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Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for 2018

Tips for Planning Your 2018 Social Media Content Calendar

It's not too late to make a plan

Have you started planning out your social media content calendar for 2018 yet? Don't worry it is not too late, despite what everyone may be saying to you. It is not too late! Yes, it would be great if you had started 6 months ago, but I am a realist. I run my own small business, I know that doing things 6 months in advance is a pie in the sky dream that we almost never can reach. And I am the first to say, that is okay! To help out I am letting you in on some great ways to plan your content calendar that will actually alleviate stress, streamline projects, and fit into an overall business plan. The best part is these tips are useful for planning a week of content, or a year of content.

Where to start?

In order to get the most out of your social media, your content calendar should be closely tied to your overall business goals for the year. So the first thing you should do is define your goals for 2018 (or whatever time period you are planning content for). Then define the who, what, when, where, why, how and how much for each of your goals. After that, decide how your social media can help you reach those goals and that will be the basis of your content calendar.

Next up, decide what tool you will be using to keep your calendar, as a social media manager I utilize Hey Orca to manage the calendars of multiple clients and gain approvals, but you can use a spreadsheet, a handwritten calendar, or tools like Hootsuite or SproutSocial its all up to you.

Once you decide on the tool you can begin mapping out your content step by step. Make sure you are keeping your business goals in mind throughout the process. Here are steps I take with clients when planning content calendars.

1) Holidays

Don't miss a holiday in 2018 and have your social media posts ready to go by marking all the key holidays down on your calendar right from the start. If you are using HeyOrca or Hootsuite you can even schedule last year's posts as placeholders or update them with the appropriate year and info if they were successful. Want some help with planning for the Holidays? Check out this infographic from “Social Media Today”

2) Review Last Year

Review 2017 and look for the successful promotions, themes, and sales. What did well and will “anniversary” in 2018? What will not anniversary but you have sales numbers that you will need to compensate for? Mark all of these instances on the calendar. For those that will not anniversary what opportunities do you have to build on successful promotions or create a new one based on the parameters that lead to success last year.

3) Monthly Themes

Now that you have the Holidays and successes from last year penciled in, its time to look at what content you will be adding to the calendar. A great way to do this is by creating themes for the months. In my past life as a Bookstore manager, our general book department would live by the monthly themes, we would have an overarching theme each month i.e. African American History Month or Banned Book Month or Valentines Day. Followed by sub-themes like for Valentine's Day sub-themes like Romance Novels, Books About Love, Teen Angst etc. This is a great way to divide your content calendar as well, as it gives you direction and focus. Themes can be a great guide if a post doesn't fit into the theme that doesn't mean you don't use it at all. Themes can also help you plan your blog content, write one blog a month based on the theme you have for your content. 12 blog posts a year should seem do-able, right?

What's Next?

So you have your themes laid out, now what do you do next? It is time to start laying down your campaigns. Take a look at all you have compiled and begin to lay in the campaigns that you are going to run this year. Your campaigns should be tied to your themes but they do not necessarily need to just be the theme.

An example of this is with the garden center I work closely with our theme for January is New Year, New Items. The theme for February is Valentine's Day. However, the campaign that we will be focusing on the three weeks leading up to Valentine's Day is our “Say I Love You Longer” campaign! So, on the calendar for the garden center, I penciled in this campaign. I also added a campaign leading up to St. Patrick's Day “Plants Behaving Badly”

Pro Tip:

Add links to the best and worst posts of these campaigns from the previous year. These provide some guidance on what worked and what can be eliminated.

After The Campaign Lay Down!

After the campaign lay down it is time to start filling in the specific posts. Here are a few things to keep in mind when filling in the specific posts, even if you are focusing on a single campaign.

  • Consistency is key to social media plan to post at least once a day on all platforms
  • Make sure all posts are reflective of your current brand standards. Update posts that were used in the past to reflect current brand standards.
  • Only schedule approximately 75-80% of your monthly content in advance leaving about 20% of your posts unscheduled.  This allows for flex, reposting user-generated content, and posts that are timely or ultra-local in nature. This 20% allows you to be current and timely while still having a majority of your content ready to go!
  • Remember the 80/20 rule still applies to all your content posted.
  • Vary your content. Make sure it is edutaining in nature! Need suggestions on what to post? Check out the 9 Suggested Posts for every Business 
  • Evergreen Content is your friend, don't be afraid to build a library of it. If you want some direction on this check out the HubSpot article I linked to above!
  • Schedule your 12 blog posts now and begin writing them when you have the time.
  • Don't forget about video content and social selling opportunities.
  • Are you collaborating with other businesses? Make sure to leave space in the schedule for cross-promotional and collaborative posts. Hop on over to the shop to get your hands on the collaboration toolkit to start planning your partnerships now.
  • Take into account the social media trends we are expecting in 2018. Review this awesome article from Entrepreneur Magazine about the 10 Things to Plan for in 2018. Chances are this will be the subject of my next post!

And then…

So now you have the tips and a few extra minutes! Go start the process of planning your social media calendar for next year now! If you have questions or concerns please feel free to ask and check out the Social Media Tools in the Shop as well!

Ah yes, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!