New Year, New Habits – Building an Editorial Calendar

Are you new and just getting started with social media? Have you been using social platforms but feel like your engagement is suffering because you don’t have a solid strategy in place? Social media, like any other aspect of marketing, is more effective when a plan is established and followed. Success can be found by winging it but it’s not as likely, and not nearly as sustainable.
Building an editorial calendar is the essential first step when it comes to strategizing your social media efforts. A calendar is a tool that allows business owners to create and curate consistent content in a time efficient way. It breaks down content into platforms, number of posts per day/week, and scheduling for peak times.
Pick Your Platforms
Spend some time examining the diversity of the social media platforms to determine which sites will have the best impact for your business. Each of the platforms has different strengths and weaknesses and one-size fits all plans will fail in impact and efficiency. 
Then it’s time to figure out how often to post and that is also unique to the platform. Facebook posts should be no more than 3 – 10 each week, while Twitter needs at least 5 posts every day. On top of that, an examination of peak times of the day is necessary as well to ensure that posts are hitting at the most effective time.
Posting Times
If you have already been posting to social, the next step is to evaluate what you’ve been posting based on its rate of engagement. Certain posts will attract more attention than others. Start by scheduling and incorporating those types of content into your calendar and build from there.  Most of the social platforms offer some sort of analytics tool if it is not immediately obvious what is working and what is falling flat.
If social media is a new tool at your disposal, start thinking about what posts resonate with you the most when you are using various social media platforms. Check out some competition to see what type of engagement success they are having. Make some notes and use that as a starting point in developing your first editorial calendar.
Curating Content
Once you know where to post, when to post, and what types of content to post – it’s time to start curating content. The first priority should be original content. There should be some original content being created every week. The rest of it should be curated, which means finding content online that can be shared with your audience. When curating, it’s important to stay true to your targeted audience and your brand. Stay focused and on topic. Share information that would be interesting or beneficial to your readers.
To make this more streamlined, start compiling a list of resources. This would be websites, hashtags and other social media tools. There are many social tools available that will automatically offer suggestions based on recent content or a set of keywords.
January is the perfect time of year to begin implementing some #NewHabits, including developing an editorial calendar that can be used to make social media more impactful. If creation of the calendar is out of your wheelhouse or too time consuming, contact our Social Media Team for assistance. We’d love to help you #BeAwesome this year and really ROCK your social content!
~ Social Media is changing the way people do business.  Don’t get left behind ~ 


Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!

Hollie Clere, of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn,Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+ , YouTube,Pinterest, Instagram  and the tools to manage them. 

Click here for her Social Media Workshops, Classes and Seminars.

Social Seven: Tools of the Trade – Post Planner

Post Planner claims to triple your engagement and reach. Erin used the tool for her own business for a while to compare its effectiveness against simply posting natively to Facebook.
It goes back to posting images versus just posting text. Posts with images get more engagement, likes and shares than if you just use text. People are drawn towards color and visual stories. Text alone is boring. It’s good to have a healthy combination of both. There is a lot less reach with a text only post than if an image is added. One of the things Erin really likes about Post Planner is that they have added the capability to create a post in Post Planner then create an image in Canva and the tool will automatically share it. It combines the two processes into one step and saves time. It’s connected to your Facebook and Canva so all those designs are saved in both places.
Another great thing about Post Planner is that it gives you ideas about what to post. When you are drawing a blank, you can search Post Planner for images, quotes, or engaging questions to ask to boost your content management. This is similar to what Hootsuite and Buffer offers but it is more of a searchable database than a list of links. Post Planner also offers insightsfor those seeking motivation or additional ideas.
Post Planner is only $7 a month to use, with occasional sales to make it even more affordable. Therefore, it is a reasonable, cost effective tool with some decent perks to help keep up with social media management.
We’d love to hear your feedback if you have used Post Planner and it has helped your business or helped you engage your audience.
Think this might help you with scheduling content and staying on top of your social media? Follow us on social media to find out when our Social Seven podcast is streaming live!

