by Jolita Abromaityte
In our previous post, we talked about the importance of a social media content calendar. To recap, we said that creating and maintaining a social media editorial calendar can help you to plan your posts in advance, which helps to reassure your customers that you are still in business, it also takes the pressure off you (thinking what to say today). But it’s important to remain consistent, be relevant, share good quality content and take advantage of scheduling platforms. Now let’s talk about how to actually create an editorial calendar. And don’t worry, it’s simpler than it sounds and it’s totally worth your time! Firstly you’ll need to decide on the format. Since you’ll be working on it, it’s entirely up to you in what format your calendar is set up, because there is no right or wrong way of doing it. The most important thing is to ensure that the format you choose is clear and comfortable for you to use. The last thing we want is for you to get frustrated over the setup. It can be as simple as an excel sheet or a google document. You can search the internet for inspiration or use one of the examples provided below. The most important thing is to start, once you get a hang of it you will quickly notice what adjustments are required, what works for you and what doesn’t.
Before you create your daily / weekly / monthly social media calendar, it helps to set up an editorial overview plan. All you need to do is plan out what kind of content you’ll be posting. Here are some ideas to get you started:
- Showcase your products and services
- Share your blog posts
- Share tips
- Inspirational quotes
- Educational posts - from how-to videos to simple checklists
- Customer reviews and testimonials
- Show your office
- Share behind the scenes
- Images/pictures from the events (past events will work in today’s environment as well!)
- Introduce your team or yourself if you’re one-man-band
- Curated content (industry news from reputable sources)
- Ask questions - it can be product/service related or “Ask me anything” kinda question
- Holiday posts (these are easy to put into your calendar in advance)
- Giveaways (they are a great way to attract new followers )
- Answers to frequently asked questions (one at a time if there are lots of them)
- Have a podcast? Then share the links to the episodes
- Useful infographics
- Hiring? Let people know.
- Have a new starter, new department or added a new product line? Share the news.
- “On this day in history” is a fun way to share interesting facts.
- Company awards and accomplishments
- User-generated content - show your customers using your product
- Share a case study
- Reshare your top-performing posts or bestselling products/services
- Share community news
- Promote your partners
Collaborate with other brands / business
Team with charities
Supporting your local community? Let everyone know about it!
Content possibilities are endless! And now that you have some post ideas, you can choose the ones that suit you and put them on paper (even if it’s a virtual paper). You can start small and work one week ahead, here’s an example of one:
Once you get a hang of it, you’ll be able to plan more than a week ahead which will ultimately take the pressure off you and save a ton of time.
Your post categories are defined, an editorial calendar is set up, now it’s time to go deeper and start working on the actual content. What you’ll want to have in your content calendar is:
A space for writing your caption
A space for adding an image that will accompany the post
Don’t forget to add a link, particularly when you want people to visit your website
A space for adding hashtags you’ll be using
If there’s more than one person working on it, perhaps a space for adding notes / feedback.
Since this editorial calendar will be a “live” document, think how are you going to maintain it. The more you add to it, the more space it’ll be taking up so it’s worth having a template set up which you can copy and paste as a new document on a monthly basis. You can always refer back to it at a later time and even re-use some content that might be relevant even in a few months or year’s time like your product benefits or how-to tutorial.
Once your feed has a consistent flow of beautiful content, you can use various tools to schedule your content, because the more you automate - the more time you have for running and expanding your business! Need help putting together your editorial calendar? Get in touch, we’re here to help you!