Showing posts with label Social Media Content Calendar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social Media Content Calendar. Show all posts

Thursday, August 30, 2018

YOUR Social Media Time Management Strategy?


Time-saving social media strategies..

A strong social media following coupled with great content is a recipe for success.



But if you don’t plan on hiring a social media management company to keep up with regular updates, engage with followers and monitor analytics, it can be a very daunting task that takes up a lot of your time.

And in today’s instant-gratification-induced environment where it’s already tough to disconnect and be present in real-life moments, constantly publishing social media posts can create an even further disconnect. Which is ironic since social media has allowed the world to connect like never before.

So how can you grow your business profiles without having your head buried in your smartphone 24/7, completely disconnected from your present environment?

With the right mix of automation and real-time posts.



Automate Evergreen Content

Evergreen content has longevity, that’s why it’s important to spend time creating blog posts, or simply even social media posts, that can be shared time and time again without losing their relevance. You can easily repost the same thing on a different day or time to get more views, or you can repurpose the content by turning it into an infographic, podcast, or short video. Reposting and repurposing content gives it more visibility than only posting it once, which is a win-win. You can create great content one time but promote it multiple times, reaping the benefits of it many times over.

Fill gaps in your publishing calendar with evergreen content. This way you can ensure you appear in your follower’s feeds without having to constantly publish in real-time. Getting the right mix of automation and real-time posts is key. If users can tell that your content is automated, you’re not doing it right. For example, if you schedule a post for a specific holiday, be sure to double and triple check the scheduled date. Nothing reveals your social media insincerity faster than a "Happy Halloween" post that goes live on the wrong weekend.



Publish In Real-Time For Current Events

Company events, national holidays, and other newsworthy occasions are the perfect time to publish in real-time. Instagram and Snapchat stories have become an obsession, for both the people attending an event, and for the people watching events unfold from the comfort of their homes.

These live videos give companies an opportunity to not only get attendees engaged, but also engross a plethora of potential customers who may be enticed to attend future events, visit the company website or simply share your message on their own social media account.

Snapchat has more than 10 billion mobile videos viewed per day, and Instagram’s worldwide user growth surpasses that of Snapchat; the opportunities are abundant.




Don’t Link Multiple Accounts And Cross-Publish

You may think that linking your accounts and posting the same thing to all platforms will save you time. And while that may be true, it’s actually more beneficial to cater your posts to each of our social media platforms specifically.



Use automation apps, like Planoly or Hootsuite, that allow you to schedule unique posts to each account.

This not only makes your content more interesting, but it gives users a reason to follow you on multiple platforms. If followers see that you only post original content on Instagram, for example, and you cross-publish those same Instagram photos to Twitter, why would they follow your Twitter account? You haven’t given them a reason to.

Instead, invest some time in researching who your current followers are on each of your social media accounts, including their demographics, likes, dislikes, etc. and use that information to determine the types of posts that would work best on each of your accounts.



Let’s say that after researching your Twitter followers you learn that a large percentage of them are price-conscious. With this information on hand, you could make the decision to share deals, promotions and announce special sales on Twitter, in order to increase engagement.

Guest Authored By Jia Wertz. Jia is the CEO of Studio 15, a socially responsible fashion brand. After leaving behind a 15-year career in the corporate fashion world, she started a company that focuses on doing good and supporting women. It’s Studio 15’s mission to promote and collaborate with other female-owned businesses and donate funds to support female entrepreneurs in Uganda. Previously Jia led the Sales Development, Operations and Communications Departments for bebe stores, Corporate Operations at Sephora and managed the western district for Aldo Shoes. She's a regular contributor at Forbes, Huffington Post, and Thrive Global, among other publications. Follow Jia on Twitter.





"Always think of the end user when creating content, if it’s not interesting to them, there is no point in publishing it.

Users don’t want to see an Instagram link with no image preview on your Twitter account, that’s why linking accounts and posting the same thing across multiple social platforms isn’t ideal. It simply doesn't make for a great user experience, and the winning strategy is to create compelling content for your followers, not merely to fill your feed. -JiaWertz


    • Post Crafted By:
      Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Salt Lake City, UT. where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
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    Location: Midvale, UT 84047, USA

    Tuesday, August 21, 2018

    YOUR Social Media Editorial Calendar?


    How to create your editorial calendar for social media..

    Developing a social media content calendar can be challenging.

    It can sometimes also be frustrating.

    But once you've created your social media editorial calendar -- and the content is created -- it will definitely help your marketing efforts, today and long into the future!



    Why You Should Create a Social Media Calendar

    Creating a social media calendar has many benefits.

    Time Management

    Planning ahead will let you organize the content, but also will be able to schedule it ahead of time, so you aren't leaving it to the last minute.

    Team Collaboration

    Developing a social media content calendar help you better collaborate with your team members who are working on other aspects of your client's marketing efforts.



    Recycle Successful Campaigns

    When a social media marketing calendar is done and executed, you can go back and see what you developed, find out what was successful, and try to recreate that again.

    You can also repurpose or spin out new content from previous successful posts you already developed.

