There are interesting trends in today’s workforce, as www.workforce.com reports:
”…the quiet flip side of the jobless recovery. Call it the “work-more economy.” Many workers are taking on extra responsibilities and in some cases doing two jobs for the price of one.”
For a business owner, manager, or employee responsible for upkeep on a company’s social media strategy, this is not good news. There are great benefits to developing and maintaining an engaging social media profile for your company, and when this suffers so can your bottom line.
Forbes lists ten benefits of social media marketing, the top three of which include Brand Recognition, Community and Repeat Exposure. It can keep you top of mind with customers, help you gain new customers and turn regular customers into brand champions. And not having a plan can leave your company behind.
With all the stresses and responsibilities of today’s workforce, how can one keep up with it all?
Simple. Develop a calendar.
The Editorial Calendar
Editorial Calendars are nothing new; they’ve been around as long as the newspaper, helping publishing companies develop, plan and strategize their upcoming issues.
With the increasing popularity of blogging, their use expanded into the digital realm. This is something we utilize at BrandQuery for ourselves and for clients. I am also in the process of developing an editorial calendar for my personal blog to ease the burden of planning content. (Don’t ask me why I haven’t done this previously; I will not have an answer.)
More recently, a new form of Editorial Calendar has taken off: that for short-form content. Businesses and organizations use these to plan and implement their social media strategies on sites like Facebook and Twitter.
We generally refer to these short-form calendars as simply Social Media Calendars, but in truth they are nothing more than your standard Editorial Calendar.
So… what are the benefits?
5 Benefits of Social Media Calendars
The social media calendar should be a general framework outlining what you will post and when. There are several benefits to planning ahead and creating a calendar, as you’ll see below.
1. Planning ahead will save you time.
If you’ve ever spent 15 or 20 minutes trying to rake your brain for something to post, this is for you.
Putting together a social media calendar for the month shouldn’t take all day. Spending thirty minutes to an hour just before the start of the month mapping out what you will post over the next thirty-or-so days will help lead your social media strategy to success, and it will save you a considerable amount of time in the process.
And saved time means greater efficiency.
Calendars I create often include themes followed by a descriptor of what that day’s themed item will include. Toward the end of the month, the specifics may include a simple “TBD” that can be filled in as ideas are generated.
An example of this is the new weekly “Around the Office Photo” themed post that launched on BrandQuery’s Facebook News Feed late last month.
The entry for today’s themed post: “Around the Office Photo – BrandQuery Logo Wall.” I posted the image to Twitter this morning and you’ll find it on Facebook later this afternoon.
2. Calendars allow you to map out a diverse plan.
Diversity in your social media posts keeps your feed interesting and dynamic. Developing a calendar facilitates mixing things up as you can visually see it in front of you and map posts out accordingly.
I try to stagger types of posts, changing what consecutive posts will include (i.e. text only or questions, shared links, photos).
This will also help you organize your thoughts.
Remember, your calendar should be a living and breathing item with the flexibility to change and morph on a moment’s notice. It’s more a multi-purpose tool to optimize your engagement rather than a strict policy that must be followed no matter what.
Helpful tip: use a physical, printed calendar and write on it with pencil. This will allow you to make edits as time goes by.
3. Calendars keep you on track during busy times.
At the beginning of this post, I noted a growing trend in today’s workforce: the “work-more economy.” Having a calendar readily available will not only assist in improving your productivity by saving you time over the long-run, it will also keep you active when things get really busy.
Tools like Hootsuite allow you to schedule posts to go live in the future on sites like Twitter and Facebook. If you prefer working within the Facebook platform, Pages also have scheduling functionality. Should things get busy around the office, taking a few minutes to schedule your posts for the next few days will keep your plan on track.
Just don’t forget to monitor the engagement (which brings us to #4)…
4. Planning ahead allows you to focus more on engagement and testing.
Because having a solid, mapped-out and visual plan in place will save you time and keep you on track, you can focus more of your energy on optimizing your plan. This includes developing a system of testing the day and time during which certain types of posts work best.
It also frees you up to focus more on insights, reports and analytics.
5. Calendars can make social media more than a one-person game.
If you are a lone individual who manages your company’s Page, perhaps one of the greatest benefits is that a calendar allows you to share the burden. At BrandQuery, I found this especially useful. I show our calendar to fellow co-workers, which often leads to a familiar phrase: “Oh, what about…”
Soon those TBDs are erased, ideas are added, and your calendar is full.
Renew Your Strategy
Of course, a Social Media Calendar is nothing without a solid strategy to get it started. At BrandQuery, we assist companies in developing their social media and content strategies to successfully engage and communicate with their audience in the social media platform that best makes sense.
Because your Calendar keeps you on track, saves you time and allows you to focus more on engagement, you can hone in on what works for your business and what doesn’t. The result is a renewed emphasis on ensuring your strategy is a winner, adjusting it as needed, and monitoring/measuring its success.