Creating a Successful Social Media Plan & Calendar

Social media is one of the go to marketing channels available today. It’s essential for any business or organization looking to expand its reach and engage with its target audience to have a web presence on these common social network channels. But it’s not simply a blind effort of content creators posting the things that they like onto their channel and seeing what sticks. The most effective social media marketers have established content strategies that allow them to release their content at optimal times for their subscribers and engages them well time and time again. By developing a clear strategy and implementing a consistent calendar, you can ensure that your social media efforts are effective and efficient.

Targets and Goals 🎯

Whenever you’re aiming to set up a winning strategy, it’s important to arrange to have goals and targets so you know where you’re going. To accomplish that, you have answer serious and HARD questions like:

• What do you hope to achieve through your social media efforts?

• Who is your target audience?

• Are you looking to increase:

  • brand awareness?
  • drive website traffic?
  • generate leads?

• How will you measure success? What metrics will you use to track your progress and determine whether your goals have been met?

• How will your goals align with your overall business objectives?

• How will you evaluate the success of your goals? How will you measure the ROI of your social media efforts and determine what worked and what didn’t?

These are not questions you’ll be able to answer immediately out of the gate and will take time to cultivate the appropriate answers. However, once you have a clear understanding of your goals, you can begin to develop a strategy that will help you achieve them with the corresponding marketing channels you believe to be valuable.

Goals and your Target Audience 👥

How do goal setting and understanding your target audience relate to each other in a social media plan?

When setting goals, it’s important to have a clear understanding of who your target audience is so that you can set goals that align with their needs, interests, and behavior. For example, if your target audience is young professionals who you want to become more aware of your brand, you’ll want to focus on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, and create content that is relevant and informative for this demographic.

What if you have multiple different target audiences?

Although this becomes more difficult, you have to consider your marketing message for each of the different targets. Instead of generalizing your message, you’ll have to set priorities on the elements most important to your business and the goals that are critical to your business today.

If your website is new, you might be trying to get your name out there and simply want to focus on driving website traffic to see how people react to your content and engage on your website.

If your website is mature, think about what you need to help it’s immediate needs like e-mail subscriptions, followers or subscribers on social channels, or tracking conversions of visitors who engage with your content

Content Calendar 📆

Once you have a clear understanding of your goals and target audience, you can begin to create a content calendar.

A content calendar is a tool that helps you plan and organize your social media content in advance.

Instead of thinking on the spot what might be helpful for your audience, you can queue up the content and launch it exactly when it’s needed to help people with their respective intentions with your content. Whether you’re helping people with beauty, cosmetics, or tips and tricks for their business, it’s good to think ahead of time what type of information you’re releasing.

Content Calendar - Best Practices

When creating your content calendar, be sure to consider the following best practices:

• Be consistent: Choose a posting schedule that you can stick to, and make sure that your content is consistent with your brand’s voice and messaging. Depending on the platform, you should determine what the appropriate timing and frequency should be for your audience.
• Be varied: Mix up the types of content that you’re posting, and use different formats (e.g. images, videos, text) to keep your audience engaged. Relying on one type of content will persecute you and some social media channels put a preference on different types of media like Instagram Reels
• Be timely: Take advantage of current events and trending topics to create timely and relevant content.
• Be interactive: Encourage your audience to engage with your content by asking questions, running polls, and responding to comments.
• Be analytical: Track your progress and analyze the performance of your social media efforts. Use this information to refine your strategy and improve your results.

This is a simple summary of the best practices, but there is information available from leaders in the industry such as Hubspot that help you get organized with their guides for Social Media and Content Calendars.

Don’t let your social media efforts fall short! Make sure to have a clear understanding of your goals and target audience, as well as a consistent approach to content creation. In the event you’ve got outstanding questions on the subject, contact EV Advisory today to learn more about how to create a winning social media plan and calendar that delivers results!