– Free Social Media Content Calendar –
Social media can be a pressure cooker for new and small businesses. Keeping on top of your content, deciding which channels to use and understanding how effective your work is, is tough!
We recommend that you use a content calendar to help you plan and produce the content that your users want to see and engage with.
Why use social media?
It enables you to raise awareness, interact with your audience and generate leads and sales.
But deciding what, where and when to post is time-consuming and challenging for many. Using a content calendar will help you and your teams to plan, implement and review your social channels.
How it can help you and your business?
Why use the content calendar? Well here are 4 of the many benefits:
- Plan your posts across various channels
- Keep on top of when content has been created
- See the gaps in your social content
- Identify the times and days where you get the most engagement
How to use it…
The excel spreadsheet is easy to use and allows you to keep on top of your social content.
It is a great place for new and small businesses to get started as it is cost-effective and enables all of your team to work from one document. See below notes for each column:
- Day: If you can post 3 times per/week (Mon – Fri) then that is a good place to start
- Channel: Concentrate on the channels that your customers use.
- What: What content you are going to post. Remember to focus on your digital personas to ensure you produce the content they want.
- Completed: Allows you and your team to keep on top of content creation
- Publish date: Date you will publish
- Time: Lots of studies have been done about the best time to post. Think about your audience and test the best options.
- Posted: Make note when the content is live!
- Boosted: We occasionally boost posts (this costs money) on Facebook. If you have budgeted for this then you can use this column to make note.
- Likes/Comments/Shares: At the end of each week/month you can record your basic engagement to review best content/most effective times to post
- Notes: We use this column to note any particular resources needed to create the content. E.g. if we are doing a testimonial video with a customer, we will write the confirmed time/date of the video, that we will need a camera and the time required to complete editing. We also make note of particular events that the post is designed to complement. E.g. national holidays.
CONCLUSION
It is important that the time and money you are spending on your social content always helps you to meet your overall marketing objectives.
Using the content calendar will assist you with the content creation stage of your social strategy. Other templates can be found to help you with other stages and we will look at this further in future blog posts.
Taking this first step allows your business to immediately communicate the key messages through social media channels.
FREE TEMPLATE
DOWNLOAD YOUR FREE SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT CALENDAR
Feel free to share your thoughts in the box below. Let me know what you agree/disagree with or what else you might consider when creating social media content.
Good luck!!
Written by Danny Layzell, February 2020
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