The most notable achievements in social media marketing are always backed by a sound strategy and the help of a social media management agency—especially when it comes to its content creation. There is one simple yet essential tool that can sometimes be overlooked while planning a content strategy that, if maximised early on, can iron out the wrinkles in content planning as the campaign goes on: the content calendar. 

Simple and effective, a content calendar provides the framework for what a business plans to release across all its marketing platforms. It can also integrate content themes across all channels and gear them towards each platform’s audience. Though they are deceptively easy, maintaining an effective social media strategy with many moving parts can be a challenge for any business.

Marrying Content and Strategy

Diving into planning and figuring out how your social media strategy will reflect on the timeline seems to be the best place to start. But before doing so, it’s best to see what your current status is! 

Enlisting the help of a social media management service to do a comprehensive audit of all content across each of your platforms will give you insights on which channels are performing and which need improvement. Knowing exactly what you’re working with will allow you to anchor your content strategy on something more tangible and measurable. 

Once you know what you have and what your audience wants, you must pay close attention to their engagement level across all platforms. Every business’s audience will display a specific trend of behaviours, as each brand is unique. While there are best-case practices for social media regarding posting times and frequency, knowing your audience well will give you a more accurate picture of when and how it’s best to engage them. 

Such findings will allow you to plot your content calendar accordingly, especially according to the specific trends that your different social media platforms exhibit.

Planning and Thinking Long Term

Content calendars are extremely practical tools because they allow you to think strategically with a very minimal layout. Viewing a calendar will encourage you to think more strategically and envision where the campaign should be a month from now. You can then work backwards or forward to determine how all the content you’ll be posting will lead up to the end result as well as establish certain milestones to watch out for along the way. 

Planning specifically for each platform you’re using is absolutely critical for success. It’s never just as simple as posting the same thing on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Content calendars map out the right posts for each channel on a specific date. Perhaps Twitter needs more frequent tweets, while Instagram and Facebook perform better when posts are uploaded sparingly. The important thing is to learn your channels and plan for each accordingly. 

Bear in mind that these calendars are a framework and shouldn’t be followed to a T. Content will always move around depending on your socials’ performance, especially when it comes to impromptu live sessions and user-generated content that doesn’t follow what you’ve mapped. While you should have everything planned, be flexible, and align your strategy with how your following responds to the campaign.

Set-Up for Long-Term Success

Executing your content marketing strategy isn’t the end of it. This can also help drive the direction for your business moving forward. 

Keeping a content repository is extremely helpful for future campaigns, especially when they’re connected to the one you just ran. It can save you time and money by having content to repurpose or simply having images, videos, and written text that can be pulled from the archive if needed on the content calendar. 

To fill gaps in your calendar, content such as promotions, new product updates, and educational tidbits make for great fillers as long as they are still relevant to your audience!

Conclusion

Brand consistency gives an audience a much clearer idea of who and what they are all about. This can be achieved through the establishment of a well-structured content calendar. It ties together your entire content strategy across all platforms and allows you to work with each social media channel’s advantages and limitations. When in doubt about your content strategy, start with the social media content calendar and seek help from a professional!

Are you looking for a social media management agency in Sussex to help your business thrive in the online world? At Minotaur Digital, we are a digital marketing agency that can help with your social media management to save time, improve customer support, and increase authority on different platforms. Get in touch with us today and download our price guide!