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TOP TIPS AND TRICKS FOR CREATING CONTENT CALENDARS

February 10, 2021

Creating social media content calendars has become part of the day-to-day activities for communications firms, as clients seek to reach their target audience through a variety of other means in addition to traditional mediums. It’s one of the most visually engaging aspects of our job, scrolling through squares and squares of gorgeous travel content, but sometimes it can be a tad overwhelming too. How to pick one piece of user generated content over another? Is it relevant? Will it perform well? We’ve listed our top tips for making a content calendar as seamless as possible.

  • Plan, plan, plan. This might seem obvious but using the calendar year as a starting point for any content calendar is key. It provides a basic structure for the content and makes sure you’re hitting those key dates and staying relevant. For example, Valentine’s Day on 14th Most clients will have some sort of romantic offering they’ll want to promote. There are lots of tools out there that will help you streamline your content and make it relevant such as Year Ahead, a platform that pulls together National Days, public holidays and other key dates for the diary.
  • Create a template. Again, it’s simple, but effective. It doesn’t need to be earth shattering or use a fancy software. A simple excel document with different sheets for each social media channel allows you view your content with ease and compare the copy and assets between channels. For a nifty trick Alt+Enter lets you start typing on a new line.
  • Choosing your content. Often, you’ll be creating calendars with user generated content (UGC). It can be difficult to know how to choose one image over another. The best thing to do is to ask yourself if you would like the post. Does it engage you? Is it inspirational? Does it make you wish you were there? Has it already achieved high engagement? If the answer is yes, then it is likely the content will perform well.
  • Scheduling your content is an easy way to ensure a post is never missed. There are great tools you can use such as Hootsuite or SkedSocial, that also offer helpful insights on when the best time to post is and when your audience is most active to maximise engagement.
  • Be flexible. While planning is key, updating and reviewing your content calendars is also essential. You never know what is going to hit the headlines that could suddenly make your content sound off-key and tone deaf. We can all think of those posts we’ve seen that make us inwardly cringe.
  • Calling for backup! Having a bank of evergreen content that you can roll out at a moment’s notice is no bad thing. Most clients will want to be posting every day to make sure they are constantly in their audience’s newsfeed. Sometimes you’ll be waiting for content to be signed off or created which can create delays and gaps in your posting schedule. A bank of content helps avoid that and keeps that gorgeous (and relevant) content rolling out.