How to Plan Your Social Media Calendar
Planning your social media presence is just as important as planning every other aspect of your business. You know how you shouldn’t haphazardly come up with policies and procedures on the fly, just making things up as you go along? Well, the same goes for social media. You shouldn’t let your social media presence be the sort of thing that you throw together, ignore for weeks at a time, use when you’re feeling inspired, or tend to when you have the time (because honestly, who has extra time?).
Your social media posts need to be planned out, thoughtful, well-developed and posted at the ideal times. Why? Because your social media presence is about your identity. It’s about your brand. It’s about your customer relationships.
Social Media is Marketing
In short, social media is marketing. And you wouldn’t sit around and wait until inspiration strikes you or you have the opportune moment to put together any other aspect of marketing, like a television commercial or a print advertisement. It’s the same with social media — you need to be active about planning it. And hey, if the right inspiration comes along or you get an opportune moment to do something new, roll with it and count it as a bonus.
And why wouldn’t you? Social media is free, although you do have the opportunity to pay to boost posts if you want to. And practically everyone is on social media. If you’re neglecting your social media presence, you’re neglecting an ideal (and free) opportunity to promote yourself.
So before you let any more weeks go by with a stale, lifeless or slapdash social media presence, sit down and come up with a plan. You can take it one week at a time, as it’s often hard to gauge what will be happening farther out than that or if your services are evergreen, then take them out several months at a time.
When you’re planning out your social media presence, consider this…
Decide what you’re going to post and when.
Start with the basics. How many times a day are you going to post, and at what times? Although this may seem unnecessary to plan it out in this kind of detail, it’s important if you’re going to catch the attention of your followers. If you post when your target audience is inactive online, then your post is not going to get a lot of attention.
You also want to make sure you’re posting frequently. You should ideally have about two or three posts a day on Facebook and Twitter. On Instagram, you could probably get away with one high-quality photo in your feed everyday or every other day as long as your story is active (two or three stories a day). LinkedIn should have a fresh post at least once or twice a week.
You might post the same thing to every platform, or you might choose to tailor your posts to be unique to each platform. For example, that high-quality photo you put on Instagram should probably go on Facebook, too. But is it relevant enough (that is, does it have enough significance to you, and will it have enough significance to your followers) for it to be your LinkedIn post of the week? Or is there something you’re putting on Facebook the next day that will be more relevant?
As you can see, coming up with a social media plan is very much like putting together a puzzle. You have a lot of information you want to get out of there to your followers. But you need to do it at the right time if you’re going to have an impact. Consistency is also key — the more people see you showing up in their feed, the more they’re going to pay attention. This is how you’ll gain more interaction and more followers.
Don’t rush through it.
One of the major benefits of creating a social media plan is that you’re avoiding mistakes. Posts that are written and thrown up on Facebook between your other daily tasks are more likely to be riddled with errors or simply lacking in creativity. By planning them out, you’re ensuring that you don’t fall victim to those blunders. So why rush through it during your planning period. Put away distractions and come up with your most compelling ideas, including vivid photos and engaging text. Treat each post as a way to bring in a new customer, not just a way to fill a hole in a schedule.
Pay attention to what works and what doesn’t.
Maybe you notice that your 9:00 a.m. post every morning doesn’t do very well, but your 8:00 p.m. post does great. If that’s the case, maybe you should save anything especially relevant for 8:00, and maybe you could engage more people if you bumped your morning slot forward to 10:00 a.m.
You’ll be doing a lot of experimenting as you come up with a schedule because nobody perfectly understands how social media algorithms work (and even if you did, there will always be other variables).
It’s not just about days and times, either. You’ll notice that people like visuals (photos and videos) more than they like plain text. Maybe stuff that appeals to their sense of humor always gets more attention. Or certain hashtags tend to be more successful than others. Remember, a big part of planning is observing successes and failures you’ve seen in the past.