Do you have a social media team in your organization? What is its main goal? In many organizations, a social media team creates content for the company’s social media pages, monitors their activities, and keeps the audience engaged.
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Whether the team is working remotely or in-house, it needs a collaboration tool to help create a content plan. A great team leader should pick the appropriate tool to bring the team’s synergy together and improve efficiency.
Nothing works better than a calendar tool that allows creating a plan for social media activities and viewing them in a calendar view. Or rather, sharing them in a calendar view.
If this is what you are looking for, this article contains important insights.
What is a Social Media Content Plan?
Social media marketers are tasked to map out a strategy to keep the social media platforms running and yield positive brand promotion and marketing results. New social media accounts do not succeed immediately; they require a good content plan and strategies in a calendar view.
Great marketers monitor the activities in the calendar patiently until there are positive results. There is no better way to explain a social media content plan than mentioning strategies for creating great content and calendars for monitoring results.
A company with a team of social media marketers should use the appropriate calendar tool, as mentioned, to assign tasks and manage activities successfully.
Choosing a Shared Calendar for Social Media activities
Before planning any social media content in a calendar view, the company should choose the best shared calendar for teams. Fortunately, many apps and platforms will help the company achieve its planning goals. Here are important considerations to make:
- Synching with other tools – The best-shared calendar should automatically sync with other tools in the company, but it could also be done manually. For instance, Microsoft office calendar tools are compatible with many ecommerce platforms.
- Online presence – Working in the digital world requires tools that are cloud-based. A good team calendar for planning social media content and activities should be available online through an app or a platform.
- Collaborating and sharing features – When looking for a team’s calendar, ensure that it allows sharing of created activities. This way, you can assign your social media team all necessary tasks and everyone can view the shared tasks.
- Track progress – One big reason to use a calendar to plan social media activities is to view and monitor progress. Hence, your preferred calendar tool should have a clear dashboard to help you view and monitor all activities easily.
- Data security – Lastly, let’s mention data security. The calendar tool you choose should assure that all data entered on the platform or shared among users is safe and secure.
Creating a Shared Calendar for Social media Activities
As mentioned, a shared calendar is the most appropriate for social media content planning. Hence, the first step is to create an appropriate that will allow teams to assign tasks, schedule meetings, and collaborate in many other ways.
Creating a shared calendar is easy for both newbies and experienced users. Here is an example of how to do it:
- Choose an appropriate shared calendar – With advanced technology, anyone who is looking for a calendar to plan social media activities will find one easily. There is an option of app or online platforms. Research and go for a brand that will work for you well.
- Initiate the process to create a shared calendar – Regardless of the platform you have chosen, you will get a starting point to create a new calendar. Administration rights are needed to create a sharable calendar for your social media activities.
- Customize the calendar – Naming the calendar appropriately is essential. For instance, you could call it “company social media activities.” Other customizations include options such as color coding, date setting, and file types that can be shared through the calendar.
- Share the calendar – A group calendar is visible to different members of the team whom it is shared with. This is the point to share it with your social media activities teams and give them the necessary rights.
- Get it ready – The social media activities team calendar is now ready for use. It is paramount to test its functionality by creating test activities for the teams and asking them to react appropriately.
Common Social Media Activities to View in the Calendar
Why do social media marketers prefer to use a calendar view to plan content? Calendars are organized and give a clear view of tasks assigned, to who they are assigned, tasks in progress, and completed tasks.
To make good use of a calendar when planning social media activities, it is good to know the social media planning activities you can achieve with a shared calendar.
- Create a timed series of activities
Do you want your social media pages to feel like a movie series? Well, you can create a daily, weekly, or monthly series of posts. It is a strategy to keep the audience glued and craving more information.
A calendar view is important for all scheduled activities. The entire team should see the activities and whom they are assigned on the calendar. It is also prudent to welcome new ideas to improve the activities.
The best time series activities start on platforms where interactions with fans are possible. It could start with a clip that will continue at a later date. To avoid forgetting, setting notifications on the calendar is very crucial as well as polishing the content before the due date.
- Repurpose the content
Social media marketers should plan to repurpose their content at a future date and a calendar will help them to plan. After posting a new article, it is good to extract information on it and repurpose it for a future date. Just key in the activity on the calendar and assign it to the team to act when it is due.
Unfortunately, social media is jam-packed with content (texts, images, videos, and memes among others). Friends, family, businesses, and organizations post something new every second. But with a plan to repurpose, you will keep your social media pages active throughout.
Fortunately, a professional social media marketing team can repurpose any content. For instance, a text post can be repurposed into a video or meme and so forth.
If you repurpose all of the content that is posted, you will have a log of content to post in the future, right? Make sure it is well scheduled on a calendar and the task is assigned to the right person to prepare well for the posting.
- Running Giveaway Contests
Have people ever resisted freebies? Absolutely not.
