social media content calendar Archives

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Growth Prompts, Membership Only, Social Media

How to Create an Effective Content Calendar for Your Business

As a business owner, it is important to provide your audience with a steady supply of interesting and engaging content. But let’s face it. There will come a time when you’ll run out of ideas and don’t know what to write about. If you find yourself in this situation, then a content calendar may be just what you need.

Creating a content calendar allows you to plan your content in advance and schedule them across multiple channels at once. This allows business owners to come up with well-researched and valuable pieces of content and then schedule them on multiple platforms in one go. Plus, it will spare you the trouble of having to come up with a topic just before the deadline.

You may not realize it, but creating posts and content on the fly is more prone to mistakes and typos. With a content calendar, you’ll have enough time to write your content and proofread them before publishing.

Ready to create your own content calendar? Here are 4 tips to help you get started.

1. What content does your tribe want?

It is important to know what your audience is looking for before you just start posting. What do they like? What are they engaging on, sharing, talking about? Look at your past social media posts if you have them or your competitor’s posts and see what is working. One way to do this is looking at your social media analytics to get a good idea of what posts people have engaged in. What if you are just starting out and you don’t know what your audience is looking for yet? This is where your competition comes in, take a look at a good competitor and see what are they talking about, what type of posts are getting the most engagement?

Be sure to mix up your content, have posts with just text, articles, blogs, images, videos, gifs, to make sure you are grabbing their attention. Once you have a good idea of what type of content your tribe/audience likes then you can start creating!

2. How often should you be posting to each platform?

This is a question we get asked all the time! Each platform is different. As a business owner, you will have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn and maybe even more than that. It is important to keep your audience in mind when posting. Meaning, how often should you post and what times should you post. When you were doing your research in step one, also check out the times that people were engaging.

You do not want to bombard your audience by posting too much and you don’t want to post too little so they forget about you. It’s kinda like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you don’t want your porridge to be too hot, too cold, but just perfect!

Here is the common rule of thumb for posting to the social media platforms:

Facebook: 1 time per day and 3 on the high-end
Twitter: 3 times a day on the low-end and 30 on the high-end
LinkedIn: 2-5 times per week
Google+: 3-5 times per week
Pinterest: 5-10 times per day
Instagram: at least once per day

Each platform is going to be different for you, some you will have more engagement so you can post more and some you will have less engagement so you may need to only post a few times per week.

Remember to use the analytics to look at the numbers and see what they are reflecting so you can stay top of mind to your tribe/audience!

3. Time to Create Your Content

Once you know what your tribe/audience is looking for and how often you should be posting, it is then time to create!

Remember to keep it fresh and mix it up. Here are a few different content ideas for you:

Create a custom image through Canva, WordSwag, Typorama, Prisma, etc.
Create a video through Ripl, iMovie, Videorama, Animoto
Post your blog post from your website to social media
Find outside sources, articles, other blogs and videos you like, that align with your brand to share
Gifs to increase engagement

Here are a few tools we use to help keep our outside sources organized:

Feedly

The content you need to accelerate your research, marketing, and sales. Stay ahead of the curve. The content you need to accelerate your research, marketing, and sales.

Stumbleupon

Discover the best of the web, one click at a time.

4. Time to fill in your calendar

Now that you have put your plan together and figured out the type of content you are going to write, where you are posting it and how often, you can fill out your calendar.

We have found that there are a few tools to help you with that content calendar. Everyone is different, some people like more of a visual calendar and others like more of an excel type of calendar. We love creating the content calendar in Google Sheets then using Trello to write the content and copy from there to our platforms. Others like to use Google Calendar for their topics and then put the posts directly into Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule them at one time to the correct social media networks.

You have to explore each option to see which one resonates with you the best! So we wanted to give you some to choose from:

Trello

Trello is a project management tool that’s very popular with bloggers, marketers and social media managers. It’s a good way to keep track of your content ideas and even has an additional calendar add-on you can use to get a monthly view of your planned content.

