If you’re reading this, you are already pulling your hair out handling social media accounts of multiple clients, reaching your deadlines, creating awesome content and STILL facing heat from clients for missing important dates and your management for not doing your job well!
So what on earth is going on?
You, my friend, are suffering from a severe case of ‘Disorganization’! Over 10 innocent strategists lose their sanity to this condition every month. (Random stat alert)
My team and I were diagnosed a couple of months ago.
We came to this realization when for a few months, the last week of every month felt like we were soldiers at a war front without weapons, Ryan Reynolds without his sense of humor and Thor without a hammer.
We were frustrated, angry and tired. Oh, so tired.
This went on until recently we were introduced to a magical tool called a Content Calendar!
A secret tool for the disorganized social media content strategist
Table of Contents
What is a Social Media Content Calendar?
In the most basic sense of the term, a content calendar is a document, usually a Google Spreadsheet, which schedules your monthly social media content down to its last detail. It helps you see your content for the week, day and if required, the time of day as well. It is meant to plan out all content across the different platforms which include your blog posts, videos, infographics, photos etc.
Why do you need this content calendar?
We know you have been doing this for a while now and your brain is completely capable of keeping track of things. But how fool proof is this plan?
Let me share a real-life situation with you-
We were handling social media for a patisserie which was famous for its macarons in Mangalore.
Everything was going okay until one day, it was National Macaron Day. We had no clue.
Our client messaged us the day of, and asked us what the plan was for the day. We had no clue.
This is EXACTLY WHY you need a social media content calendar. If you’re still not convinced, the following are a few reasons why, we realized content calendars were our life savers!
1 ORGANIZATION/LESS GOOF-UPS
Content Calendars are not just planning tools or documents; they are legit calendars which gives you the ability to look at your content across platforms all at once! You won’t be worried about any gaps in your campaign. The bonus is that even if you’re down with a fever, a teammate can easily take over without you having to call from your hospital bed explaining what has to be done that day.
2 IMPORTANT DATES WILL BE HIGHLIGHTED
Now you may think that ‘International Happiness Day’ is not important for your client. But trust us, friend, it is! Just to avoid last minute hassles, we include National Holidays, UN Day of Observances, Industry Specific Days and finally, fun/trivial days in the content calendar. We share these ‘days’ in advance with our clients and get a confirmation on what days they would like to celebrate on their pages.
3 THE GIFT OF TIME
Since content calendars are made a month in advance you don’t have to waste time thinking of ideas for content every day or week (depending on how you’re doing it right now). Once we have the important dates, our team sits on a client-wise brainstorming session where we plan fun engagement content, campaign ideas etc. and fill out the rest of the calendar. Once you have the calendar set, all you need to do is start writing the content. We get the entire content for the next month don’t the previous month (apart from the trending formats).
This saves us a great deal of time during the week as everything is pre-scheduled allowing us to be more creative, efficient and productive.
4 BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF YOUR TG & WHAT WORKS
Now that you have more time during the month your content calendar and its execution allows you to see what content has worked and what hasn’t, has your target audience engaged the way you hoped they would, is there anything you could have done differently or better. You will start noticing a pattern- it may be specific days when your content has performed better or a certain communication style that has worked better. When you do this and start creating a content calendar for the following month, you know EXACTLY what to duplicate from the previous month and what to run far away from.
5 EFFICIENT & EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES
Even though you keep saying ‘I work best under stress’, a content calendar will save you the last minute writers’ block and dissatisfaction! When it comes to campaigns and last minute trending format content, content calendars give you enough time to do your research, brainstorm with the team, create and execute. This will turn the ‘I need a beer. It’s been a hell of a day’ to ‘I’m done with work, wanna hang out and have a beer?’ Oh, the joy!
6 STAY SANE AND LOVE YOUR JOB
When you have a content calendar in place, you won’t find yourself pulling your hair out and having anxiety attacks when your deadlines come close or your client says ‘let’s post something on this topic tomorrow’. You won’t be digging for content; instead, you’ll find yourself making informed decisions about your next content.
Now that you know why having a content calendar is a smart call, start executing! If you don’t like Excel sheets and Google Docs, just go online and looking for free tools to create content calendars easily.
Let us know how it works out for you in the comment section!
Good luck & remember to ‘Keep Calm and Content On’!