Mark your calendar to learn how to create the perfect content calendar

With the continual surge of new content, ideas, and news emerging, it’s easy for brands and marketers to get lost in the day-to-day of overseeing multiple media accounts. When we’re all busy, things like social media publishing have a tendency of falling through the cracks. That’s why incorporating a content calendar into the process can be super helpful for keeping one organized and on top of their social media plans.

A content calendar is a written schedule of what, when, and where a brand or marketer for a brand plans to publish upcoming content. Content calendars usually include upcoming articles, status reports, promotional activity, partnerships, and pre-planned updates to existing content. And each calendar entry can include elements like the time the post is going live, where the post will be published, and what creative assets, links, and tags should be used.

So, whether you’re trying to get more eyes on an Instagram account or apply social media KPIs to the mix, a content calendar can help you post consistently, which is key to engaging social media followers all while building brand awareness. Impressive engagement increases a brand or marketer’s organic reach via the platform’s algorithm and planning consistent posts ahead of time means that you can fail-proof your workflow too. Based on best practices for posting, the goal should be 3 to 5 times per week depending on the company and industry vertical. Revising copy, fact-checking relevant information, or even vetting it with organizational stakeholders like the C-suite is a lot easier when you’re working days or weeks in advance.

To create an effective social media content calendar, follow these 6 steps:

Step 1: Create content pillars

• Determine your overall fixed brand pillars from which all your content will ladder up to. Pillars also give you a North Star to determine whether or not content fits your brand

Step 2: Look at your social media insights

• Use platform insights to find the best days, time of day, and platforms to be posting content and how often

Step 3: Work with your creative team

• Brainstorm together about the topic you want to highlight, the messaging, and look and feel of images that will be used on social

Step 4: Create a calendar utilizing all the information you’ve gathered from your content pillars and platform

• This will decide what your calendar needs to track

Step 5: Give yourself and your team enough time to create, review and schedule posts

• This will help with time management for creating awesome and consistent posts

Step 6: Start publishing and scheduling

• Now you’re ready to gather and analyze data

Once you start to push content out over a period of time and review what is and isn’t working, your time is free to answer even bigger questions. Should you do an Instagram poll? Are influencer partnerships useful for the brand? Does Twitter make sense to use any more? How many times do I post a day? Maybe it’s even time to get your brand a YouTube channel or a LinkedIn account. Whatever it is, content calendars allow you to step back and see the month holistically rather than day-to-day, so you’re able to orchestrate a good cadence and avoid repetitiveness.

Content calendars provide a lot of insights for you. And at LUDWIG+, our social media content calendars deliver relevancy, increased engagement, and growth for every brand we work with. From planning content a month out in advance to finding the type of content, format, post frequency, and time of day to post for each social platform, we have the strategic backing to help any brand’s social presence succeed.

From a marketer and brand standpoint, your time is too valuable to spend deciding what to post every single day. Asking your group of hard-working team members to drop everything for an emergency Instagram Story will not win many likes. And it’s not even guaranteed to earn engagement if it feels slipshod or pushy. But our well-planned out social media content calendars at LUDWIG+ lets you use your time wisely so you can plan for the future and focus on other aspects of your marketing strategy. To learn more about how we kick out great work with our content calendars, work with us today.