Download your content calendar template: http://bit.ly/1XXH8wO
One of the biggest frustrations I hear about using social media for your business or for your brand is that it takes too much time and it takes too much effort – but it is one of the most cost effective and powerful ways to marketing your business, so it kind of makes sense that you do have to put some effort it. Having said that, there are a few tricks to saving yourself time and sanity and my key is being really really organized.
I know a lot of companies and brands operate without a content calendar, but I absolutely swear by mine and I ensure that my clients are using them too to make sure they are getting out the right messages, when they need to get them out. So in this video I’m going to show you exactly how to set up an effective content calendar and a few different apps and tricks that I use to keep all of my social organized. And below this video there’s a link to download my exact template for my content calendar, so you can start using it for your business as well. So lets get started!
When it comes to getting my content organized the elements and requirements that I have to have in every brand strategy and content calendar are key events and dates, content categories, influencer outreach, launched or campaigns and key brand messages. I’ll get into all of these when I show you my content calendar. First let’s talk about key brand messages. Key brand messages are pieces of content, sales or promotions that you know you need to be promoting consistently across your social channels and you don’t want to have to think about promoting on a day to day basis. They’re not dynamic content pieces, there what I like to refer to as static content pieces, so you can bulk schedule them ahead of time. This is how to do it. Hootsuite is my social media management platform of choice. You’ll see just underneath where you compose a Tweet, there’s a little calendar that says, “schedule link”, so if you go in there you can schedule one tweet at a time or you can go to bulk message uploader. If you click on it, you can bulk schedule messages for months in advance and bulk schedule your key messages. At the bottom you can download the sample CSV file, which is the format that you have to upload your bulk schedule messages in. You can put in the date and the exact time you want to schedule the message for, add in your text, and then add in the link. It will automatically turn it into a shortlink when you upload it into the dashboard. So what I do is bulk schedule all of my YouTube videos in advance, so that I have one or two going out every week. So if I choose the file, and ensure that the format is month/day/year before you upload it, when you click submit it will show up in your scheduled posts. As you can see I have a ton of scheduled messages and they are all key brand messages that I’ve scheduled using the bulk message uploader in hootesuite. Now for the content calendar.
A few things to keep in mind; everyone is different and everyone’s platforms are different, so you can tweak this to your liking and which platforms you use most often. Also keep in mind, that I don’t plan out every single thing that I post, like I mentioned before, this is for the main messages that I know need to be out in a timely manner and things that are important to the brand or sales to be pushing on social. I do still leave a lot of room for being spontaneous for live social interactions as well. Here’s a look at my content calendar and how I lay it out. You can see that I have my main platforms here and there is where I populate the content that’s going to be going out for the week – so Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. I have my notes on the far right hand side, so that’s anything that I might forget about what’s going on that month. My categories breaks down my content into different categories to make sure that I’m not continuously posting the same things over and over again. Product is color coordinated in green, inspiration, education, any launches or campaigns that I’ve got going on, a special event or date, and when my newsletters are going out. I also have an influencers category for each week. I write down different influencers that I want to engage with, or I initiate outreach to during the week. For example, the week of November 30th I had an event that I was speaking at on Thursday evening, so I wanted to make sure that I promoted it, promoted ticket sales on Monday. I had it noted on Thursday so that I would remember to do live social interactions from the event as well on snapchat, twitter, ect. Color coded in green is the Recording for Revenue launch, that’s my product launch. That was across all social platforms and it’s bulk scheduled as well across social platforms for the next month. And the launching campaign for that on social media is running until the 17th of December. I also have an educational piece every Thursday which is a link and an article from Forbes, which I posted on Facebook and on Twitter. And then on Friday I wanted to post something fun and inspirational, so I posted a graphic to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For the rest of the month I’ll be filling that out kind of week by week, but anything that I know is coming up, I make sure that I put it in here for the month in advance. For example, I have a blab coming up with Steve Dotto on the 17th, I have my email newsletters going on every single Tuesday, and then of course any special events or dates are noted in red as well. You can also add in specific times that you want to put out content, it’s not something that I do, but if that makes you feel better you can always add that it to your content calendar as well to make sure you’re putting things out at the exact right time that you want to. The other element that I use for scheduling social media content is breaking it down day by day in smartsheet, which is an incredible tool for organizing your content. For example, this was for Monday December 1st when I was launching Recording for Revenue. I have all the different platforms, the day i’m working on, the platforms, the task name and the exact copy I’m going to be using so that it’s all in once place and I can just copy and paste it. I also have the link I’m using and then you can write down the attached media that you’re going to be including, and actually attach it here. You will see that the photo and graphic for Recording for Revenue, that I was posting to Facebook, was actually uploaded and anyone can access it, upload it and schedule it in Facebook. I also make sure that I put in the published date and time and once it’s done and checked off and scheduled, I just click done and it’s crossed off my list. Anyone on my team who’s working on it, is able to see it as well. I highly recommend using smartsheet if you’re in a team, it just makes it really easy to know what content’s been scheduled on which platform, and it also just keeps you links, and your attachments, and your graphics and videos all organized in one place.
I also use latergramme to schedule my Instagram videos and my Instagram photos and I rely on Facebook natively to schedule posts and photos and videos to my brand page. To schedule posts on Facebook you simply put in the text is that you want. You can add in your media and then you do down where it says publish, and instead of publishing right away, you go to schedule, and then schedule it.You will see that it says one scheduled post. You can go into tools, then into scheduled posts and you will see it in the que. You can then make any edits that you need to.
If it’s time to get your social organized and to save yourself a little bit of time and sanity, like I said, then make sure you download my content calendar below this video and start using it for your business! I’ve also put some other tutorials that will help you get organized when it comes to your business below this video. I’ve put links to all the websites and apps that I’ve mentioned in this tutorial. If you liked this video hit the like button below, subscribe and share it with your friends. And if you want exclusive tips and tricks that I only share in email, make sure that you subscribe to my weekly emails, the link is below this video.
Download your content calendar template: http://bit.ly/1XXH8wO
Hootsuite: https://hootsuite.com
Smartsheet: https://www.smartsheet.com
Latergramme Tutorial: https://youtu.be/dCvaNGn2Hgw
My fav productivity tools and apps: https://youtu.be/H7izYDcByxs
[x_share title=”Share this Post” facebook=”true” twitter=”true”]