Time has proved that even the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry without planning, so why take the risk with your business’s marketing?

Almost every individual understands the importance of content marketing in today’s world, but only a few recognize the critical role of content calendars.

In this article, we will highlight the importance of having a content calendar for your social media and other content marketing channels.

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What is a Content Calendar?

As the term suggests, a content calendar is a calendar that marketers and social media managers use when planning their upcoming content output. It’s the hub of your content marketing efforts and an essential instrument in your marketing kit.

A marketing team consists of multiple creative roles, from writers to editors to strategists to designers. A content calendar can help these individuals collaborate and understand each project’s workflow more efficiently by visually organizing their tasks, efforts, deliverables, etc.

What is Included in a Content Calendar?

Every social media calendar is different, but generally, all of them include a combination of these elements:

• The post’s copy and creative assets (i.e., photos or videos)
• The exact date and time the post is going live
• The social network and account where the post will be published
• Links and tags to be included in the post
• Any additional relevant information (e.g., is this a sponsored post?)

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Why You Should Use a Content Calendar

Here are five reasons why you should use a content calendar for your social media:

Keeps your team organized and aligned

A major benefit of using a social media content calendar is that it helps your marketing team stay organized and aligned. By using a social media calendar, you can visualize your content strategy over a period of time and plan your marketing efforts ahead of time.

Your team can batch their efforts and note down their creative brainwaves for later so they don’t have to run around looking for a generic inspirational quote at the last minute. Every team member is aware of their tasks and respective deadlines, so they can organize their work and align with relevant team members accordingly.

Helps maintain consistency

Whether you’re trying to increase your Instagram or want more Youtube subscribers, talk to any social media expert and their first tip will always be “post consistently”. There’s no disagreement on that.

You might be wondering why.

When you post consistently, you have a higher chance of showing up on your target audience’s feed – and that is the key to engaging them on social media. The more engagement you get, the better your organic reach will be via the platform’s algorithm, so your posts will be visible to new eyes and you’ll gain more followers.
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Helps build marketing personas

Building a consistent brand identity across all marketing channels can be a challenge. Fortunately, having a content calendar makes the task much easier – especially for social networks.

You will have a different type of audience on every platform. If you use the same content for two or more platforms, chances are that it won’t resonate with your audience the same way. Having a content calendar can help you avoid such problems. You can plan in advance for every social network separately, hence creating a separate marketing persona for all.
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Reduces the risk of mistakes

A social media calendar – especially one that has all team approvals built-in – can save you from low-key embarrassments, like posting a creative on the wrong platform, or having a high-key social media crisis.

When you plan your social media posts ahead of time, you get a chance to copy-edit the text, fact-check all the information, or also vet it with organizational stakeholders like the legal team or C-suite. All these tasks are a lot easier when you’re working in advance.

Enables better performance tracking

In addition to planning, a social media calendar aids in the efforts of reporting and following up.

Every social media strategy has a goal. Do you want to build your audience? Get more likes on Instagram or more retweets on Twitter? Whatever your goal(s) may be, you need to track your social media campaign results to check whether you’ve achieved them and a content calendar can help in that.

Besides this, a social media calendar can also help you track individual employee’s performances. You can see who has submitted their work on time, whose work required more revisions, and what are the pain points in their journey.

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How to Create A Content Calendar for Your Social Media

By this point, we’ve established that every business needs a social media content calendar. However, the main question remains: how to create a proper social media calendar?

Here are eight steps to follow:

Step 1: Audit your social networks and content
Step 2: Choose which social media channel(s) are best for you
Step 3: Decide what your calendar needs to track
Step 4: Make a content library for your assets
Step 5: Establish a workflow
Step 6: Start crafting your posts
Step 7: Invite your team to review, and use their feedback to improve
Step 8: Start publishing/scheduling

Making a content calendar might seem like an easy task, but it can be quite challenging – especially if you don’t have a proper creative and marketing team. But don’t worry, DIGITORM is here to the rescue! We’re here to get our hands dirty, so you won’t have to. From coming up with creative ideas to executing them, we offer 360-degree social media management services that cover it all.

Get in touch with our team for a free social media audit and consultation!