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Create a cohesive and strategic social media marketing calendar from beginning to end.
Picture this; you’re looking at the calendar for 2024 wanting to start planning your social media content. The problem? You have no idea where to begin, and it feels very overwhelming. Creating a social media content calendar is tricky, especially when you have multiple managers to please, products to promote, or KPIs to hit. So, how can you make the whole process easier?
Social media is one of the best digital marketing channels around and can help you achieve amazing results for your brand (or your multiple clients, if you’re working at an agency). Using social, you can boost brand awareness, generate leads and conversions, and ultimately increase your bottom-line profits. There are so many things to learn when it comes to the world of social media marketing. But it all starts with a consistent posting schedule and a social media content calendar.
In this article, we’ll delve into how to create a cohesive and strategic social media marketing calendar from beginning to end. We’ll also help you figure out where to start, from defining your content pillars down to scheduling your content and setting up super simple social media workflows.
Ready to get into it? Get scrolling to score a treasure trove of social media secrets!
Why Is Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar So Important Anyway?
Being faced with the task of creating a social media content calendar can feel daunting, especially when you are running your own small business or are simply facing the pressure of boosting your results in 2024. But how can a social calendar help you?
A social media content calendar, or editorial calendar, can help you in a number of ways;
Consistency: Being consistent on social media is crucial for long-term success. If you’re only posting on a particular channel sporadically, you could be losing out on reach, as most social media algorithms reward pages that post consistently. Not only that; but if you haven’t posted in months and suddenly start again, your audience might forget who you are; or why they followed you in the first place.
More strategic content: Having a consistent social media content calendar ensures that you can plan ahead, which gives you the freedom to be a little more strategic. This way, you can ensure that you don’t miss important dates that align with your brand, such as Mother’s Day, Black Friday sales, or even your own product launches or promotions around optimal times in line with key sales periods. You can always add posts later, but by planning ahead there’s less chance of you missing key dates. Planning and scheduling also offers a holistic view of your content, so you can make sure all your content pillars are covered.
Fewer errors: A content calendar also means less chance of errors. If you’re posting directly to a platform, especially at the last minute, there is generally a higher chance of you (or someone on your team) making an error. With a social media content calendar, your social posts can go through several rounds of approval from different marketing team members, instead of using a variety of messy Google Sheets or Google Calendars! You’ll also be able to keep track of your post content and easily identify if you have doubled up on any posts.
Aside from all this, having a social media content calendar is just less stressful for whoever is in charge of content creation! Instead of having to come up with new content every day – or even a few times a week – you can simply plan your posts ahead of time, schedule them, and watch them go live. This makes content planning so much easier and leaves you to focus more holistically on your overarching social media strategy or seasonal social media campaigns.
Tips To Create A Social Media Content Calendar In 2024
So, now you know why you need a social media content calendar. But how do you execute one? Well, lucky for you, we’ve pulled together our best tips on how to create a social media content calendar for 2024. We’ll give you step-by-step instructions, from beginning to end.
Creating a content calendar is easier than you might think, but it does require some strategic thinking so listen up!
- Conduct A Social Media Audit
The first thing you’ll need to do when creating your social media content calendar is to sit down and conduct a social media audit. In a nutshell, a social media audit is basically just an assessment of how your social media channels are doing and what you could do better to improve them. If you don’t already have social media marketing channels, you might want to think about auditing your competitors instead to check what’s working and what’s not.
A social media audit should show you your brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and any threats present in the social media landscape.
Find out how to conduct a comprehensive competitor social media audit here.
Your social media audit should include information on:
- When your brand should post on social
- Which content types and themes are working
- What your target audience likes to see on social media
- What kinds of opportunities exist on social for your brand
- How you can improve your content
- How you can turn engagement into leads, clicks, conversions, and more
A social media audit might look a little different according to each brand or social media page and their unique goals, so there isn’t always a set template for how it should look. But it should leave you with guidance and insights on how you’ll start shaping your social media strategy.
- Choose Your Social Media Channels
Next up, decide which social media channels you want to utilize. When choosing your channels, you’ll need to take a number of factors into consideration:
- Your target audience. If your audience is younger you may want to think about channels like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, as they skew younger. If your audience is female-skewed, you might choose channels like Pinterest and Instagram. Think about your audience demographics as well as their interests.
- Your business. What kind of business do you have, and what kind of platform would best showcase your content? The type of content that best showcases your business might determine the best channel for you. For instance, maybe you’re a B2B business wanting to showcase lots of articles or whitepapers. In that case, it might be better to focus on LinkedIn or X. But for a brand like GoPro which focuses on video content, video-based social platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube are more suitable.
- Your resources. If you’re a larger business with plenty of resources, you may be able to maintain three or more main social media channels and two complementary channels. But, for a small business, you may not have the resources to properly maintain so many channels at a time. It’s definitely worth considering which channels you can focus on at any given time. Keep in mind that you’ll also need to maintain all these channels and respond to any user comments and queries that pop up.
If you’re just starting out, don’t spread yourself too thin. Focus on just a few social media platforms at a time. With scheduling, you can often repurpose content from other channels – but more on that later!
Learn how to link your social media accounts seamlessly for maximum reach here.
- Create Content Pillars
Once you’ve conducted your audit, you’ll want to define your content pillars. You may already have gleaned some insights into what kind of content is working for your brand when you did your social media audit. If not, you can create them now. Content pillars are a huge help when it comes to curating your social content and ensuring that everything is on brand.
If you have already been creating social content for a while now, you probably have some social media content pillars in mind. Or, you may already know subconsciously what your social media content pillars are, but haven’t defined them.
