Planning your social media content and measuring its effectiveness can help ensure the success of your marketing campaigns, keep writers and other content stakeholders accountable, and provide clear communication between teams – not to mention organizing your publishing schedule and saving time.
How do I Create a Social Media Marketing Calendar?
Follow these steps to creating an effective social media calendar:
1. Audit your social networks and content
2. Choose your social channels
3. Determine what you want your audience to do next
4. Define your goal
5. Choose the right platform
6. Determine a schedule
7. Create campaigns
1. Audit your social networks and content
Step one in creating a social media calendar is to make an audit of your social networks. Using social media analyzer tools like SocialBro or simply by looking at social accounts manually, assess the following:
2. Choose your social channels
Choosing your social channels is the next step. Based on your audience audit, you need to choose the most strategic social channels for marketing your business. Whatever social channels you choose, you’ll need to stay visible on them every day. For a small eCommerce business, it would be a bad idea to devote significant marketing resources to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, Google+, and other channels with millions of users (although these channels could be used well for small marketing campaigns so long as they don’t take up too much of your time). Instead, choose those channels with more targeted audiences such as forums or industry-specific blogs with targeted audiences.
3. Determine what you want your audience to do next
Determine what you want your audience to do next. The most important thing is tracking your progress.
4. Define your goal
Define your goal. Make sure you know what you want your prospective audience to do after seeing your content. Do you want them to sign up for your newsletter, like your Facebook page, or make a purchase?
5. Choose the right platform
After choosing the appropriate social channels for marketing your business, you’ll also need to choose the right platform for each goal. For example, LinkedIn might have a high percentage of your target audience interested in your products or services, but it’s not as effective as social media as a whole for getting traffic to your website and generating leads.
6. Determine a schedule
Determine a schedule. Determine what will be posted when, and set those dates and times in an Excel calendar. Don’t forget to check your posting calendar before you start publishing content.
7. Create campaigns
Create campaigns. Social campaigns aren’t fun (nor are they inherently exciting to think about), but they’re the best way to keep your company’s social channels organized and productive.
Earn Money by HubSpot Affiliate Program: Make $1000 Per Referral