Google Calendar

If you want to keep it simple, you could always just create a new Google calendar for the process and invite everyone on the team to view it. Those teammates could also add all of their own posts and ideas to the same calendar.

Google Sheets

We have created our clients content calendars into here for topics and it will look like this:

Or this is how our Social Speak Content Calendar looks, you can be as general or as detailed as you want:

Buffer

Buffer is a new and smarter way to share what you want to share on Social Media. People have called it great names before, like your Social Media Assistant or the Siri of Social Media.

What it does is simple. Posts in your queue will be sent out automatically by Buffer, according to the posting schedule that you put in place.

Select the social account you’d like to customize the posting schedule for, select the Settings tab at the top, and then select Posting Schedule. From here, you can choose which timezone is best for this account and customize the days and times your posts should go out. Select the days you’d like to include and add the individual times you’d like your content to be shared.

Hootsuite

Manage all your social media in one place. From finding prospects to serving customers, Hootsuite helps you do more with your social media. Save time by scheduling your social posts. Keep your social presence active 24/7 by automatically scheduling hundreds of social media posts at once, across your social accounts.

July 6, 2022/by Amber Irwin

Social Media, Social Speak

7 Tips for Creating a Social Media Content Calendar

When you manage several social media channels and create lots of content, it can be challenging to keep up.

A social media content calendar helps you plan your content and visualize your strategy over time. It allows plenty of time to fill the spaces with relevant content, preventing you from publishing poorly written posts. It will prevent you from going into a full panic mode since everything was planned and pre-scheduled.

Need help in creating social media content calendar? Follow the tips below.

Audit your social network

What’s great about digital marketing is that almost everything is measurable.

Take time to go through your social media accounts and posts to see how your content is received.

When auditing your social media profiles and your previous posts, you will begin to notice a trend. Identify what types of content are getting more engagements on each platform. Also, identify which posts sparked the most conversation. This will clue you in to where you should focus your efforts over the next month or two.

Define your goals

Before you start creating content, it is a good idea to ask yourself: what is the primary goal?

Do you wish to drive more traffic to your website? Are you hoping to get more leads? Or do you want to grow your following? By defining your goals early on, you’ll have a clear idea of the expected results.

Pushing out content without a clear purpose won’t benefit your business or your practice. Instead, it will only lead to wasted time, effort, and resources.

Plan your content

Once you’re clear on your goals for social media marketing, it’s time to plan your content.

When you hit a high-performing piece of content, it can be tempting to keep posting similar content week after week. While this might work initially, it will have diminishing returns over time. Come to think of it. Even the best dinner gets old if you serve it every night.

When creating content, make sure you’re not posting the same sort of content. If you do, your followers may find your posts boring and can lead to disengagement or unfollowing.

Decide on the publishing frequency

Now, it’s time to decide on the publishing frequency. You see, social media success isn’t something you can achieve overnight. It will require hard work and patience. Posting consistently on social media makes you more visible to your audience. But that doesn’t mean you should spam them with too many posts each day. Posting seldomly may cause your audience to forget you.

This is why it’s essential to choose a publishing frequency that works for you. Think about how often you can publish fresh content realistically. If you can only commit to posting three times a week, then that’s fine as long as you stick to your posting schedule.

Keep evergreen content at hand

Evergreen content is something that can provide value to your audience over long periods.

If you’ve been interviewed, you are free to share it again at a later date, so those who missed it will have the opportunity to watch it. You can also share blog posts that list out various tips and tricks. We bet most of these tips are timeless and can be shared with your audience again and again. Of course, you can also post evergreen content from other websites.

Don’t miss out on relevant moments

There are so many holidays and pseudo-holidays each year. Some marketers tend to consider social media holiday posts as “fluff’. But your audience doesn’t see it that way. As long as you keep your audience in mind, they’ll create emotional touchpoints in your marketing campaign and get the engagement you seek.

Holidays and special events are a great way to connect with your audience. You may find companies that use unusual holidays to sell their products and services. Don’t be left out – become one of them.

