Social Media Marketing helps businesses to connect and communicate with customers, collaborators and followers on a regular and frequent basis. For managing multiple social media posts of diverse brands, a scheduled calendar with allocated dates and posts is created. The scheduled format of social media posts is collectively called a Social Media Marketing Calendar. This blog will analyze strategies, common mistakes, and benefits of creating an effective social media marketing calendar.
Strategies for creating an effective social media marketing calendar
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Identifying suitable social media platforms
The primary step to creating an effective social media marketing calendar involves in identifying suitable social media channels. Different formats like image posts, reels, infographics, and blogs are suitable for different social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Medium. A good digital marketing company in Orlando would identify suitable social media channels for promoting brands through different posts, videos, and blogs. Based on the frequency of customer engagement in different posts across particular social media channels would help in creating an effective social media marketing calendar.
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Determining the audience for each social media platform
Audiences in different social media platforms tend to be different in terms of browsing behavior and buying preferences. As of March 2024, about 45.5% of social media users in the USA preferred Facebook, while 21.2% browsed Pinterest and 14.13% used Instagram. Twitter had 10.13% engagement and YouTube received only 2.8% user involvement. To maintain brand competency in US markets, an effective social media marketing calendar will mainly need to schedule content for Facebook, followed by Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.
(Source: Statista.com, 2024)
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Maintaining a consistent posting schedule
Consistency is the key to attracting audiences across different social media platforms. An effective social media marketing company in Orlando will create a social media marketing calendar as per audience engagement patterns. As identified before, brand marketing in the USA would need to prioritize Facebook and Pinterest content scheduling per day or per week as per user engagement. An effective social media marketing calendar will need to list Facebook postings at the top, followed by Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter.
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Using Google Sheets to create a social media marketing calendar
Google Sheets help social media marketers list each posting in different tabs as per date, timing, content, and marketing targets. The main benefit of Google Sheets over MS Excel Spreadsheets lies in its easy document saving facility within Google Drive. Users can easily access and edit sheets without the risk of losing files upon a hard disk crash in the case of MS Excel spreadsheets. Google Sheets also provide the benefits of direct sharing access with other online users and teams, and thereby multiple entries in a social media calendar can be easily made.
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Developing a social media calendar template
Maintaining a template is necessary for developing a social media calendar. An efficient digital marketing company in Orlando will develop a calendar by including the following
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Social media channels
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Date and Time
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Frequency of posting in each network
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Including taglines, hashtags, and ULS
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Including Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
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Color coordinated labels for marking the progress of content
Common mistakes done while creating a social media marketing calendar
Not maintaining flexibility: Social media is a dynamic platform and marketers will need to adapt different trends and current events. An effective social media marketing calendar will need to have space for inputting spontaneous posts in case of sudden event occurrences.
Ignoring audience interaction: Audience interactions in social media are necessary for understanding which social media channels are needed to be prioritized for content creation. If audience interaction is ignored, then brands may face gaps in developing their content as per consumer needs.
Benefits of creating a social media marketing calendar
Centralizing content planning: A social media marketing calendar allows marketers to develop promotional content as per targeted date, time and KPI. Social media marketers will be able to run campaigns in less time and develop more marketing contents within a shorter time frame.
Improve engagement with audience: An effective social media marketing calendar helps businesses to interact with audiences in mostly visited networks. A social media marketing company in Orlando will schedule marketing contents as per audience interests and interactions in particular posts. By creating a well-structured social media calendar changing trends and preferences of the audience are observed, based on which a brand can create its posting frequency.
In Conclusion
Strategies for creating an effective social media marketing calendar are simple but needs a skillful engagement for scheduling posts as per audience and market needs. For maximizing business reach, social media calendar reviews audience engagement frequency and schedules content as per existing and upcoming trends. Even if scheduling social media posts will require some time, higher audience engagement will always be worth it.