We have learnt the importance of using social media for your small business or brand, in this article. as well as a social media marketing strategy. One of the points highlighted when creating a social media marketing strategy for your business is using a content calendar.

In this article, I will take you through what a social media content calendar is, the thought process involved in creating a content calendar for your brand or business, and how you can create one for yourself. I will also share some websites with free social media content calendar templates and guides.

What is a social media content calendar?

The simplest method for organizing and planning your content on social media is to use a content calendar. Creating content at the very point of posting can be daunting, because of all the thought processes required to put up interesting, engaging, and unique content.

You won’t just miss out on the innovative social subjects and events that may be organized in advance, but your material will also be less likely to fulfil the demands of your audience.

Using a content calendar saves you from this stress because you get to have knowledge of what you want to post when you want to post it, how you want to post it, and what platforms you want to post your content.

Your social media content calendar should include

1. Scheduled date ad time of posting’
2. Platform (Facebook, LinkedIn Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, or Twitter)
3. Content pillar or theme
4. Content (Text, hashtags, and tags) and design direction (if needed)
5. Visuals (Images and videos)
6. URLs of any links required for the content

How do you plan a social media content calendar?

Now that we know what a content calendar is used for, the next thing is how to plan a social media content calendar. Below are 5 steps involved in creating a social media content calendar:

1. Outline your social media goals:

You need to know what you intend to achieve with your social media platforms before you even know what content to post. You must have a distinct understanding of your goals before drafting any plans. This will greatly impact everything about your content calendar., so it must be carefully thought out and outlined.

We all have some sort of objective in mind when we publish something on social media, but it pays to focus on this and make it much more implicit. It will be a lot simpler to create content that will assist you to reach your goals if you are clear about what you’re aiming for.

2. Think about belonging, equity, inclusion, and diversity.

You should take into account issues like diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging while planning your social schedule. Make sure your material respects and reflects the experiences and values of your audience.

Additionally, the people, perspectives, and narratives you publish on your social media platforms have to reflect both your target market and the greater community in which your company conducts business.

3. Make important decisions

There are some important decisions you need to make in your social media content calendar creation process. It is best to adequately define all of these things and write them out because they will greatly impact the calendar you create.

• Decide on your content curation strategy.
• Decide how frequently you want to post content on your platforms.
• Decide your posting times and days.
• Schedule and plan your posting sequence.

4. Create your content calendar

After putting all of these steps mentioned above in place, then you should create your content calendar. You can either outsource this to a freelance content writer or do it yourself if you don’t find it overbearing.

Even if you choose to outsource this, you will still achieve your content creation goals as long as you effectively communicate all of the processes explained above with the freelance content writer and he/she is an excellent one, you can be assured that you will get value for your money.

Free Templates

There are quite a number of websites that provides free templates and guides for creating social media content calendar. some of the tops websites are:

1. Hubspot: This is an extremely thorough and durable template. Additionally, each social network has its own tab, so if you require that, this could be the one for you.
2. Hootsite: This website also has great social media content calendar templates
3. Content Cal: This website’s social media content template is automated. You can create a personalized content calendar that spans 12 months by providing answers to questions about your goals, channels, and content types.
4. Backlinko: This website’s free content calendar template can be downloaded as an Excel or Google Sheet.
5. LocalVox: Another useful template is LocalVox, which provides a monthly overview of all your social networks on a single page.

If you carefully follow all of the information shared in this article, you are on your way to creating top-notch content for your social media platform.