Countless businesses have taken to social media to promote their products. What started out as casual photo sharing and messaging has completely transformed into an incredibly powerful platform for influencing consumers. But, if you want to be noticed, your content must stand out. Planning social media content can make this process easier.
Scheduling Content
The first step to scheduling your social media content is creating a content calendar.
A content calendar is a calendar filled in with potential social media posts. Once filled out, it will allow you to see an overview of your social media posts and help you keep track of your overall message strategy.
Using content scheduling tools such as CoSchedule, Sprout, Feedly, Airtable or Planoly can make this process even easier.
Content calendars help you stay organized and maintain consistency in your content creation and posting. It can also aid in determining how to engage your audience. Seeing an overview of your posts can help you brainstorm new ideas based on the performances of older posts.
What to Include
When setting up your content calendar, you should include these basic elements:
- The social media platform where the post will be published
- Dates and times your post will go live
- The post’s content (copy, photos, captions, hashtags, etc.)
- Type of post (i.e., Instagram feed vs Instagram story)
- The person assigned to the post
- Link to published post
Although these are a few key elements needed in a content calendar, you can add as much information as you want. You should customize your calendar to fit your business’ specific needs and overall social media strategy.
Creating Posts
Before you start filling in your calendar, do some research. Think about the overall brand strategy and figure out who you are trying to reach, what type of content best appeals to them, what platform is the best vehicle for this content and how you want the user to engage with the content.
The goal when utilizing social media is to create audience engagement. Understanding the different features of each platform is key to creating a strong social media presence.
Social media platforms organize their audience’s feed through algorithms and each one focuses on different metrics. For example, while Tweets are sorted by time posted and relevance to the user, Facebook focuses on meaningful interactions. It is important that you understand how each social media platform prioritizes content.
Need Help Getting Started?
Although planning social media content may seem fun and easy at first, it can be hard to get started.
1893 Brand Studio can help you build your social media presence. Whether you need help with caption development or creating digital content, our experienced staff can help optimize your social media strategy to best tell your brand’s story.
