You’ve got many content types to choose from in your content marketing strategy. You can do social media posts, blogs, podcasts, white papers, ebooks, Youtube videos, webinars, and more. With so many materials to choose from, balancing them can be nerve-wracking. After all, you can confuse and overwhelm followers on certain profiles while neglecting them on others. Sadly, this results in wasted efforts and disengagement. If you want to avoid that try this free content calendar. But wait, why do you need a social media planner anyway? Learn more about this below, as well as the elements to include in yours so you don’t miss out on opportunities.
What is a Social Media Planner?
This is a digital tool where you can plan all your content marketing activities from your social media profiles to your blog. Some refer to this as the following:
- Editorial calendar
- Social media planner
- Editorial schedule
No matter the name, they all have the same goal, which is to help you efficiently manage your content creation, publication, and distribution. It highlights where and when you published your content. Bear in mind, you need to consider audience preferences, your priorities, and content seasonality in each of your mediums for maximum results.
Grasping your way through each of them can be quite an uphill battle, but the task morphs into something manageable with your social media planner. The primary benefit of this tool is it helps you visualise how all your content was distributed and will be distributed in the coming weeks, months, and years.
With an overview of your past, present, and future content output, you can fill in gaps. It proffers great transparency, as it encourages your team to cooperate and take accountability for what they do to deliver quality content. Most of all, it contains metrics that provide you with a clear picture of what’s working and what flopped. This digital tool empowers you to organise your content creation and make it more effective to meet your content marketing objectives.
What Should a Content Planner Include?
Curating the best social media planner for your brand requires thoughtful preparation and execution. This will help you churn out content even during the days when you’re not feeling inspired. Check out the 6 most important things to include in your social media planner:
1. Name of the Content
You must give the content you’re publishing a name. It should match with details of the content or overall topic and complement your marketing objectives. Having this information will make it easy to see what this content is all about when you’re looking at many different entries.
This information will also provide your team an easy way to refer to what you need should you ever need to discuss elements about this post. With this at your disposal, you can also readily pinpoint content gaps in your strategy at glance. As a result, you give yourself and your team plenty of time to make excellent content ahead. You can use this for a variety of ways, such as:
- Highlighting important events
- Seasonal holidays
- Product launches
- Special offerings and promos
2. When and Where
The next important consideration is to include when and where you intend to publish the content. Include the specific date and time. Indicate if you intend to do automated scheduled posts to avoid confusion amongst team members. Most of all, indicate what platform it will be published in such as:
- Social media profiles
- Blog
- Official website
- GMB
- Guest post
- Product descriptions
3. Content Type
Indicate in your social media planner what type of content it will be. Will it be a blog, meme, video, ad, digital poster, infographic, etc? You must also include content assets that you need such as the following:
- Visual elements like photos or footage
- URL
- Call to action
- Music
- Sound effects
- Graphics
4. Completion Deadline
You must provide the specific target date of publication. This will provide your team direction so don’t forget to include this. The deadline keeps them on their toes and tells them to persevere because there cannot be any delays. Most of all, don’t forget to include a status update so that everyone in the team will know how things are faring.
5. Author of Content
If you’re a one-man show, clearly it’s understood that you’re responsible for all the materials in your social media planner. However, if you work with a team, you must include the names of the people who are working on the content. Firstly, this promotes accountability because everyone knows who are the people responsible for the work. Secondly, it motivates the content creators to do well because their names are there for all to see. Most of all, it will give the authors a sense of pride and inspire them to keep on doing better.
6. Create a Section to Track Engagement
You must carve out a section to track audience engagement and monitor the overall analytics of each content. This is highly useful for a social media planner because it shows what materials resonate with the audience. It will help you gauge the following:
- See what topics are trending
- Improve those that work
- Check to see which are the best posting times
Make Adjustments in Your Content Planner as Your Dim Fit
All these details must be included in your social media planner. And if you notice something awry, don’t hesitate to make changes. The date you get from tracking can help you make adjustments in your content if something is not going right. And if you spot opportunities, you can readily make changes in your social media planner, whether it’s the topic or the publishing schedule.
Having a calendar doesn’t mean things are already set in stone. Instead, it just provides a guideline and helps you keep focused. However, if there are any industry trends or sudden changes, you can readily pivot as well. And bear in mind, what you post can also change over time as your brand grows and becomes more prominent.
The important takeaway here is to use your social media planner . It is a crucial part of your marketing strategy to raise brand awareness, optimise audience engagement, generate leads, and drive up sales. Your calendar will give you a glimpse of how well your content is doing. Remember, strive hard to make content that educates, excites, and engages your followers to ascertain success.
Also read: How to Use Your Spare Time
