Social Media Content Calendar:

What Every Business Needs to Implement to NOT Get Burned Out or Boring.

What is a Social Media Calendar?
If we can create a 12-month plan ahead of time with blog post ideas, the coordinating tweets and posts, the social process becomes much easier and much more interesting.

Machine Gun Style Social Media

I often see companies approach social media as a rapid-fire approach, as much as possible based on business inspiration. This style wears out your audience and they become blind to your posts.

Arrow Style Social Media

If we know what our targets are, i.e. keyword phrases we want to rank for, then creating a targeted content generation process is easy. If you know the keywords that are most important to your thought leadership, then go from that point. Stay focused and on target with every piece of content that you create.

The Blog is the Center of the Universe

Spend your time creating a well-researched, optimized, blog post and make sure all your social shares are for the blog promotion as well as other interesting posts related to what you do as a company.

How to Create a Findable Social Media Calendar

So, the trick with the content calendar is to have the site map of keywords in front of you. These keywords are the compass by which most of the content will be inspired by. If you do not have a plan for the keywords you are trying to rank for, I suggest you go back and use a tool like spyfu.com or semrush.com to explore what keyword phrases are most important for you to rank for long term.

Step One:
Create a 12-month calendar in a spreadsheet
A twelve month running calendar with a column for each month of the year.

Step Two:
Look at each month and see if there is any time of year seasonality that relates to your business. Also, add any major holidays to that monthly calendar.

Step Three:
Use HashTagify.com to choose hashtags that coordinate with the keywords from the site map or research list. It’s critical that we use these hashtags in all the social media platforms to keep your name inserted into these higher-level conversations. Google will see your effort to include your blogs etc. into the collective conversation online.

Step Four:

Create Monikers or slogans that help people look forward to your social engagement. Do this for everyday of the week. This gives your followers something to look forward to every day. Otherwise it’s just a series of posts that no one asked for but you thought was great.

Monday:
Monday Moments or Madness
(something funny or thought-provoking to start the new week)

Tuesday:
Techie Tip Tuesday

Wednesday:
Website Wednesday

Thursday:
Throwback Thursday

Friday:
Flyer Friday

These are just some ideas to consider. If you have a consistent plan for the week, creating content that matches is very easy and makes the creative process so much easier.

Step Five:

The center of your universe is the Blog. Most your weekly social media will be sharing the blog. So, we pick a topic for the blog. Then we create a graphic in Canva.com that features the concept of the blog PLUS your logo and phone number and website address ghosted in the bottom right or left of the image.

Step Six:

Create all the rest of the content based on the blog title.

So, a series of weekly tweets regarding the blog with links.

• Facebook posts that have the image from the blog and a short description that links back to the blog.
• Create a Pinterest Board for each of the concepts Monday Through Friday. Remember that Pinterest boards need to be named the key concepts we want to rank for.
• Consider creating a short video for each blog with the inspiration for the blog and any case studies regarding prior work done.
• Post image to Instagram with hashtags

Your core social media list is NOT up to you or which portals you use the most, it’s up to the prospect. You need to share your content to ALL of them and not just one or two based on personal preference.

Essential Social Media Posting List:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google +
• Youtube
• Instagram
• Snapchat Story
• Pinterest
• Linkedin (Business Page and CEO’s Profile Page)

No rapid-fire social media. Stay focused on the keywords you need to rank for and create content that reinforces your expertise in the space.

Stay focused, stay consistent and remember to have fun along the way. Your followers, fans and subscribers will thank you.