The year is full of special events. Do your due diligence and take note of local, national, and international holidays. Identify those holidays and somehow connect to the products or services you provide. A content calendar will reduce the risk of forgetting or missing out on these events.

Choose your publishing tool

Forget setting the alarm to remind yourself to post. Instead, choose a publishing tool that will help you make the most of your time.

Automation helps you save time, achieve consistency in your social media marketing efforts, and gives you greater control over the content.

Buffer, Hootsuite, and SproutSocial are just some of the best tools that can help you streamline and automate your social media content so that you can focus on more critical aspects of your business.

Final thoughts

A well-thought-out and organized social media calendar serves as a framework for what you plan to share and promote across all social platforms.

If you need help planning and creating a social media content calendar, please let us know. Book a 30-minute consultation call with us, and we’ll help you take your social media marketing game to the next level.

July 21, 2021/by Kathlyn Angeles

Content Creation, Social Media

Social Media Plan 2021

In today’s blog, we’ll be covering six tips to create your healthcare social media plan for 2021. Yes, 2021! We are entering the fourth quarter already of 2020, and it’s really important to be proactive when it comes to your social media strategy. Because the more that you plan, the easier it is.

Social media review

You’ve heard of us talking about this a little bit throughout the year. We always like to do a quarterly check-in and just see what’s working and what’s not working.

So if you haven’t done your review yet, take the time this fourth quarter to really look at each of your social media platforms, (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube), you need to look at their Analytics. Look at each quarter, look at the whole year, look to see what posts have gotten the most engagement, and also look at your Google Analytics to see where that social traffic is coming from.

Are you getting a lot of website traffic from Pinterest or Facebook? Are you getting a little website traffic from Instagram, but you’re getting a lot of engagement? So really looking at each platform, what is working, and what’s not working on each one. Why? It’s because each platform has its own purpose.

Like with Instagram, you may get a lot more engagement, but you’re not gonna get a lot of traffic to your website; whereas Facebook and Pinterest, maybe you get less engagement, but more traffic to your website, so looking at those and looking at them individually and seeing what’s working. So that was number one, doing your social media review.

Content

So after you do your review, make sure you write down what content works the best, and figure out new ways to implement new content for 2021.

According to Tubular, by 2021, 80% of Internet traffic will be from videos, that’s huge, 80%. And a lot of that is done by the phones.

So you have to think of what types of posts you’re putting up. Are you doing more personal posts of you and your staff, patient testimonials, and short little videos? Are you doing doctor interviews, patient interviews, educational videos where you are talking, maybe you have a weekly FAQ section?

What are the types of content that you have put out over 2020 and what’s work the best? And then make a list of the content that you want to do more of in 2021 and things you wanna try.

So maybe you’ve just been posting, repurposing content from outside sources, which is great. It’s always good to share articles from your industry, Facebook loves that. But maybe you want to have original content. Maybe you should start blogging in 2021 and have that content go out to social media and drive that traffic back to the website. Think of different types of content that you want to implement into your social media plan for 2021.

Set goals

I know sometimes it sounds so like, “Oh, it’s just social media, we don’t need to have goals.” But you do. You need to really look at how many followers and likes do you have right now, and what’s that number you wanna get to. Sometimes, it’s not always the quantity, it’s more quality.

So you may have 1500 likes, but your engagement with them is amazing. So you may say, “Okay, I’m not really worried about growing my likes on my Facebook page, but I wanna reach even more people.” And so looking at those goals, maybe you tapped into Facebook ads a little bit in 2020, but your goal is to really master Facebook ads where you can see that return on investment, “I wanna grow my email list by 200 people in 2021.”

Well, you’re gonna grow that email list by creating really successful Facebook ads, you’re not gonna grow that email list by just posting. So setting those goals and looking at how you can utilize Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and making sure, looking at the kind of, if you’re new to the Facebook ad world, okay, you may be tapped into it or you boosted a post, but you really didn’t get anything from it.

