Did you know that you could improve your conversions simply by posting on social media? However, in addition to knowing what you should post, you also need to know when to post it. Coming up with a calendar for your social media content can help you do just that.
Creating a social media calendar is a pretty simple task. That is, it’s easy to throw a bunch of content together and post it across different channels. But if you want to create a winning social media calendar, there are a few things that you need to consider.
This post will walk you through important aspects of designing a social media calendar. With these elements in mind, you can create and schedule posts that attract and convert your target audience.
Develop A Brand Voice For Your Posts
Your message is the most important aspect of any post. Your business’ social media page(s) should, therefore, reflect that.
First of all, it’s vital that you have an overarching message that you want to communicate. This message must hit the mark, too – it has to at least awaken interest in your target audience, for example. It should also be refined down to what you are actually trying to accomplish with the post. If you’re marketing to existing customers, it should effectively promote a new product or an upsell, for instance.
Plan your social media calendar so that you have, in essence, created a funnel that will guide your target audience to the specific actions that you want them to take over a period of time.
- whitesession / Pixabay
Choose Images that Add Value
Don’t just throw in a nice image to finish off a post. Each post image is valuable real estate that should never be wasted. Images get 2.3 times more engagement on Facebook, for example.
Choose images that complement your post text. Whenever possible, use images that show parts of people, ideally interacting with a product. And make sure that your images are clear, bright, lively, and original.
Better, yet, add images that include text to expand your message. Most platforms have a standard character count that works best, so if your message is longer than that, you can use images to incorporate your CTA or add details on features and benefits.
Post in the Right Places
Before you go planning a social media calendar that covers every single platform out there, you need to know which ones are the best for your business.
Generally speaking, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are the top platforms for business overall. They each receive a great amount of traffic as compared to other platforms. They have also invested in improvements to their marketing tools.
But again, you have to step it up if you want your posts to perform better. There will always be one or two platforms that will work wonderfully for you based on your target audience. This is because each platform has its own culture, and so do your ideal customers. You will get more bang for your buck and your efforts by starting with the platforms that hold the most potential for your outreach and marketing.
- LoboStudioHamburg / Pixabay
Know the Right Timing
Every social media platform has recommended posting times based on comprehensive user statistics. Sprout Social created this neat report on the best times to post in 2020. It’s a great place to start if you haven’t defined your audience yet, or you haven’t done any specific research.
General posting time are not enough, however, to maximize your impact. You need to know the exact times when your ideal audience is most actively engaged on your chosen channels. Facebook Pixel can help you track purchases made, for instance, at certain time of the day and days of the week. You can also use different platforms’ analytics like Twitter audience insights to help you test and tweak until you find your niche sweet spot.
Be Consistent
No matter which platforms you’re using, you need to populate your social media calendar with regular content. Consistency will always help to increase likes, subscribers, and shares. No matter what your key performance indicators are, posting regularly is important both in social media algorithms and to your audience.
Consistency promotes engagement. Showing up in your audience’s feed at set times helps them know where to find you. It also establishes your reliability and encourages trust in your brand. This increases engagement. In turn, impressive engagement increases your organic reach, and, therefore, your potential customer base. It then follows that as you have more followers, your brand ranks even higher.
More followers also means a greater opportunity to make genuine connections with a growing audience and increase conversions with valuable content.
- crystal710 / Pixabay
Plan in Advance
You need to populate your social media calendar with well thought out posts ahead of time. Don’t ever just wing it. Planning allows you to post consistently great content, no matter what’s going on in your business.
People are harder to please today. More than ever before, you need to bring the value every day or you risk losing followers fast. Some people might forgive a couple of misses. But really, why would you want to sacrifice your momentum? Most people expect to be wowed at every step. If you fail even once, you can lose them.
Track Your Posts
Tracking any activity that has to do with customers should be a top priority for your business. Customers are the be-all and end-all of any business. You should love them more than your product, and love serving them more than you love serving them pitches.
Depending on which platform you’re focused on, there will always be a way to keep track of your posts to see how much engagement you got and how well they converted. This information allows you to make adjustments to increase both and create better posts moving forward.
Final Thoughts
Your social media calendar will require a decent amount of attention. That is, if you want your social media efforts to yield profitable results. But it doesn’t have to take up enormous chunks of your days to put together a good basic structure.
You can Google a free template to start you off, then apply the tips provided here to create a solid baseline. Then, you can simply build up your assets as you go along. Eventually, you will have a nice collection of material to reuse and repurpose with just a few tweaks here and there.