How to Plan an Effective Social Media Marketing Calendar

Let’s be honest. We’re not all wordsmiths. And to be realistic, even talented writers would need the time to plan their content. If you’re not using your time to plan your social media marketing calendar, it would only make sense that you’d find yourself rushing around trying to find quality content to share across your social media channels.

Below are fundamental steps to developing a social media marketing calendar tailor-made to your business.

1. Determine what times are perfect for posting for your time zone.

If your target is your local market, it would do you good to research what times are perfect for optimal engagement in your time zone. If you have a global target, however, research and constant trial and error are your best bet to determine your posting schedule.

2. Decide your post frequency.

3. Decide where you get your content to share.

To help you decide, here are some of the questions you have to figure out.

A. Do you plan to share just your created content?
What topics and subtopics should you focus on?

B. Do you plan to share purely curated content?
Where will you source the relevant content?

C. Or do you plan to do a mix of both? If so, what’s your ideal ration of the mix?
These are some the elements you have to decide on.

4. Determine what tools fit your social media marketing.

Like good relevant content, finding the right tools is just as vital when it comes to social media marketing. From free to paid, here are some of the widely used marketing calendar tools.

A. Google Calendar

If you want a free and simple tool, this is your best bet.
B. Google Spreadsheet

If you want an even simpler calendar, you can use the spreadsheet which can be shared to your teammates.

C. CoSchedule

Not only is this paid tool a great social media calendar tool, but it is also a marketing automation tool which you can integrate to your WordPress blog. That’s killing 2 birds with one stone!

4. Plan ahead

Finally, determining a timetable of when to turn in your social media marketing content is vital. Planning it in such a way that the information shared is still relatively fresh and relevant, is crucial.

5. Remember the 80-20 rule.

In social media, the goal is to engage and interact with your audience. And bombarding them with constant promotions is never the way to go. The ideal is 80% informative content and 20% promotion. Of the 20% promotions, half should be spent on soft promotions and the other half for hard promotions.

In Conclusion:

As with other marketing strategies, practice makes perfect. Perfecting the right mix for your social media marketing should always be done through trial and error and experimentation.