Developing a social media content calendar is an essential part of your content posting strategy. Not only will it help ensure that you are posting consistently and constantly, but it’s also a great way to leverage trends. Choosing the right topics and types of content will ensure that your social media is shareable and engaging.
Having an editorial calendar for your social media strategy helps your brand plan and provide your audience with relevant and useful content that gives them a reason to follow you. Your postings across social media should provide incentive for your audience to share your brand and show your company’s personality. Having a social sharing calendar helps raise your social media traffic. When you create a piece of marketing content — whether it is a blog post, video, or Instagram post — be sure to share it across multiple platforms. This enables you to get the biggest return out of your original content.
What social media content should you include in your editorial calendar? We have selected five “must have” segments to get you started.
Relevant Social Media Content is Key
Above all, all content shared should be relevant to your audience. This can mean sharing content from experts in your industry and creating new posts that reference current trends. The community is also a great source for ideas– what is your audience talking about? Are there common questions or subjects mentioned in your social media interactions? Creating social media content based on this feedback and UGC is an excellent way to make your customers and audience feel involved.
Holiday and Seasonal Posting
There are plenty of unique holidays — everything from National Sibling Day to National Ice Cream Day — in addition to the more traditional holidays (like Sparkmas.*) Creating social media content that is based around these various holidays and refers to your brand is a great way to engage with your audience. They are also an easy way to populate your calendar with regular posts. Planning ahead with posts that follow a theme will give you more time to create original social media content the rest of the month.
Share Multimedia
Social media provides an excellent opportunity for sharing more than just content. Break up the monotony of different sites with multimedia — photos, videos, or infographics. Photos are the most-shared social media content, so take advantage of their popularity. Sharing between platforms is a great way to project your brand image and personality through videos and images. Multimedia is an excellent way to start conversations with your audience and drive engagement.
Provide Tips
Sharing advice and tips on your products and/or industry is helpful for ensuring that your content is both relevant and useful to your audience. If you’re announcing a new product, be sure to pair that with information that will provide value to your audience. Interview industry experts and share their knowledge with your audience. Find out what questions your audience ask the most and provide them with answers. Your audience is looking for reasons to follow your content and engage — providing them with valuable information gives them an incentive to share your brand and continue following your social media accounts.
Promotions, Announcements, and Events
If you have a new product coming out or are beginning a new marketing push, be sure to share announcements and promotions with your audience. Keeping them in the loop and up-to-date ensures that your content will be fresh and that your audience is aware of new developments with your company. Promotions are useful for developing buzz around your company and driving engagement — especially if there is a call to action to obtain the promotion. If your company is part of any events, be sure to advertise those. You can also share information about other events in your industry or create branded content related to big news events — if it is relevant to your audience.
Speaking of current promotions… Sparksight is opening up in Denver this year! (Shameless Plug) BIG specials going on, check it out!
Publishing consistently and sharing content across platforms are the best ways to make your social media content work hard for you, but remember that quality is the priority. Make sure you optimize your content for different platforms and change up your sharing content so that you’re not posting the exact same thing for every post. Whatever you share and however often, remember the consumer — they have thousands of choices of people to follow so make sure you stand out. Create a value proposition for your social media channels so that you are continually providing value to your audience.
What other posts are essential in your social media content calendar? Let us know in the comments section below!
