In this day and age, if your business doesn’t have a social media presence, then you’re behind the times. Even just two years ago, almost 90% of B2B businesses were on at least one social network.
However, you don’t just want to jump on any and all social media channels. You need to have a strategy in place to make sure you’re hitting the appropriate channels and the right audience with the right message for your business.
Creating awesome content and managing your business’ social media accounts can be an overwhelming task, so one piece of your social media strategy would be to create a social media content calendar. A social calendar allows companies to organize and schedule out their social media content in manageable chunks.
What are the advantages of using a social media content calendar?
- It saves time
Creating a social calendar is the best way to efficiently manage your time and resources. It ensures that whoever is writing the posts has plenty of time to thoroughly research topics and create engaging content. Instead of creating content on a daily basis, you can knock it out in easily-manageable pieces.
- It’s easier to balance topics
As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life. And this is especially true for social media. No one follows a social media account to see the same types of content posted over and over again. Developing a social calendar is the easiest way to ensure you don’t overload your audience with any one kind of content. If you’re struggling to create new content, consider working in local and national current events; this is a great way to switch up your content while remaining timely and relevant to your audience.
- Easily create themed posts
Utilize themed posts to add consistency and a bit of fun to your social media. Examples of themed posts include a weekly “around the office” picture, a throwback Thursday photo on Facebook or even a motivational quote every Monday (#MotivationMonday). Themed posts not only give your audience something to look forward to each week, they’re also easy to produce. Looking for some cool themed post ideas? Check out this massive list from Forbes.
- Never miss important dates
It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day work and forget an important date or a holiday. Creating a social calendar and populating it with dates that are important to your company or your audience, will ensure you never miss an important date again. Here’s a great resource that lists all of the major American holidays.
- It prevents overloading one social network and neglecting others
If your clients are active on a social media channel, you should be too. However, be careful to avoid overloading any one particular social media network. A Fast Company survey of social media users found that 22.1% listed posting too much as the most annoying thing an account can do. Creating a social calendar provides you with the framework for ensuring an equal distribution of content across your social media channels.
Does your company have a social media presence? If not, we’d love to help get you started. Shoot Bill an email to see how we can help your company find social media success.