    Higher Quality Content

    If you're rushing to post out content without a social media calendar, then have a higher likelihood of developing low quality content that doesn't resonate with, or engage, your audience.



    Big Campaigns Need Planning

    If you deal with big brands, then you know that every year or so, they place a lot of budget into a big brand campaign.

    It takes time and planning to help support these types of campaigns with social media content.

    Tips to Build out Your Social Media Calendar

    1. Know Your Audience

    Even before you start jumping into creating and developing the content, you need to think about your audience and/or the personas you have developed.



    A persona is a type of fictional character that your marketing team develops which shows various behaviors and characteristics that your ideal customer would have.

    Researching and developing content will become much easier once you know who your audience is and what they want.

    For example, I work with clients who are in the healthcare vertical, and fourth quarter tends to be very hectic because that's Open Enrollment Season.

    Multiple campaigns have to be developed that echo roughly the same messaging. But target markets are split up by people under 65, or over 65 and some years we tend to focus on a specific age range, in addition to focusing on a specific location, depending on the market saturation.

    All these details help form the messages you create for all your social media campaigns.



    2. Identify the Goal of Your Content

    Not all content you will promote in social media should have sales goals attached to it. If you do this, your audience will get bored by your constant and repetitive sales pitch.

    Instead, when planning your content calendar, keep in mind what the objective of each post will be. Some will be to drive sales, but others will be done to simply get engagement and entertain your audience.

    The perfect mix of education, entertainment, along with sharing your product offerings, will make for a great calendar!



    3. Consider Seasonality

    Another item that may help you develop your messaging is seasonality.

    For ecommerce that could be around Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and various other holidays. Other verticals also tend to use seasonality differently.

    In healthcare marketing, seasonality tends to be around not only around pertaining to buying health care plans, but also awareness months that focus on different health conditions and causes in order to bring education and attention to them.

    Healthline is one site I go to for this information because they have a handy directory of all things around health awareness and use this content to help frame the month.



    4. Figure Out Your Timing

    Timing is everything. It's also something you must consider when publishing your content calendar.

    My team uses Sprinklr, a customer experience platform that lets you schedule your content, see all comments, reviews, and messages in one view, and what day and time my content is being most consumed.

    Below is an example of social engagement for one of my clients. Now I know which days and times are most impactful when planning my calendar.



    5. Use Others Viral Content for Engagement

    While creating your own unique content for your social media calendar should be a top priority, it is fine once in a while sprinkle in posts from popular pages, as long as it's content that is likely to appeal to your demographic.

    I've seen several brands do this, and it is also a tactic that can be planned out in advance.

    As this content is being shared by a brand, it's important for the message to be not only something that would appeal to your audience but also content that tends to lean on the more wholesome or safe side.

    Keep in mind that you should always get approval for this content by your client, as you would for other content you created.



    6. Use Templates, Tools & Apps

    Initially, I started this calendar but using a template that HubSpot had created, but I further customized mine based on my needs and wants.

    You can see a version of my template here.

    There are loads of tools and templates and apps out there to help you build your calendar. Personally, I start with a simple spreadsheet, and have two tabs and then organize my thoughts.

    The first tab is labeled "Master Calendar," which shows the topics of the post.



    The labels, which you can see below, have

    --Key Message
    --Date
    --Platform (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.)
    --Any comments to help describe the message

    A handy tip for the Key Message section: if you're sharing a link, make sure the topic title post is linked to the content. That way when the social media content calendar is being distributed, individuals will be able to see where the audience will be directed to.



    The second tab is where all the creative lives and that is split up into two sections:

    --Organic
    --Paid

    I further break out the paid portion, but labeling each campaign with the amount I will spend on that campaign. That way when the client sees the calendar for the month ahead, they will know where their budget is being focused on and can be altered to their liking.

    I usually will insert screenshots and then go to Format > Compress > Picture Quality: Best for sending in e-mail, which helps to share out the content calendar.

    You can also use Google Docs in this capacity, which can help with the ease of sharing.



    Other tabs you can add, depending on your needs are:

    --Author
    --Owner of Content
    --Status (Approved, Loaded, Live)
    --Format of Content (video, image, link to blog)

    As I mentioned before, I use Sprinklr which has a content calendar built right into it, but here are a few other resources that can help you develop your content calendar:

    --Sprout Social
    --Airtable
    --CoSchedule
    --Trello

    Guest Authored By Victoria Edwards. Victoria has been working in SEO and Social Media for ten years and currently works for GuideWell Connect, a healthcare marketing agency, based in Jacksonville, Florida. Victoria is their Senior Marketing Manager of Social Media and focuses on Paid Social Media, SEO, and Content Marketing. Follow Victoria on Twitter.





      • Post Crafted By:
        Fred Hansen Pied Piper of Social Media Marketing at YourWorldBrand.com & CEO of Millennium 7 Publishing Co. in Salt Lake City, UT. where I work deep in the trenches of social media strategy, community management and trends.  My interests include; online business educator, social media marketing, new marketing technology, skiing, hunting, fishing and The Rolling Stones..-Not necessarily in that order ;)
      Published by at No comments:
      Labels: , , ,
      Location: Midvale, UT 84047, USA
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