Either way, it’s time! One of the great things about Sked Social is our AI can analyze your past posts and offer a summary of the different content pillars you have used in the past.
Then, these can be used to define ‘Labels’ in Sked Social. Once you have your defined Sked can help you come up with content ideas, generate captions, and help you report on the performance of each pillar.
- Outline Your Quarterly Focus
Next, map out your different focus areas for the next quarter ahead of time. You can start your content planning based on:
- Seasonal events like Christmas, the start of winter, or Mother’s Day
- Any evergreen content; these posts can be scheduled for months in advance
- Key sales periods that might be relevant to your brand. For instance, if you sell cold and flu medication, winter is probably your biggest time of year
- New product or service launch dates
- Content marketing campaigns that you might want to launch
- Any other business plans or events to take into consideration
- Utilize Social Media Calendar Tools
Social media management tools can make life much easier for you and your social media team. Social media tools can help you to generate strategic insights, measure, and track performance, collaborate, and schedule content.
The key is finding a social media marketing tool that is powerful and flexible, and includes all the amazing capabilities you need. The best social media management tools really can do it all. They can help you create better, more strategic content, all while shaving hours (or even days) from your workflow every few months.
Sked Social is an intuitive social media calendar tool that can help you to schedule content, collaborate on approvals, save assets, generate in-depth social media reports, generate insights, and much more! It can help you save time, maintain a consistent posting schedule, and boost your social media results in the long term.
- Post Consistently
Maintain momentum on your social media accounts by posting frequently and consistently. By posting regular updates on social media, this signals to users that your brand is active, relevant, and committed to delivering valuable content. Check your posting frequency for each social channel and ensure that you are posting at least a few times per week.
Not only that, but, a consistent posting schedule enhances visibility in crowded feeds, maximizing the chances of reaching a broader audience. Every time you post, you have an extra opportunity to reach someone! Over time, this means increased brand recognition and loyalty, as followers start to look forward to your content. Eventually, you’ll start to build lasting connections with users and your brand will stay top of mind.
Collaborate effortlessly, save time and spend less
Why settle for a lackluster social media management tool when you could be using Sked Social? With unlimited collaborator access, streamlined approvals and advanced auto-post technology that lets you schedule to all major platforms, Sked Social offers everything you need.
Get Started for FREE
How To Level Up Your Social Media Strategy
So, you’ve created the ultimate social media content calendar for 2024 and maybe you’ve even started posting. Sounds like you’ve nailed the basics of social media planning! But if you’re anything like us, you’re impatient. You want to scale your progress faster and see tangible results.
But how can you boost your results on social media and see results faster than ever? Here are some extra tips to bolster your social media marketing strategy and enhance your performance.
Repurpose Your Social Content
If you want to maintain a presence on multiple social profiles, it helps to repurpose some of your social content. Cross-platform posting will extend the life of your content further – and it makes life easier!
This can work in several different ways. You can use some original content on each platform and some repurposed content. Or you can use the same assets with different captions. You could also repurpose some of your ad content after you have used it. The choice is yours.
However, it’s important to keep in mind that each social network is different, and your audiences might be different on each channel. Plus, if you have some duplication when it comes to the audiences on your social media channels, using the exact same content means that they will be seeing the same posts over and over again, which isn’t ideal – although if you’re just posting to Instagram Stories this might not be an issue. So, before you start copy-and-pasting all your posts, come back to your strategy and consider creating some unique content or editing your assets to use them in a different way. For example, think about how a video could be edited differently to serve different purposes.
Social media management tools like Sked Social allow you to repurpose content easily. Instead of sharing and uploading content across different platforms one by one, just re-post your content with the one tool.
Our tip? Mix up the captions, tags, and hashtags purposefully for each social media channel to ensure you’re reaching new audiences. So, what are you waiting for? Get started by signing up for Sked’s 7-day trial today.
Boost Your Reach With Awesome Captions
Did you know that your social captions are a crucial element in making sure your posts are seen by more people? To get the maximum reach, use industry-specific SEO keywords and hashtags in your post copy.
But how do you know what the right keywords and hashtags are for your brand?
It’s simple. Just head to your social platform of choice and search for keywords that your audience might be using to find brands like yours.
Try to use keywords related to your industry AND possibly your location, too. Once you have your hashtags ready, be sure to add them to your social profile’s bio, in post copy, and in your hashtags; wherever it’s relevant.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started today by signing up for Sked’s 7-day trial.
Are You Ready To Create A Killer Social Media Calendar In 2024?
Ready to start planning content and get rid of those messy Excel sheets? Sked Social is the ultimate social media calendar tool and is perfect for project management on social. It can help brands and social media managers to seamlessly schedule high-quality content (the right way), conduct reporting, and tweak their content so that it meets their own brand guidelines as well as Instagram’s size specifications. It can also help you stay up-to-date with any new social media post types that might be released in the future.
What’s more; Sked’s reporting features are constantly improving, and allow you to unlock critical insights about what your competitors are up to. Sked Social has powerful capabilities that can help you streamline your social media workflows, become more dynamic, enhance your creativity, and connect with your target audience.
Is it time to level up your social media content calendar and leverage the immense power of a social media management tool like Sked Social? Sked can be utilized across all your social media channels, from TikTok to LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, and more. You can schedule your posts, Reels, videos, and more!
Ready to schedule your next post? Sked Social is the Social Media Management platform for social media scheduling, reporting, and more. Get started by signing up for Sked’s 7-day trial today or learning more about our pricing.