The Ultimate Guide to Creating the Perfect Social Media Calendar

Organization is the key to a successful social media campaign. Now, one might argue that content plays the most important role in delivering the message and creating a buzz among the target audience. But ask yourself, if your content fails to reach the audience in time, or fails to grasp their attention due to a number of inconsistencies, doesn’t that mean the whole intention is ruined?

The strategy alone won’t work; you need a comprehensive laid-out blueprint to support your content marketing game plan so that it doesn’t get messed up by any external stimuli.

Enter, social media calendar.

These calendars are the most effective way to get everything done in time. You can conveniently dump all the necessary information in one place for easy access. And, it somewhat helps if you are blessed with an obsessive need to organize and color-code everything in place. Well, more power to you.

By investing your energy in creating the perfect social media calendar for your brand, you will not only save a lot of time and resources, but also keep the quality of your content consistent and relevant. After all, it isn’t easy to produce high quality content at the drop of the hat, you need time to research and evaluate the importance of the piece and the expected response of the audience. For that, you need to have a clear idea of the content pegs that should be published, for example, next week, or next month for that matter.

Also, you will never miss out on important dates. There’s nothing more satisfying than impressing your boss with a well-researched, well-crafted content for the perfect occasion, days before the actual event!

Calendars help you to repurpose old content if it fits the bill right now. You will never run out of content if you already have a bulk of it stored for future use.

The check-list

The calendar should be brief but self-explanatory so that your team doesn’t face any problem deciphering it. It should be updated and improvised on a regular basis to stay relevant and fresh. ‘Constant Vigilance’ is what you should aim for.

Ideally, you should work on having separate sheets for each month and then breaking it down to weeks and days and hours. Fill up the calendar with the 3-month/6-month plan you have worked out. Round up all the social media platforms your brand is on and place them accordingly. Now, each of these platforms follow different time schedules and content forms, so make sure that you have enough space to accommodate the time, frequency and the optimized content for each of the posts.

Assign the pegs to your team members and finalize the respective deadlines. Another important factor you should look out for is, don’t make it a chore for you and your team. There are no templates when it comes to social media. The consumers are lapping up everything as long as it’s new and exciting and fresh. Don’t lose that ‘dynamic‘ edge.

Now comes the most difficult part – analyzing your audience response. Make it a point to note down the audience reactions along with the already uploaded posts. After a month, you will end up with an elaborate comparative analysis of your content. You will be able to see the pattern – what kind of content your consumers are enjoying and what they are rejecting. It will help you to revise your plan accordingly. Compare metrics such as views, clicks and engagement ratio, these will help you to keep you on your toes.

Never run out of time with a well-planned social media calendar! We agree, for a newbie, it can seem a little bit daunting. But we, at Capital Numbers can make the elaborate process a lot smoother for you.

Let’s have a chat, shall we?