A content calendar (also known as an “editorial calendar”) is a schedule displaying when you plan to publish your social media content (what day, what time etc.) Content calendars typically include upcoming content pieces, status updates, planned activities like promotions or sponsored posts, partnerships, and updates to any existing content.
There are many benefits to content calendars such as:
- At surface level, content calendars are made to help you stay organized. You save time by planning ahead.
- It encourages you to be more consistent with your social media posing. It makes you stay on top of things so that you don’t forget to post.
- They help you make sure that posts are timed accurately.
- With the option of sharing the calendar with your organisation, it makes social media creation more collaborative. It’s helpful to collaborate with different people to create an optimized plan.
- It helps you understand your customers better by noticing patterns, are there posts that do better on certain days? Any particular content ideas that are better received than others? This will help you further optimize your strategy and determine what content is more engaging.
- A content calendar lets you look at the big picture when it comes to social media content planning. You’re not just looking at individual posts, you’re looking at it as a whole which will help you visualize ideas better and organize them in a way that’s easier to execute.
Even if you’re confused on why you posted something a couple months ago, a content calendar allows you to go back and see the thought process and idea you had behind posting that particular post which gives you so much more perspective!
A great content calendar should include the following:
- Topics with an assigned person
- List what topics are priority and should be executed first
- Clear assigned roles for editor, writer, scheduler etc,
- List (and links) to channels the content will be posted o
Airtable is a great example of an application that you can use for content calendars. It is user friendly and easily accessible. Here is an example of a content calendar that we use for Digital Practice and as you can see, it’s really straightforward!
A couple last words:
When planning content, don’t be afraid to repurpose content and schedule it across different social media platforms to get the most out of it. When deciding where to post what content, also consider what types of content perform well on that platform.
So what are you waiting for? Go get that content calendar!
ABOUT DIGITAL PRACTICE
Led by Marketing expert, Muireann Fitzmaurice, DigitalPractice.ie is a social media agency that create branded social media content for professional practice owners. It is a subscription service that provides physiotherapy-based content to the practice owner on a monthly basis that can be used on all social media channels. Saving you time and headspace each month to concentrate on other areas of the business.
