How To Make Content Calendars
The ultimate guide to creating an effective content calendar in 2023 to improve your online presence
If you’ve been searching for tips on how to grow your social media following and enhance your online presence in general, you’ve probably come across the term content calendar.
In essence, content calendars are a visual layout of all your social media posts you’ll be creating and posting at a certain date, time, platform, and other details.
Keep on reading to learn how to create your own content calendar, what to include in it, and how to actually use it to achieve your goals.
What Is A Content Calendar?
A social media content calendar is a detailed schedule of all your upcoming posts, with content ideas, the platform you’re going to upload them to, the time the posts will go live, and the order of each.
Content calendars are lifesaving for small business owners who are in charge of their social media posting, as well as for social media managers. Some content calendar benefits include having everything organized and ready to go, planning ahead of time what content to create and how to do it, as well as arranging how the posts will be seen from an aesthetic point of view.
You can create a content calendar based on your preferred timespan, such as a week, month, trimester, or even a year. Bear in mind that the longer your content calendar is, in terms of the time it encompasses, the more attention to detail you’ll have to pay.
With this ultimate guide, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Keep on reading to learn how to create your very own content calendar that will help you have a strong online presence and the results you’ve always looked for.
How To Create A Content Calendar That Works
There are many different content calendars templates out there, and before you start searching for the cutest one, there are some things we need to discuss in order to create a content calendar that actually works.
Step 1: Define Your Goals
You can’t create a content schedule without defining your goals first, thus they’ll be the ones to determine your course of action. Spend time thinking about the end goal of your content, the reason behind you’re doing all of this. Here are some goals examples to get your mind thinking:
- Drive more people to your website
- Increase your sales
- Improve your online presence (visibility) Once you’ve narrowed down your goals, you can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Create A Template
Here’s when you’ll start playing around with the layout of your posts and the actual look of your calendar. A little content calendar tip, don’t get stuck on designing your layout, thus what matters the most is the information you add.
When you’re creating your template, you can use free apps like Canva that will allow you to easily modify your design and create one from scratch. Add squares that represent your feed, and as many as you want. Include these elements to create an effective content calendar.
- Topic and type of content. For example, you can create a video (type of content) about the top 3 things no one knows about your business (topic). Other types of content include a blog post, LinkedIn post, carousel, and simple photo post.
- Platform in which you’re going to post, such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc.
- Date and time to publish the posts, and the person in charge of doing it. If you’re doing all of this by yourself, you can skip adding the person.
We recommend you have a fair share of content that will give your platform value, such as press releases (launching a new product), participating in a current trend, selling posts, client stories or reviews, how your product/service looks on a daily basis, and similar.
Step 3: Execute & Monitor Your Content Calendar
After spending time planning, it is time to start creating your content and posting it according to your content schedule. The sooner you create your content calendar, the more prepared you’ll be to create the content.
It is important to monitor how your content is doing to later do some adjustments to your calendar if needed. For example, if you notice your content shared between 9 and 11 pm does better than the ones you published after 5 pm, you can change your posting time. The same applies to the type of content posted.
It takes time for your content to perform as you dream of, so being patient is the number one rule to creating a successful content calendar.
Content Calendar Tips
There’s no right or wrong way to create a content calendar, but as with everything, there are a few tips and tricks we recommend you have in mind to work smarter and not harder.
- Use the 80/20 rule. This rule implies that 80% of your posts will educate, inform or entertain your audience, while the other 20% will focus on promoting your services or products.
- Use a template that works for you and how you work. There are spreadsheet templates as well as visual templates available, choose the one that you know will keep you focused and organized the most.
- Be as detailed as possible. You can create a month-old of content in a few hours, and you might think you’ll remember everything, but we assure you when the moment of creating the actual content comes, you’d want to have everything detailed and explained.
Final Words
In this post, we talked about content calendars and how you can easily create your own to reach your goals. If you’re looking to create a community and reach more people online, a content calendar can definitely help you do it in the most effective way possible.
Remember to define your goals, lay out your content with as much detail as possible (type of content, topic, platform to be posted to, time, date, people in charge), and monitor your content as you post it.