Marketing on social media platforms helps close the disconnect between businesses and their potential audience members, as well as showcasing your brand’s vision. But with all the social networks out there, how do you stay organized? Check out these tips on how to create an effective social media content calendar.

What is a social media calendar? 

For starters, a social media calendar is a detailed overview of your upcoming posts, organized by date and time. This can be done in the form of a spreadsheet, digital calendar or interactive dashboard.

How to create an effective social media calendar

Follow these three steps to learn how to create an effective social media content calendar.

Conduct a social media audit.

A social media audit evaluates your current social media presence, including accounts and engagement. By doing this, you can see what’s working and what could use improvement.

As part of the audit, review and analyze how often you are posting, look at your analytics for engagement times and gain a better understanding of your target audience’s interests and habits.

Select your social platforms and content mix.

An essential part of social media strategy is deciding what type of content you want to post and where you want to post it. There are a couple marketing strategies to use to help you get started, such as the social media rule of thirds or the 80-20 rule.

The social media rule of thirds means that one-third of your posts should promote your business, one-third should share industry content and one-third should entail personal interaction.

The 80-20 rule is the rule that 80% of your content should inform, educate or entertain, while 20% of your content promotes your business.

Choose what information your social media calendar will include.

No matter how you plan your social content, deciding what information you want in your calendar will help you stay organized and reach your desired results.

Typically, social media content calendars include the date and time a post will go live, as well as the social media account and platform for each post. Copy, hashtags, graphics and links will also be included on your calendar.

Additional tips to stay organized include sharing platform image sizes, campaign hashtags and color-coding your calendar.

In a “nutt” shell

Now that you know more about how to create an effective social media content calendar, start creating! Share it with your team to get feedback and tweak it as needed to help meet your marketing needs. Not sure where to begin? We are here for you!

McNutt & Partners is a full-service advertising and digital marketing agency. Contact us today for your marketing needs! Call 334.521.1010, or visit our contact page.