Creating a Social Media Calendar for SMEs
If you’re an owner of a small-to-medium sized enterprise, chances are you spread yourself thin to accommodate the mission-critical tasks needed to smoothly run your business. More often than not, this includes sales and marketing roles.
Because of its low-cost investments, social media has become an indispensable cogwheel into the marketing machine of SMEs. Where else can you find a free platform where you can market your goods and services? And if you’re a business owner who wants to do good on your social media game, you’d want to start with a simple yet powerful starter tool - the SOCIAL MEDIA CALENDAR.
More, often a social media calendar includes the following elements:
● Topics of post (think of seasonalities, trends, news, events)
● Copy and creative collaterals
● Schedule (time and date) when the posts will go live
● Which social media platforms to upload them to
● Other shared links (blog posts, videos, photos, memes, etc.)
Creating a social media calendar can be a Sunday picnic if you know the steps to undertake. Here are the steps to creating a social media calendar that works, especially for small to medium sized enterprises:
1. Conduct a social media audit.
The social media audit takes into account the following:
● Existing social media accounts, usernames and passwords
● Impostor or duplicate accounts (report or remove them!)
● Goals and KPIs
● Past social media posts (creative collaterals) and other reusable content
● Target demographics/psychographics
● Roles (writer, designer, community manager, strategist, etc.)
2. Set a goal
Like other endeavours, it is imperative to set a goal for why you want to push content on social media. Otherwise, you’re just carrying out a fool’s errand.
Do you want to increase people's awareness of your brand? Do you wish to get more followers or more engagements (reacts, shares, and comments)? Do you want people to sign up to an event you’re hosting?
Goals can be short-term or long-term, but make sure that they fall well within the SMART framework:
S-pecific
M-easurable
A-ttainable
R-elevant
T-imebound
3. Choose your social media platforms
The kind of content you want to push can inform you where best you can publish them. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the assortment of social media platforms. As much as you want your brand to be ‘omnipresent,’ it’s better if you can prioritise the platforms to put out your content. This works for businesses with small teams.
You can follow the Pareto principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule. Which 20% of effort gives you the whopping80% results? Is it better for you to stick to just marketing on Facebook and Instagram for now, and move on to Tiktok, LinkedIn, or Twitter after some months? The goal is to wisely use your precious time in the channels where you’ll achieve the quickest and biggest wins.
For the meantime, you can prioritise the platform you’re most familiar with and slowly add other social media channels along the way. Once you have the processes replicated and mastered in one channel, it’ll be easier to fine tune your strategy to fit the next platform.
4. Organise your calendar
Once you have the elements completed to start your social media calendar, it’s time to put them together on the right visualisation tool, which is, a CALENDAR! You can download free social media calendar templates from Hubspot, Hootsuite, or Sprout Social. If you find the above templates limiting, a simple calendar from Google Sheets can do the trick. You can design it however you want to to make the visual feedback more manageable for you and your team.
For the content, you must have a healthy mix of original and curated content to share. Experiment with different content formats as well like videos, articles, quotes, polls, photos, etc. Make sure that your identity stays across the board by following your brand guide to the T: proper use of colour palette, logo, icons, tone of voice, etc.
Lastly, never be afraid to exercise your creativity!
5. Pilot-test the calendar
If you’ve just started pilot-testing your social media calendar, don’t forget to gather data about its use and efficiency as a tool. Get feedback from your team and see if there needs to be adjustments in the way the calendar is used, monitored, and updated.
If you’re using a paid social media marketing tool, there are features that allow you to integrate your calendar and lets you automate the publishing of your content.
It also helps to look at the analytics report so you can get insights on which posts are doing well and at which time, etc. It can give you learnings about what you should do more or less of, and in what frequency.
Social media is a powerful tool that affords you the benefits of free marketing. Armed with a well-organised social calendar, you are on your way to achieving optimal results in whichever social platform you decide to promote your brand.
Are you in need of a creative and solutions-driven team to execute your social media marketing plans? Contact SEOPremier and let us make your brand meaningful and memorable for your target audience!
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