One of the best social media marketing strategies is running giveaway contests once in a while. Because this should not be a random activity but rather a planned activity, the use of a calendar view is crucial.
If the contests are scheduled well and assigned to the right team members, they will yield positive results within a short time. Social media experts claim that Instagram pages with content receive likes and comments to the tunes of thousands. It is easy to plan and schedule a contest with the following tips:
- Items or services to give to fans and participants
- Terms and conditions that cover you legally
- A creative way for members to participate or enter
- Regularly use influencers
Social media takeover is a great strategy to give new life to your company’s social media pages. You can plan when to release the account to influencers and enter it in your social media activities calendar.
These influencers usually take over your Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook page for 12 to 24 hours. If you schedule such activities well and ensure that they are not forgotten, it will definitely bring new fans and followers onboard.
It is good to assign such a takeover to one of the team members to monitor the activities of the influencer and plan to repurpose the content or know what the next influencer should focus on.
- Plan to team up with other brands
Teaming up and marketing brands together are called co-marketing. It is a win-win situation for both brands as their followers and fans merge. However, it should be a periodical activity that requires a lot of planning.
A great social media team should plan well for the strategy. As such, it is good to use a calendar view to plan this strategy alongside others discussed in this article. Furthermore, it should be assigned to the best team members to coordinate with the other brand.
The best approach is to partner with a company with similar fans and followers to share common content while not competing against each other. Both brands should have a win-win situation at the end of the project.
- Going Live Regularly
Live videos are fun to follow, it is plain and simple. Many people cannot explain why, but they are always curious to follow until the end. However, a company cannot have live videos every day, so planning is crucial.
Just look at your calendar video for social media activities and see where you can slot live videos. You may have one per week but a maximum of three, according to experts. Some brands do them more regularly, especially if they are part of the series of activities we already mentioned.
Live videos should be allocated to the best team members who will come up with the best ideas such as Q&A, responding to fans’ comments, or introducing a new product. It is just an amazing strategy when it is given an innovative and compelling approach.
Sometimes, you can bring in a professional influencer to conduct the live video on your behalf.
- Interview an influential figure
Another great social media strategy you should have on your calendar is an interview with an influential or prominent figure. It could be a celebrity endorsing your brand or a professional in your line of business.
Regardless, this strategy will bring many followers on board. If possible, it should be part of the series of activities, and the interview should be promoted and highlighted well. It is the work of the marketing team to promote the interview on time as scheduled on the calendar.
Twitter and Facebook are the best platforms to conduct a live interview, and the recorded video can be shared on other social media platforms. It could also be repurposed and reposted as a new product in the future.
The reason why interviews are powerful and attract a lot of following is that they are live and authentic. That is why the interview should be kept as professional as possible.
- Create attractive memes
Memes take advantage of trending issues to create humor. Brands should not be afraid of such a strategy. Therefore, a social media marketing team should create innovative and humorous memes that are not offensive to other brands or anyone else.
Because they should not be incorporated all the time, it is crucial to plan for them well on the calendar. The good thing is that there is always something trending that one can use to create a meme. It is also good to schedule their posting well.
Some memes are created by graphic designers rather than social media marketing teams. Hence, they should be assigned on time and supervised well to pass the intended message.
- Creating Periodical Tutorials
A big number of the audience on social media is still looking for tutorials and “how to” content to help them on a daily basis. Always create tutorials related to your business. For instance, a business that sells DIY tools should create videos on how to make different crafts at home.
Again, these plans for the strategy should find their way onto the calendar tool. Plan to release the tutorial periodically, for instance weekly or bi-weekly to give the team enough time to prepare.
If the team cannot prepare the tutorial, you can outsource the tasks to professionals and assign the appropriate team members to follow up and ensure that everything is ready on time.
According to experts, “how to” guides and tutorials that are shared on social media regularly are more effective in bringing in new potential customers than those shared on other platforms such as video streaming platforms.
- Run a poll
Followers and the general social media audience love sharing their opinions through polls. They will rarely overlook your Q&A requests. But you cannot always bombard the fans with polls.
So, plan this strategy well and use a calendar view to schedule it. It could be once a month to give the team enough time to prepare, collect the data, and analyze it. Always remember to schedule a date to give results to the audience.
Some polls are better done by professionals to make sense. All the activities from following up with the professional poll company to conducting the polls and giving results should be scheduled appropriated on the calendar and assigned to the appropriate members.
- Interacting and responding to followers
Creating time to respond and interact with fans and followers of your social media platform is essential. This is a task that should be entered clearly on the calendar and assigned to the right team members.
An interactive social media platform is as vibrant as one that applies all the strategies we’ve discussed above.
Final Words on Social Media Activities
Using a calendar view to manage your social media activities is essential. As a matter of fact, it is a must for any brand that wants to leverage marketing through social media. Whether you are new to the strategy or otherwise, the insights shared will be invaluable to you.
