Having a social media content calendar is undoubtedly the best way to plan and organise your upcoming content for the year.

 

A well-planned social media content calendar will not only help build brand awareness, increase followers and maximise engagement, but it will also ensure that your social presence is consistent and timely.

 

The most challenging part of creating an abundant social media calendar is generating enough relevant ideas to fill your schedule for the entire year.

 

In this blog post, we share our top tips for creating a great content calendar that will see you through the entire year.

 

Create a calendar

The first and most crucial step to creating a great content calendar is actually having a calendar.

 

This might seem like an obvious step; however, you would be surprised at just how many people actually have their entire content calendar written in notepad/word doc. 

 

You don’t have to create a calendar from scratch. There’s an abundance of ready-made excel calendar templates online that are free to download. Find a template you like and use that as a starting point. You can brand it up, add colours and make it look more appealing if you want to.

 

By having an annual calendar in front of you, it will help you visualise the year as a whole rather than just the weeks ahead, which makes planning content so much easier.

 

Determine a posting frequency

You can post whenever you feel like it, but that will more than likely lead to random, sporadic posting, and it is highly likely that you will end up forgetting from time to time.

 

That’s why you need to determine a posting frequency. 

 

Do you want to post three times a week on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday? Or maybe you want to go all out and post twice a day, every day?

 

Whatever frequency you choose, plan it in the calendar and stick to it.

 

Plan in advance

It’s always best to schedule your social media posts a few days (or weeks if you can manage it) in advance. By doing this, you can not only save yourself time in the long run, but you can also plan ahead.

 

There are some great scheduling tools out there, such as Hootsuite and Buffer, both of which have a free plan.

 

 

Keep evergreen content at hand

It’s always great to have evergreen content at your disposal for the times when you are struggling for ideas, or there just isn’t much going on. 

 

Evergreen content is the type of content that is always relevant, and it is not tied to a specific date or time.

 

Save this kind of content for the times when ideas are sparse. 

 

Plan a calendar of key dates and awareness days

This is a fun one. 

 

Go through the entire annual calendar and pull out awareness days, key dates in the year and annual milestones.

 

Once you have done this, your schedule will suddenly become full of ideas that you can start planning fun posts for, without that much thought!

 

Look at your competitors

Now, we are in no way saying that you should copy your competitors… ever. But, a sneak peek will certainly help you produce bigger and better content.

 

Taking a look at what they are doing can help you to establish what works and what doesn’t work.

 

Think of your competitors as the test run that you didn’t have to take.

 

Follow social media trends

If you have your own personal social media, then this won’t be hard to do. Although this isn’t really something you can plan for, but you can allocate time in your diary to look for daily / weekly social media trends.

 

Piggybacking off trends will guarantee that your content is RELEVANT.

 

Start thinking about what you want to do this time next year, NOW!

It’s almost Christmas, and we are sure there are already things you wish you had done (marketing-wise) for this year…

 

Well, note them down in an ‘ideas’ document so that you have some ideas as a starting point for next year

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This doesn’t necessarily mean you need to start putting things into action a year in advance, but it will definitely benefit you to start thinking about what you want to do, at the very least.

 

Don’t put things off

Benjamin Franklin once said: “By failing to prepare you are preparing to fail.”

 

It’s so easy to think to yourself “it’s six months away, I can do that another time'” but really, six months is nothing, and before you know it, that time you were putting off will slap you right in the face, and you’ll be wishing you’d just got it done.

 

Planning really is the key to success.

 

Monitor the success of your posts and create future posts accordingly

This is one of the best tips we can give you.

 

It is so important to monitor the engagement levels and the success of each post you put out there. If you know something has been a flop before, why would you bother taking the time to do it again in exactly the same way?

 

On the other hand, if something has been a success, then do it again! You know it will be well received, so why not?

 

Don’t always try and sell

Try to view your content as a means of brand awareness and a way of interacting with your customers, rather than a sales avenue.

 

Create a nice balance of sales, fun and relevant posts so that your audience won’t get bored.

 

Provide your audience with a variety

Provide your audience with different content regularly. Share jokes, blogs, tips and tricks, so you are always proving new and engaging content.

 

If you are struggling for content ideas, check out this recent blog post: 20 Social Media Content Ideas You Can Save For Later.

 

Throw some fun into the mix

Every so often, you want to surprise your audience with something fun, like a competition once or twice a year.

 

This will not only provide great content for the period OF the competition, but it will also give you a heap of great content during the lead up to the competition.

 

There’s nothing wrong with an occasional throwback

You don’t always have to create content from scratch. Repost an old blog, share an old photo or a throwback to a previous event.

 

Save this kind of post for a time when you are struggling for ideas, or there’s a gap in your calendar.

 

Ready to start building your social media calendar? 

 

We know sometimes you have all the hopes of managing your social media yourself (which of course is the reason you’re reading this), however, occasionally things get in the way, and that just isn’t possible. 

 

And that’s okay…

 

We can help you. 

 

We love creating social media content, and we are always looking for new businesses to work with and create content for.

 

If you would like our help creating a great content calendar for 2021, get in touch with us.