So, you’ve decided to start posting on social media to share business updates and start engaging with your customers online. Great idea! Having a company presence on social media can help you reach customers where they go to explore, engage and interact with one another. You start brainstorming your ideas on a Word Doc and create a decent list of content that you’ll post this month!
Then you realize you’ll probably want to add some images to your content to make it stand out. No worries, you can take and edit some photos between your regular daily work tasks.
When your first post goes live, you receive emails from your boss, the compliance department, and the marketing department each with their own set of changes that they’d like you to make with your post. Now you have to edit your post to comply with each party and collect and edit photos before your next scheduled postdate, all while juggling your day-to-day work activities.
This is a common example of how the seemingly simple task of posting content can turn into a much more cumbersome task that isn’t so easy. Without a proper plan, posting social content can quickly turn into a difficult task. How do you begin to account for all of the components of posting content, making sure they have the proper content to go along with them, all while getting the approval of the appropriate parties before the content gets posted?
Enter the Content Calendar!
It All Starts with a Plan
The key to a winning content strategy is proper planning. Spending time in October to plan what you’re going to post in November gives you the bandwidth you need to explore content ideas that speak to your business. Trying to create quality content ideas in a time crunch can damper your creativity and have you publishing content that could have been better with a bit more time and planning.
This is where a Content Calendar shines as it sets the stage for brainstorming new ideas and gives you ample time to put your content together. Everything from the topic, post text, graphics, platforms, and internal approval can all be done within a content calendar.
Preparing quality content takes longer than you might think, which makes proper planning a necessity.
The ‘Rough Draft’ Phase
Like any piece of written content, it’s good to have a rough draft of your social content making it open to changes before they get published. This allows you to make revisions, seek feedback from peers, or make edits to the assets you’re planning on using with your posts.
Having all your content pieces laid out in a content calendar helps you catch errors and make improvements before they go live. This keeps your content polished and saves you from making edits to already published posts.
Getting Approval
Have you ever gotten the “Looks good” email when sending your boss something to review only to have them come back with revisions once the final product is live?...
Content calendars make it easier to get approval on your posts since it lays out all of the building blocks that you plan on using. From text, hashtags, links, graphics, and platforms you can give a full sense of what your content is going to look like.
With a content calendar, you have an accurate depiction of what your content is going to be so you can make any needed edits and get buy-in ahead of time. This saves you the hassle of taking down content that doesn’t meet your organization’s expectations and scrambling to get another post published last minute.
Here are some tips to keep in mind with your content strategy:
- Find Your Voice: Find the tone you want to use when engaging with your audience online and stick with it. Make it uniquely your own so your followers know what to look out for.
- Consistency is Key: Make sure you’re posting consistently. Not too much, but not too little. Choose a pace that you can sustain with your other work priorities/demands.
- Mix it Up: Have a healthy mix of different types of content to keep your followers interested. We find that combining informational and brand awareness posts with content focused on company culture is a good way to keep your followers engaged.
How Do I Get Started?
There are several free Content Calendar templates online you can use to better manage your content strategy:
If you’d like help creating a social content strategy for your business, send us a message and we’d be happy to help!
