Most marketers will tell you they live and die by their content calendar. Social media marketers specifically swear by their social media calendar.

Consider content planning like meal planning - it sounds like a massive commitment, but once you’re done, you know that you’ll save time. Personally, I hate meal planning but I ALWAYS feel better when it’s done (especially when I order groceries online).

Calendars can look like a simple table in a document, or a massive dashboard that is host to dozens of feeds. Your social media content calendar can be whatever your brand needs it to be.

Why Use a Social Media Calendar

1. Save Time

Your social media efforts have one thing in common with every other task - it takes time and attention every day. Not just last minute. Every. Day. Having a calendar with your content mapped out, helps you plan ahead, batch your content, avoid multitasking and save ideas for later. Use a tool such as Buffer, Hootsuite, or Co-Schedule to batch schedule your content as well. Once you have your content planned out, you’ll stop wasting time wondering what to post each day.

2. Create Consistency

Whatever goals you have, the first advice that I give to ALL my clients is CONSISTENCY is KEY.

When you consistently show up in your audience’s feed, you increase engagement, and thus your organic reach which means you start to reach NEW eyes and NEW followers. Making those genuine connections is a key way to improve conversions on social media. You also build that necessary credibility that leads to that increased engagement and audience growth that brands care so much about (rightfully so!).

Having a well-populated social media content calendar allows you to maintain that consistency,

3. Fewer Typos

Planning ahead of time means that you can get an extra set of eyes into your workflow if it needs it. OR have time to run it all through Grammarly. Taking the time to copy-edit, fact-check, and even get that second set of eyes on it can ensure your content is in line with the overall branding and messaging from key stakeholders.

4. You Don’t Miss Things

You know those kitschy holidays (and some meaningful ones) - that are brand relevant and that have the hashtags that trend that are an easy way to get a little more reach? Yeah. Those. When you have a content calendar, you can jump on those holidays. When you have things planned out, you can also jump on things a little faster because you’re not scrambling for content. “Oh hey! This event that our audience cares about is happening! Let’s move things around..”

Where do you maintain a Content Calendar?

There are MANY tools out there that can help keep your content calendar organized. From Social Media Schedulers such as Loomly to Project management tools such as Trello, ClickUp, or Asana - there are many ways to keep your content planning organized. I personally like using a good old-fashioned Google Sheet.

Need help? Download our social media planner to get focused on your audience, your goals and to hone in on your content pillars. The first step to success with social media marketing is having an understanding of what your audience wants and what your goals are. First you get the basics, then you get the content planned.