When you consider that the average person spends about two-and-a-half hours per day on social media, it’s easy to see why platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are crucial to your marketing strategy. But most small business owners can’t stop what they’re doing multiple times each day to update their Insta or share a picture on Pinterest.
The solution? A social media calendar.
A social media calendar maps out your posts across all platforms for a set period of time. It tells you what is getting posted, to where, and when. And it makes it easy to create a coherent flow for your posts rather than random things being posted at random times.
Creating Your Social Media Calendar
Any good social media calendar has a theme — the main topic you’ll be discussing that week. Most of your posts will tie into that theme somehow.
For instance, a mobile repair service might want to spend the third week of July talking about air conditioner maintenance. That week, their social media posts would all relate to that topic — tips on how to clean your AC, what filters work best, how to tell if the system needs serviced, etc.
At the end of the week (or a few times throughout), the repair service would post a call to action. “Here’s who we are, here’s what we do, call us for a [free estimate, discounted service, same day repair].”
If you have a regularly updated blog (as well you should!), creating a social media calendar gets even easier. That’s because you can use that week’s blog post as a jumping off point for your theme.
Top Tools for Managing Your Social Media Calendar
You could work your social media calendar out on paper or a white board or draw it in the sand with a big stick. But with all the tools at your disposal, that would be a bit silly.
Social media management tools automate your posts. You can schedule them for a specific time or let the tool pick for you based on what its algorithms think will get the most engagement. Some will even keep track of your evergreen posts and push them out on a rotating basis so you’re constantly sharing your best content automatically.
Here are three of our favorite tools for managing your social media calendar:
CoSchedule
An all-in-one marketing solution, CoSchedule’s Marketing Calendar is one of the best in the business. It not only helps you schedule your social media posts, but it also allows you to see all of your marketing activities in one place so that you can see the big picture in real time.
Loomly
Looking for a simple, straightforward tool to help handle your social media calendar? Loomly is a great bet. It will suggest ideas for new posts, allow you to pull from your own content library and even offer tips on how to optimize your social media management.
Sendible
When it comes to social media publishing, it’s hard to go wrong with Sendible. You can schedule posts in bulk or individually as far out as you need while keeping your most relevant content in constant rotation automatically.
What’s on Your Calendar?
A streamlined social media calendar saves you time and energy while ensuring that your audience always has plenty of great content available on any platform. Yes, it takes a bit of planning and some management, but it will pay off in increased engagement, as well as happier fans and followers!
Need help managing your jam-packed calendar? Mischa Communications has a spot open for you on ours! Let’s schedule a chat.