Let’s dive into that a little bit more. What post did you boost, did you create a specific audience? Sometimes we have clients that say, “Oh, I tried the ad thing, it didn’t work for me.” But they have a brick and mortar practice in one city, but their ad is going out to everyone. So if you have a brick and mortar practice, you wanna make sure that you’re only doing a 25-mile radius and you wanna utilize the tools that Facebook provides you to set that target audience, that’s really important to make sure your ad is going to the right people. So setting those goals for your social media is a really important step.

Make sure you’re reaching your target market

So there’s a couple of ways you can do this. Obviously, a lot by trial and error of what platforms you’re posting to and where that engagement is coming from. You can also do a survey. You should have a patient database or an email list, and you can ask them what social media platforms are they a part of, even if you have, like your sign-in sheet at the front desk, add a couple of columns.

Where are you most active on social media? And just have Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn or Twitter, and then ask them. If you have a good relationship with your patients, they already know, like, and trust you, and they want to help you be successful because they’re coming to you for a reason, and hopefully they’re so happy about the results that they have seen with you, that they wanna be able to share your posts and tell their friends and families.

So if you are connecting to them on social media, that’s a great way to create those posts to talk to that target audience. You could also go a step further if you already have a large client database. When you’re looking at those Facebook ads, you could upload a lookalike audience, so it will target people that have the same similarities as that list already.

If you’re putting all this time into Twitter and you’re putting up three or four tweets a day, and you’re following all these people, but you’re not getting any engagement, that may be a platform that you say, “You know what, this isn’t something that is going to work for us, we need to let Twitter go,” or “We’re only gonna post once per week, and we’re gonna focus our time on these platforms.” So just knowing where your audience is at.

If your audience is women and mothers, you need to be on Pinterest. You need to start creating those Pins, especially if you are an OB/GYN or an Endovascular Center that focuses on uterine fibroid embolization, you need to be on there because that’s where women are going.

Pinterest is a visual search engine, just like Google. The demographics on there are about equal, but women have a little bit higher presence on Pinterest, so if women are your target market, you gotta get on Pinterest and Instagram because that’s really where you’re going to reach them.

Look at your competitors

So you wanna see what are they doing. Facebook came out with page transparency about two years ago.

So if you go to a Facebook page on the right-hand side, it will say page transparency. That allows you to see what ads they have running and how they’ve been doing. You can kind of, in a way, spy on what they’re doing. This really gives you a good foundation of what’s working and what’s not working.

If you are an individual healthcare practice, like a Family Medicine Practice, you may wanna look at the larger hospitals of what they’re doing because that would help give you an idea of the content that they’re putting together, the ads they’re running, and then how you can tailor your own ads to reach your target audience.

So it’s really important that you’re always looking at those competitors, both in-state and out-of-state, nationwide, just so you can see, “Okay, well, we did a similar post, but they had a thousand likes and 15 shares and we didn’t have anything, why is that?” And so it allows you to see how things can be done as well. So that’s number five, looking at competitors.

Create your social media calendar

Once you have done all of these steps, you are now at the place, you have your notes, you’ve looked through everything, you have a good idea of what you wanna do, what you wanna implement, now it’s time to go back to that content calendar and create your social media content calendar for at least, at least the first quarter of 2021.

You are gonna create that, we will put a link to a social media content calendar that we use that you can make a copy of, and you’re going to in there put what networks you’re gonna work on, what resources you’re going to share from, what content ideas that you are going to implement, what videos you need to record, what goals you have? You wanna be able to run this many Facebook ads and put everything together.

So come January 1st, and hopefully, before that, you already have your social media posts written for January. You’ve already looked at what those national observance days are for the health and wellness industries so you know what topics you’re gonna talk about. You’ve already spoken to your doctors, your staff, your patients, and you have set up those times to interview them.

Using Zoom to do an interview call is awesome because you’re allowed to talk, they’re allowed to talk, and you can record that and then upload that directly into YouTube and use it as a social media post or as a blog post. So looking at what videos you want to implement and just having everything in that content calendar.