Social Seven: Tools of the Trade – Editorial Calendars and Trello

If you don’t have a routine or a schedule, you aren’t going to be consistent with your social media. So, it makes sense to build an editorial calendar. What do you use to build a calendar for your content? This can depend on the client. Everyone has thrie own themes and weekly schedule. Each one is so drastically different, as are their posting options. A social media manager could use tools like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Google Drive and Dropbox for different purposes. However, that means pulling from a variety of different places. Therefore, it makes sense to have everything in one spot instead of duplicating efforts.
Trello is an online tool for scheduling. There are so many things you can do with it. Trello can be set up for one clientor many. There are various boards, lists and cards for each client. You can be very narrow with what you are doing. Typically, with an editorial calendar for a client is there is a social media strategy. In Trello, you create cards. These cards include brief descriptions on what to post, hashtags, timing and anything else pertinent to that schedule.
One major perk to Trello is that images that have been created to share can be placed onto these cards as well. Text can also be added so that everything for the post is in one place. Also, the client can be added in order to review the cards before they are posted. Due dates can be added and reminders via email will be sent to remind team members or clients to approve or review the posts.
Trello also allows users to label the cards with custom labels to help with organization. Then it can be copied into Hootsuite or whatever other scheduling tool is being used to post the content.  For Twitter, it may be better to use something different such as a Google spreadsheet or an Excel file. This is mainly due to the bulk uploading nature of that platform.
There are other tools available such as Base Camp, One Note and Evernote that could be used as well. Base Camp and Trello are very similar. Unfortunately, Base Camp gives you only a specific amount of time to make changes or edit a post, which could cause some issues in the long term. The idea is to keep you organized. Don’t let yourself run dry. Try out some new tools and see if you can make them work for you!
Think these might help you with scheduling content and staying on top of your social media? Follow us on social media to find out when our Social Seven podcast is streaming live!

Social Seven: Tools of the Trade – Commun.it

Social Seven – Social Media Podcast

With Erin Cell of Socially Powered and Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor




What is the primary function of Commun.it? It is a Twitter tool used for scheduling and managing this social media platform. It can be used to stay connected with new followers, to stay engaged, and to monitor clients and mentions. Users can follow/unfollow and track who is following and unfollowing them on Twitter right within the tool. It will send a reminder to let users know when it’s time to reconnect with someone. Commun.it also offers suggestions on accounts you might like to follow.
We do tend to get really busy and lose track of the last time we connected with someone within our communities. It’s social media. It’s meant to be social. That means stepping outside of your box and actually having online conversations with people and engaging with them frequently. It’s not just a matter of pushing content out. Acknowledge when someone shares something of yours and when you get mentioned. If someone asks you a question, you should at least respond.
Commu.it includes some canned responses that can be used to immediately reply to specific types of engagement. Try not to overdo it, as real engagement is more valuable and effective than automated responding. However, this can be a way to stay on top of the fast pace of Twitter.
These tools also include worthy analytics that can be used for tracking effectiveness and then submitted to clients.
Using Hootsuite, Buffer and Commun.it combined is a fabulous way to optimize your social media content management. Commun.it is an easy to use tool, that is simple, and worth checking out. These tools will help you increase your online engagement, which will help to organically grow your audience.
It’s social people; let these tools help you remain social!

Think Commun.it might help you with scheduling content and staying on top of your social media? Follow us on social media to find out when our Social Seven podcast is streaming live!

Learn how to use social media to grow your business online with our video series!

  • Learn the fundamentals of social media
  • Learn how to build better brand engagement
  • Learn how to enhance your visitors' experience
  • Learn how to grow your business using social media strategies.

If you want someone to break down aspects of social media to get more clients and build your business using social media, this is the program for you.

Start Learning Today!

Follow me

Categories

Latest Articles

©2008-2023 Clere Communications / The Social Media Advisor