Planning is the key to success.
With content being easier than ever to create, social platforms are much more saturated than they used to be. The key to standing out is making sure that your posts are going up consistently and at the right time. The best way to accomplish this is to create a content calendar. With a content calendar, you can plan out in advance what is going to be posted, when it’s going to be posted and who is going to be posting it. Scheduling also helps ensure continuity of content, visibility for your brand and overall less stress for you (and your team).
Here are some of our favorite ways to create a content calendar:
- Create your own spreadsheet/calendar: Before apps were around, spreadsheets/calendars were our best friends. Google Drive and Microsoft Office, or anything similar, are really useful tools to creating and organizing your content calendar. You can plan a template for what to post on each day of the week and then fill it in weekly with the specific content that is to be posted. Take a look at some of the layouts we love below:
- Plan it out visually. Social media is a visual medium. You want to make sure that the content you are planning to post creates a visual story for your brand, especially on Instagram. These are our two favorite apps to help plan out a feed.
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- Unum: “Design Perfection For Instagram.” Available in the App Store and Google Play, Unum is an app that allows Instagram users to plan out and schedule their Instagrams. This is the perfect app for testing out different images in order to maintain a flowing theme. Consistency is key for UNUM users – never worry about your overall Insta-look with the help of UNUM.
- Planoly: “Empowering our users to tell their story visually.” Planoly is a monthly calendar that enables users to schedule Instagram posts and captions, search hashtags, manage and reply to comments, view analytics, and more. There is a paid version that grants users access to more features, however the free version is a great stepping stone. Available in the App Store and Google Play, as well as online.
- Have a system. Working in a digital field can be hard because often times there is no defined work schedule. We believe it’s really important to create one for yourself. If you define what your week will look like, you’ll know what needs to be accomplished when. For example, every Monday you plan out the posts for the following week, every Tuesday you write captions for each post and every Wednesday you schedule the posts, etc. Keeping yourself on a schedule will help you stay on top of your work load.
The best content calendar is the one that you and your team like to use. Whichever method works for you is the best one there is. Try implementing a content calendar this month and see how it affects your productivity and stress-level.
Written by our Digital Specialist, Nora Henick.
What’s your content strategy? Tweet us @somethingsocial or tag us on Instagram- @somethingsocial.
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