So come 2021, you are ready to hit the ground running and you are organized, so now, if you just do the first quarter of 2021, come February, you wanna start planning the second quarter, so you’re always about six weeks ahead.

And it’s important too because the industries are always changing, there are always new things coming up, and new news stories, so on your content calendar, you may have a place holder for an article or industry tip, and those are things that are gonna be more in the moment post. You may just schedule those a week in advance. But you wanna know your foundation, you’re gonna be able to know the National Observance days, again, the interviews, you can schedule those out, you can talk about, you put together the topics you wanna talk about, create those images in Canva, find that content that you wanna put with it. So you’re just making sure that you are ready for 2021.

Schedule a free consultation

If you need help putting this social media strategy together, we are here to help you. Head on over to socialspeaknetwork.com, and schedule a free consultation today and we can help walk you through what’s the best steps for your business to start and how we can implement a plan for you. So we are here to help you and we look forward to seeing your social media strategy.

September 30, 2020/by Amber Irwin

Social Media, Social Media

11 Content Ideas to Fill Your Social Media Calendar

A social media calendar can help you plan and schedule your social media posts in advance. With an organized calendar, you can ensure no days will go without a single piece of content being published.

Fresh, quality content is important to attract your target audience and keep them informed. But let’s face it. It can be challenging to find fresh social media ideas, especially when you have to post something daily on different platforms.

Next time you think there’s nothing for you to post, think again. Here are 11 content ideas to fill your social media calendar.

Industry news

If you find yourself at a loss when it comes to making updates on social media, sharing industry news is a great idea. Regularly posting informative articles will help turn your page into a trusted resource for relevant information.

Think about what your target audience would find helpful and relevant. Share links to relevant news and blogs.

Blog posts

Do you spend countless hours writing killer, quality content for your blog? Don’t let it go to waste Share your blog posts across your social media accounts.

In addition to giving you something new to post, sharing your blog posts on social media will help deliver a steady stream of visitors to your site. Make sure, though, that you tailor your message to fit each platform and audience.

Polls and surveys

People love answering questions, and polls provide the perfect avenue for this.

Polls are easy to make, encourage interactivity, and get people talking. It allows you to gain a deeper understanding of who your customers are. By reading their responses, you can learn from them directly and better understand their needs.

Videos

Video is the undeniable king of content marketing. In fact, they get exponentially more shares than texts and images combined. Not only are they convenient and efficient for the consumer, but they can also help you create an emotional connection with your audience.

If you aren’t creating video content for your brand or business, now is the time to get in front of the camera. I challenge you to do one this week. You can start by doing a Facebook Live or Instagram story. The first video is usually the hardest, but you’ll get better as you go.

Behind the scenes photo or video

Sharing behind the scenes content gives people an inside look into who you are and what your brand represents. People want to do business with people, not from a company that hides behind a logo. They want to know the people behind your products and services.

Behind the scenes, content humanizes your company and helps you build rapport with your target audience. Trust doesn’t come easily for businesses, but transparency is a great place to start.

Share a tip

Share tips that your audience might find useful. You may also consider turning it into a weekly post. For instance, “Tip Tuesday” or “Fun Fact Friday”. This way, your audience will have something to look forward to.

User-generated content

User-generated content is any content that has been published by fans. Nine out of ten consumers trust organic, user-generated content more than traditional advertising. That means, they’d rather hear from your clients and customers instead of you.

UGCs work well because they’re authentic. Plus, it puts customers front and center. It encourages engagement and helps you grow your audience.

When sharing user-generated content, always give credit where credit is due. Make sure that you tag the original poster in the post.

Infographics

People love information, but most people lean heavily toward visual content. Infographics are easily read, understood, and remembered. Your audience can easily scan the document and understand the message you’re trying to get across. Not only will they appreciate the new-found knowledge, but they’ll also find your information more credible and compelling.

Your employees

Posting photos of your employees help humanize your brand. It allows them to have a sneak peek of the people behind your products and services.

