What Is a Social Media Calendar and Why Your Business Needs One

Social media marketing can be a hard nut to crack, especially when you first start trying. What really helps is organising your activities from the beginning. The most useful tool for this is a social media content calendar to guide everything you do on social media. Luckily, we’ve got a social media calendar template to help you get started. You can download your free template here. 

Read on to find out more about this template and why you need to start using a social media content calendar.

What is a social media calendar?

A social media content calendar is like a roadmap for all the content you want to share on social media. When done well, it will tell you, or whoever is in charge of your social media, what to post, where to post it, and when to post it. This helps to streamline your marketing and makes sure content is always going out.

You can map out a social media calendar in a simple table, a spreadsheet, or even an actual calendar. And you can plan for the week ahead, the month, or even further. But make sure you occasionally revisit your strategy and your calendar if you do plan it in the long-term.

Why do you need a social media calendar?

Social media marketing can be extremely time-consuming when not managed properly. If you’re always having to think of what to post each day, then you’ll end up wasting a lot of time that could be spent on other productive tasks. You’ll probably end up becoming frustrated with social media as well.

This is where a social media content calendar comes in. Here are just a few of the reasons you should get one for your business:

It allows you to automate

One of the ways you can save time on social media is by automating some (but not all!) of your posts. This means that content is always going out, even if you take a break or are too busy with other tasks. When you plan out your content in advance, you can use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to schedule posts to go out at specific times of day.

Anyone can follow it

You don’t have to be responsible for every aspect of your business. If you outsource your social media to someone else or bring on a new employee to take the reins, then they can keep posting the right content at the right times by following your content calendar. This way, you can focus on other things knowing that your social media is in good hands.

Maintains consistency

Consistency is one of the most important factors in succeeding in social media marketing. By putting out content on a regular basis, you grow awareness and engagement levels with your brand. Creating and sticking to a content calendar helps you to maintain this consistency even during busy periods.