HOW TO CREATE A SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR FOR THE YEAR

Planning a social media content calendar for the year ensures you always have posts ready to share, on a daily basis. A social media calendar helps to build a framework for ideas you want to share with your audience. Basically, a calendar is used for planning and then, executing the social media posts for the audience.

The purpose of a social media calendar is to give an overview of what posts need to be shared, what themes to follow, what’s coming next, the timings and frequency to publish posts, and the efficient strategy behind sharing content.

If you create a social media calendar for the year, then you will never have to scramble and brainstorm what to share next. You also establish a consistent posting schedule for your social media audience. And, consistency, in any platform, leads to success.

Let’s quickly figure out how to create a social media calendar for the year.

1- CREATE A SPREADSHEET/DESIGN AN EDITORIAL CALENDAR

The first step to create a social media calendar for the year is to design the spreadsheet and set everything up. The simplest way is to use Excel or Google Sheets. Otherwise, you can also download the editorial social media calendar by Coschedule.

Now, you can fill in the days of the week. Another option is to create weeks and separate the content accordingly. The next tip is to use colors to identify the days, week and other parts of the calendar. At this stage, your spreadsheet must be ready to be filled. Or, you can also use any templates available online.

2- STUDY YOUR AUDIENCE

A social media audit is a must. You should know what social media channels and content ideas you are going to share with your audience.

Before you fill the calendar, you need to determine your audience interests, and their problems.

The next step involves deciding the types of social media posts you will be sharing with your audience. You can experiment with images, videos, links to websites, short posts, etc. You can always analyze the performance of your social media posts using the analytics feature. Every social media channel allows you to study analytics and measure the engagement rates. Always keep an eye to determine the engagement and the traffic rates across each of the platform.

3- ADD EVENTS/HOLIDAYS FOR THE ENTIRE YEAR

It requires a quick research to find out the happenings, and events in your industry to fill up the calendar. You can easily find out the industry events by doing a Google Search.

Let’s consider real estate here. If you work in real estate, you can look up the major events in 2018, such as the conferences, summits, meetings, etc.

Now, put all the events and conferences into the particular days when they will happen. You can also write a brief description of the events. This way, you’ll know exactly how to plan your content.

Once you’re done with events in your specific industry, look up National Holidays. You can also check out NationalDayCalendar to find out upcoming holidays. This way, you can also put national holidays like New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Day, etc on your calendar.

4- CREATE THEMES

Brainstorming a year’s worth of content can be intimidating, but content themes are easy to work on. Before you come up with hundreds of ideas for social media posts, brainstorm content themes that you can use to educate, and entertain your audience. Take into consideration your business priorities while creating content themes.

Themes also save you extra time for posting the same things over and over again. Make sure you have different subjects that relate to your particular industry. Thus, it helps to create social media posts around that specific theme.

At The Orange Stack, I do a Facebook Friday. Every Friday, I record a Facebook Live video for my audience. It basically covers effective business growth strategies.

So, you can also create a theme for your business. Maybe, a productive tip each week, a two-minute video each Sunday.

5- GENERATE CONTENT IDEAS

By now, you have themes, days and events in place for the calendar. So, it’s probably the right time to generate content ideas. Fill all other days of the calendar with your own ideas. Maybe, choose a day to share a customized image. Pick a day to share a tip. Choose a day for an individual post on social media.

There are a number of places to get social media content ideas. You can use BuzzSumo, Feedly, StumbleUpon, Flipboard, and Pinterest to collect ideas for your social media calendar.

Most importantly, don’t just plagiarize. Design a customized message to share with your audience on social media. You can even follow 80/20 rule. Share 80% of others content whereas 20% of your own content. Keep your audience engaged by providing content they are looking for. Write engaging captions. Make irresistible headlines to grab attention. Create stunning graphics. Record helpful videos to educate your audience. Share a tip each day.

6- FILL IN ALL THE GAPS

The last step involves filling up the calendar. You need to put the whole social media post on the calendar. Write a small description and add a link so that it will be easy for you to share. You can also put all your images on the Google drive. Then, you just need to provide the image link to Google drive on the calendar. Mention all your events and holidays on the calendar. Use different colors to mark days, events, themes etc.

Make sure you specify the posting times across each social media channel.

MAINTAIN THE CONSISTENCY

No matter what business you run, it’s important to maintain a consistent posting schedule on social media. That’s the only thing to increase your social media engagement. Be consistent.

The social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite, and Buffer also play important roles in saving you excessive time. Use these tools to schedule the content you’ve already prepared for your social media content calendar.

Planning a social media content calendar in advance gives you enough time to curate interesting content, helpful statistics, and create quality posts every week.

What ideas you have? What tips can you offer to create a social media calendar for the year?