Go ahead and share photos of people who make your business possible. Without them, you won’t be able to operate.

Customer testimonial

Studies suggest that 74% of consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before they can trust a business. Sharing customer testimonials on social media is one of the best ways to build trust with your audience and add credibility to your brand.

Let your customer’s voices be heard on social media. Create an image with their testimonial or retweet their kind words. Don’t forget to include their name or handle.

Meme

Have you noticed more and more brands are incorporating humor into their social media marketing strategy? It’s because humor sells.

People love humorous content. Infusing humor into your social media content helps show your brand’s personality and get more people to engage with your content. Besides, posting only business-related content is simply boring.

July 1, 2020/by Kathlyn Angeles

Content Creation, Content Marketing, Social Media

5 Reasons You Need a Social Media Content Calendar

Social media has become an integral part of many businesses’ marketing strategy. It helps you connect with your audience, increase awareness about your brand, and generate more business.

With so many social media platforms to manage and publish in, it’s important to have a plan and stay organized for what and when you’re going to share on each platform. Having a social media content calendar will make things a lot easier.

What is a social media content calendar?

A social media calendar is a document that is used to plan out and organize future content. It allows you to visualize how your marketing looks like in the coming weeks or months and tweak any scheduled posts as necessary.

Content calendars can come in several forms. It can be a spreadsheet, hand-written calendar or a software. The purpose of a social media calendar is to provide a framework for scheduling out when and which content will be published across different social media channels.

A content calendar do wonders for your business. Here are 5 reasons why you need a social media content calendar.

Save time

You need to post regularly for your business to benefit from social media. But we all know that managing multiple social media accounts can be challenging, not to mention time consuming.

The purpose of using a content calendar is to help you plan out content ahead of time and schedule posts across multiple channels at once. With an effective calendar, you can schedule content weeks or months ahead of time. You no longer have to worry about falling behind if you become too busy or if something comes up.

A content calendar will not only help alleviate some of the day-to-day stressors, but it can also help you reach your long-term business goals. Freeing up more time, you can now focus on more important aspects of the business.

Never forget important dates

Holidays and other important events offer excellent opportunities to create engaging content. With a hectic schedule, it can be easy for important dates to slip your mind. Missing important dates can represent a lost opportunity.

An organized calendar helps reduce the chaos of scrambling to post it on time. Taking note of future events, you’ll have enough time to create the best possible content for the occasion instead of just churning out content at the last minute.

Having a content calendar alleviates the fear of forgetting important dates. Plus, it ensures that your content is being published when your audience is active.

Plan and organize your social media marketing strategy

Providing your audience with relevant, informative, and entertaining content is the key to keep your audience engaged.

When posting on social media, you want it to be a mix of industry news, inspiring content, content from others, and your own content. Using a content calendar allows you to visualize your content strategy over time. You’ll have plenty of time to fill it with relevant topics that resonate with your audience.

Without effective planning, you may run the risk of posting a topic that you have already discussed a few weeks ago. A social media content calendar will help you keep things in check, so you can avoid such blunders.

Brainstorm ideas

Instead of making last-minute decisions about what types of content to publish, you’ll have the advantage of getting feedback from your team members.

Every piece of content start with ideas, and you’ll need a lot of them to fill your calendar. When you plan out your social media content in advance, teams from different departments can contribute ideas, make edits, and plan future content.

They can use their knowledge to fill the space with relevant content that is valuable to your audience. Hence, you can be sure that you’re putting out the best and most relevant content.

Turn chaos into harmony

Collaboration with team members often lead to fresh ideas and greater return on investment. However, it can also be tricky to pull off efficiently. It can be further complicated by remote work.

A social media content calendar is a great way to collaborate. It can serve as a communication tool for the whole team. This is where topics, ideas, contents, and dates are placed. It helps keep every member of the team on the same page and stay on track of publishing.

Having a central place for different teams across your organization to manage social media content allows for a much smoother implantation of your social media marketing agenda.

June 10, 2020/by Kathlyn Angeles

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