you won’t see success with your social media campaign. Worse than that, you’ll see success in the wrong areas. You might find yourself with a million followers who aren’t your target audience and never click through to your website to buy your product.

Know what next steps you want them to take, so you can create clear calls to action at the end of each post. When you know the goals you’re aiming for, you can create targeted content that drives traffic towards the goal you want.

Map Out Your Content and Posting Schedule

You can do this via several different methods. You can use a simple Excel or Google sheet, you can use a project management software such as Asana that your whole team can access, or you can use the software program you already use to schedule your posts.

Regardless of how you map out your content, you need to create something that will help you manage your posting schedule and what you’re posting on each platform. This will be your roadmap that you’ll follow as you, or your team, create your social media content.

So, take the time to nail down this crucial information now in order to ensure success on social. If you haven’t done it already, grab a piece of paper, open a text document, or create an Excel sheet and start making notes.

Steps

First, across the top choose your theme. If you’re a chiropractor, your theme for this month might include how exercise can help your clients with their back pain.

Then identify who your ideal clients are, for our chiropractor this will include people with back pain, people with decreased joint mobility, and those suffering from arthritis and inflammation issues.

Third, decide what your end goal is. Our chiropractor is naturally looking to fill their schedule with clients. If you’re an author, you might want to drive your views to your Amazon profile or storefront. Regardless of what your business is, you need to know what the end goal is so that you can create the right content that drives action towards that goal.

Lastly, map out your posting schedule. This might be bare bones if you’re focusing on one or two platforms, or it could be intense if you’re on all the platforms and building engagement for future sponsored posts. Again, if you don’t know your goals, you run the risk of focusing on the wrong tactics.

Example

Now you might have a spreadsheet that looks something like this:

– Monthly theme: Social media marketing

– Ideal clients: Overworked and overwhelmed business owners trying to improve their marketing

– Goal: Drive all clients to a landing page to sign up for Opt-in freebie

– Week One: Branding

– Facebook

1. Post text:
2. Image:
3. Hashtags:

– Twitter

– Instagram

– LinkedIn

This is your map to follow as you create your posts throughout the month. When you take the time to sit down and create your plan ahead of time you will never again find yourself staring at a blank screen wondering what to post again.

Automate and Delegate

You don’t need to be the one pushing the publish button. In fact, you should not be pushing publish, ever. Either use a software program to schedule your posts ahead of time or use the native scheduler most social media platforms already have available to you.

Additionally, you can also delegate this entire process to an intern or VA so that you can get back to running your business and focusing on tasks with a higher ROI than social media.

If you want to scale your business to the level you’ve always wanted, you will need to automate and delegate tasks. Social media is a great choice when it comes to deciding what to delegate.

Track and Analyze the Results

Finally, don’t stop with just planning your content. You need to perform a regular review and update your results for your social media campaigns. Head back to your spreadsheet or text document and create a space to track your engagement including, click-through rates, new email subscribers, and sales.

When you know which posts bring the best conversions, as well as which platforms drive the most sales, you can focus on creating the best content for the best platforms for your business. Additionally, avoid tracking vanity metrics such as followers or likes. This information doesn’t make you money or affect your bottom line unless you’re an influencer or building to become one.

Keep this information handy so you can track your results over time and know where your traffic and conversions are coming from. You might get hundreds of clicks from your Facebook posts, but zero conversions. While your search engine traffic brings fewer clicks but more conversions to paying customers.

This information is gold as you make your content calendars in the future, so you can plan your content accordingly and focus on the highest ROI marketing activities.  Stop spending time and money on marketing activities that don’t drive sales and conversions. Instead, track your results and focus on the best platforms so you can create the best content for your ideal targeted audience.

Engage Your Audience with Content That Converts

It might seem like this is a lot of work to do and you haven’t created any posts yet, but remember, you wouldn’t head out on a road trip without a map. Similarly, don’t attempt to post consistently on every social media platform without a social media content calendar.

As Alexander Graham Bell said in his famous quote “preparation is the key to success.” So, like so many other successful business owners before you, take the time to prepare today so you can be successful tomorrow.

Follow these tips to ensure that you’re driving the right traffic to the right results to grow your business. If you’re not sure where to start, or you know that your time is better spent elsewhere the reach out to us so we can help scale your results through digital marketing.

At Five Channels, we are experts in digital marketing. We work with business owners just like you who want to get back to the work they love and get off the never-ending treadmill of publishing to social media. We specialize in getting your brand recognized on all five channels of fulfillment, content marketing, local SEO, PR and branding, social media marketing, and paid advertising.

If you’re looking for an expert to help you with your social media content strategy and planning, we’re here to help you get your message in front of your ideal audience. Stop throwing spaghetti at the wall with paid ads going to cold traffic, instead, have us show you how our targeted advertising and content marketing can drive warm traffic and prospects to your business every day.

To learn more about social media marketing and how we can help you drive more traffic and increase conversions, schedule your free digital marketing review today.