Has it happened to you that you don’t know what to post on your social networks? Or have you invested too much time waiting for ideas to arrive? This has a solution! A social media editorial calendar can solve all your problems.
We tell you how to make an editorial calendar for planning your social networks like an expert.
What is a social media editorial calendar?
Let’s start by defining what we mean by the editorial calendar of social networks.
The editorial calendar for social networks is the planning and guide to tell us what, who, where, and when to publish. It will be our roadmap, a frame of reference to follow when we prepare to create and publish content.
It is very important within our content marketing strategy. In the editorial calendar of social networks, you will have all the strategies of your social platforms. At first, it may seem like a big investment of time, but later you will see that it has been worth it.
6 Reasons to have an Editorial Calendar
Here are some reasons you’ll want to use an editorial calendar to plan your social media posts. This planning can be as straightforward or as elaborate as you need it to be.
1. Time savings
Your goals and marketing agenda require effort and a lot of work. If you organize yourself and plan, you can prioritize your activities and focus on a few things at a time.
By being more organized, you can save time to invest in the rest of your tasks.
2. Constant posts
If you have strategies within social networks, you are interested in increasing interaction with your audience and, in the same way, attracting more attention to your specific objectives.
This means that there is a large amount of content and publications. With the help of the social media editorial calendar, you will be able to have greater control and consistency.
Some tools allow you to schedule your posts in advance if you need to post daily, like Hootsuite, Buffer, Later, Onlypult, and many more.
3. Less errors
If you plan your posts, it’s much easier to spot typos commonly made when writing a post that still needs to be prepared. In addition, you have more tools that you can use to review the content.
With Onlypult, you can schedule your posts and manage multiple accounts. In addition to that, you can monitor your brand and your competitors.
4. Presence on important dates
A social media editorial calendar keeps you in mind important events and dates relevant to your business and your audience. This way, you will be present at all appropriate moments.
5. Time to create more strategies
Once you have the planning of your publications, you will have more availability to plan the rest of your brand strategies.
6. Higher-quality content
Finally, mention that if you avoid creating last-minute posts, you can offer your audience better content quality. And you will also continue working to make your brand stronger.
What should your social media editorial calendar contain?
Before preparing the publication calendar for your social networks, you must know the most important data you must include in your editorial calendar. Let’s find out:
- Date and time of publication: Find the most opportune moment to make a publication in your social networks.
- Publication media: On which platforms will the publications be made? Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
- Copy: The publication’s content is adapted to each social network’s formats that generate interaction and comments.
- Visual aids: These can be images—photographs, videos, infographics, gifts, etc.
- Responsible: Know who should publish it in case several people are in charge.
- Call to action, hashtags, and links: Be clear about all the supports accompanying the publication.
- Comments: Annotations that must be taken into account.
How to plan the publications of your social networks?
It would be best to combine strategy with creativity when making the editorial calendar for social networks. Let’s get started!
Analyze social networks
Review your social networks but also the competition. Identify which social networks are working best, the frequency with which it is published, the content, and which publications stand out the most.
This way, you will know your evolution, the things you can improve, and the practices you can continue using.
Choose your social networks
Having a presence on social platforms does not mean publishing without control over each. You must choose them carefully according to the type of content you will publish, especially in the channels where your target audience is.
Select your template
Choose your template or design your scheme to plan your posts. It does not have to be a very elaborate format; a document where you can have everything organized in rows and columns is enough. The most important thing is that it suits your needs.
Many templates, even free ones, will make this job easier for you, and you will only have to fill them in with your information.
Define your work pace
Once you have all of the above ready, it’s time to set your work pace. In this way, you will set the standard for the frequency of publication on your social networks.
If multiple people are involved, and approvals are needed, you can set up the communication flow between them.
Tools to create a content calendar
There are many ways to create an editorial calendar. For some people, it is more comfortable to use a traditional calendar, Excel, or a spreadsheet, like this example, that gathers the essential data to organize and control your editorial calendar.
There are also digital tools that are very useful for creating editorial calendars, such as Airtable and CoShedule, with different payment plans. Airtable is a tool with fully customizable spreadsheet characteristics and adaptable to your needs.
With this tool, you can add fields for attachments, long text notes, checkboxes, links, and even barcodes and generate views designed for different uses.
CoSchedule is an online tool that helps you manage your social media editorial calendar. You’ll also be able to stay focused, deliver projects on time, and keep your entire marketing team happy.
On the other hand, there are also free-to-use tools with many functionalities, such as Asana or Trello. The objective of both devices is to help you organize since they allow you to manage, supervise, share tasks, and assign activities.
Summary
You can make your own social media editorial calendar now that you know that. It is a very important tool within the content marketing strategy.