- Wondering how to use a social media content calendar?
In this video, I will show you how to set one up
as well as why it will save you time
and get you better results in the long run.
Alright, lets get into it.
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My name is Jerry Potter, and I gotta tell you the truth.
Whenever I suggest using a social media content calendar
to clients, about 90% of the time they say,
"Well that seems like more work, and it'll waste more time."
But, the truth is, if you use one the right way,
it will save you time and frustration.
One, because you will be planning things ahead of time,
so you're not doing guilt posting where you're going,
"Oh, I haven't posted in four days,
I gotta get something up," and two, you'll have
a more balanced strategy because you'll see everything
upcoming at once, and that will improve your results.
So, to setup a social media content calendar,
you have to answer three questions.
One, what social networks am I going to post on?
And, when you're answering this, also factor in
if you're going to send out an email to your list,
or post on your blog, or anything like that.
Is it gonna be Facebook and Instagram?
Is it gonna be Twitter and YouTube?
It is gonna be your blog and Facebook?
If you're not fully decided on what social networks
you're gonna focus on for your business,
I've developed a technique I call the Five Dollar Method
for choosing your social networks, and you can get the link
to that in the description of this video.
Second question to ask: how often will you post?
And, it might be different on different networks.
Like, you might post on Facebook three times a week,
and if you use Twitter 21 times a week,
and YouTube once a week, and you might email
your email list every other week.
Whatever it might be, you've gotta decide
what that's going to be.
Another resource for you if you'd like help
deciding how often to post on certain social networks,
I'll link those up in the description of this video as well.
And, the third question to answer before setting up
your social media content calendar is when will you post?
I get asked this question probably more than
any other question, and I have the worst answer for it
because the answer is always, "It depends."
And, if you're looking for the answer
like 2.47 times a week, "It depends"
is a really annoying answer, but it does.
It depends on your audience, your brand,
all those things, you know that.
But, if you need a starting point,
try and post when you think the majority
of your audience is active and online.
If your post on any social network gets lots of engagement
in that first hour or two, that will help you
reach more people in the long run.
Obviously, you wanna factor in what time of day
makes the most sense for your product.
If you're promoting breakfast,
then three or four p.m., probably not the ideal time.
And, one more thing to consider is
what's the goal of your post?
If you're just hoping to get some quick likes and shares,
then maybe any time of day is okay, but if you're looking
for longer comments, like feedback on something
or sharing a quick story, you might consider doing it
when you think people will have more time,
like in the evenings or on their lunch hour.
Once you've answered those three questions,
you're ready to fill out your social media content calendar.
I've made one in Google Docs that you are free to take,
make a copy of it, and use it for yourself,
but no matter what you use for your calendar,
I'll show you how to fill this one out,
and those same things will apply to your calendar as well.
So, if you're using this template that I've provided
in Google Docs, the first thing you wanna do
is come up here to the file menu, choose make a copy,
you can name it whatever you want,
decide where you want to save it on your Google Drive
or Google Docs, which is free by the way, if you don't have
Google Docs or Google Drive, and that way you can edit
because the one that I'm providing you is a view-only,
but once you make a copy, you can do whatever you want
with it, so first thing you would do, come in here,
obviously is just set it up,
so let's just call this August for the heck of it.
This box here I like to use to keep
frequently used hashtags, so if you have hashtags
you use over and over again for your brand,
if you paste them there, that way when you're scheduling
later, you can just copy and paste them from this box.
These are just instructions showing you
what I just showed you, but they're there for reference.
Then, you wanna go through and figure out what days
of the week the month started on, so just for ease,
I'm just gonna keep it at one, but let's go ahead
and set the dates so they're right, and then
over here on the left, we've got Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest,
website is just your website, and YouTube,
and what I would do first is go ahead and delete anything
that your brand is not gonna use.
Earlier in the video, we talked about deciding
which networks you're going to post on,
so everything is kind of here to start.
For simplicity's sake, let's say this is a company
that only posts on Facebook and Instagram,
so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click over here
at the left side of this row, and I'm gonna get rid
of all of these rows that I no longer need.
So, everything but Facebook and Instagram,
and I right click, delete selected rows,
and now they're gone, so I strongly encourage you,
I'm gonna leave the rest of the month for now,
but I strongly encourage you to go through and delete
any rows that you're not going to use,
you can also add rows, for example, you may want
a different row for Instagram stories because that might
be different content, you also may want a different row
for something like your email marketing.
Last thing I like to do before I actually start
laying out posts is go through and just put anything
that is on a hard date, so for example, if you know
that on this day, your anniversary sale begins,
I've left that little white box there at the top
for you to just kind of type that in,
and anything else that you might definitely post about
at a certain time, for example,
maybe this is National Taco Day, and you love tacos,
you definitely wanna post about National Taco Day.
Now, you're ready to decide what you're gonna start posting.
There's a couple ways to do this, in the beginning,
I would suggest just going through and writing
when you're going to post first,
just to kind of get a layout for it.
Eventually, you won't feel like you need to do this anymore,
and maybe you don't need to do it right now, but,
so if I'm gonna post, let's say, three times a week
on Facebook, I'm gonna go ahead and just put those
in a post on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday,
and then the following week, I'm gonna go ahead and post
on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for example,
so I just like to be able to see those, and then maybe
Instagram, I post everyday, but maybe I post a video
one day, and an image the next day,
so I would do photo post, and then the alternating days
I do video posts, so I'm just copying and pasting
these in to the cells just so I can see them,
so now I know that's what I need to go through
and accomplish, so then I'll put in anything
that seems easy, for example, our anniversary sale
begins right here, so this post is absolutely going to be
about the anniversary sale, and then this I might change
to video about anniversary sale.
Then, I'm gonna post about National Taco Day, it looks like,
another nice thing about using the Google Docs
for your calendar is you'll notice when it became too long
for one line, it automatically extended it,
so you can put stuff in here as long as you want.
So, you go ahead and fill this out.
One more thing I wanna show you that's really cool
about Google Docs is let's say, here, I was gonna do
a blog post, you can have your title in there,
and then up here you can click link, and then
you can paste in the link to your blog post,
so then once you've got it all laid out,
if somebody else, for example, is coming through
and they're like, "Oh, where do I find this blog post?"
the link is already there, so that's just another
great reason to use Google Docs for your content calender.
Alright, want that calendar, so you can
copy it for your own business?
Just go down to the description of this video,
grab the link there, and, of course,
building a social media content calendar
is part of a marketing plan,
but it's certainly not the whole thing.
In our online master class, I teach
frustrated business owners how to build
a social media marketing plan the same way
that I do for my agency clients,
so if you'd like more information on that,
you can go to fiveminutesocialmedia.com/masterclass,
or get that link in the description of this video.
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