In today’s world with the daily influx of new content, news and ideas, managing social media accounts can be a challenge.
Factor in the reality that it’s likely your social media manager’s daily responsibilities include more than monitoring your radio station or organization’s social platforms, and the struggle to choose what content to post, (and when), becomes real.
That’s why utilizing a well-planned content calendar is such a great social media tool.
A content calendar is a key way to plan, organize, and track social media posts. Like a traditional calendar, a social media calendar provides a big-picture view of the coming weeks and month.
Five tips to create and manage a social media content calendar:
- Choose your social media channels: Each social platform has a different demographic. Determine your target demo and focus on the best social platforms to reach it.
- Create content for each channel: It’s best to create a variety of content. Videos are popular, but images, text-based posts, infographics, testimonials are effective too. Mix it up to keep your feeds appealing. Things like holidays, events, radio station news, interviews/guests, local happenings, local news, maybe even a “week in review” make for great social posts.
- Decide what your calendar should include: To further simplify the posting process, include details such as platforms used, subject, post copy, links, hashtags, etc. on your calendar for easy reference.
- Get feedback: Once your calendar is complete, share it with your team to get their feedback and make sure you aren’t missing activities, events and special days coming up in the month.
- Track and monitor your posts: Utilizing a social media calendar is a great way to make sure you track and monitor your posts. Be intentional about checking on which posts are getting the most engagement and note it on your calendar. Use this data to more effectively plan content moving forward – knowing what content moves your audience to engage is key.
Just as each social media post should be tailor-made to fit your radio station or organization’s brand, your social media content calendar needs to match your needs as well. Customize your calendar to best fit your needs and strategy. Start with a calendar format which best suits you – a printed calendar, spreadsheet, digital calendar, or interactive dashboard.
(Contact me for details on free social media calendar templates.)
