Content Calendar Aids In Optimizing Your Marketing Strategy

Everybody uses social media. What seems like a blanket statement rings true once you consider that 78% of the U.S. population now has a social media account. Not surprisingly, 90% of marketers consider the medium an important part of their strategy.

Of course, simply engaging in social media marketing does not lead to automatic success. Too often, especially smaller businesses fail to see results from their efforts because they don’t approach it strategically. Running a business Facebook page or Twitter account, as it turns out, comes with significant differences compared to a personal presence on the same network.

That’s where a content calendar comes into play. If you can plan out your efforts ahead of time, you increase your chances of actually growing your brand awareness and customer base through social media.

Strategizing Your Efforts

Especially if you are looking to promote your brand on multiple social media outlets, you don’t want to push all your resources into one channel while neglecting the other. A content calendar can help you make sure that your messages make sense both within a single network and across platforms.

But the strategy benefits of this tool go beyond managing multiple networks. In fact, you can also use it to ensure a good balance of posts. Your audience probably doesn’t want to see a deluge of links to your website; instead, they need varied updates, from videos to images, that keeps them engaged.

You also need to keep a balance of interesting and promotional content, ensuring that your marketing efforts remain relevant to your audience. Through a content calendar, you can monitor your individual posts to keep that balance.

Getting the Timing Right

In marketing your business on social media, timing is crucial. You need to make sure that you get two variables right: how often you post, and what time of day is most effective.

A number of studies suggest that posting more often on your preferred social media networks will lead to increased audience engagement and marketing success. Twitter, for example, is most successful with 3 updates per day, while your Facebook page can benefit from 2 daily posts.

In addition, day of the week and time of of your posts also matters. Through a content calendar, you can plan out your content so that the most important updates will be seen by the biggest possible audience, without neglecting other, less impactful time slots.

Distributing Workflow

Finally, this tool can be a significant time saver for your business and marketing team. Think about it: every time you have to post an update, you need to spend some time thinking about the topic, coming up with the right wording, and doing at least some research to determine validity.

If you can plan and schedule your posts ahead of time with a content calendar, on the other hand, you can block out a time period that allows you to get at least some of the required content out of the way. You still want to check in regularly for time-sensitive points, but the pressure to put out multiple posts every single day subsides.

Building Your Content Calendar

In short, a content calendar can and should play a major part in planning and executing your social media marketing strategy. If you don’t know where to start, HubSpot’s template can give you an outline that’s easy to follow and improves your efforts almost instantly.

Of course, even with the best content calendar in place, you still need the resources and expertise to actually write the content and execute your strategy. For help in that regard, as well as more information and tips to optimize your social media marketing, contact us.