How to Build a Content Calendar | Social Media Management

January 18, 2012 Leave a Comment

Many of my clients are concerned about the amount of time they will need to spend creating and searching for content to share with their communities. Writing original content through blog posts can be time consuming. Searching for and curating content to share is also a time investment, especially if done without a plan. My post on using listening tools for brand management and content curation will help organize your content curation. Now it’s time to add a content calendar to your strategy to plan what and when to post to your followers.

What is a Content Calendar?

A content calendar is an plan for publishing content to all your social media streams. The format is up to you. I prefer using a spreadsheet, but a Word document, Google calendar, or any other tool will work. If you’re sharing the calendar with other community managers a shared Google Document or calendar using any of these formats is a useful tool.

Your calendar should contain an overview of the topics, the dates, the content and links to relevant information. Include notes on social objects such as photos or videos as well.

Plan for Creating your Content Calendar

Calendars can be set up yearly (very ambitious) or weekly or monthly. If you decide to use a yearly calendar plan to update and change regularly as ideas and topics come up. Remember nothing is set in stone. At the very least, decide on what you plan to post this week to get started. Then as this planning becomes a habit, look farther into the future.

Deciding on Content

Start by looking at your business calendar. What events occur regularly that you want to incorporate into your strategy? Do you have monthly meetings, are there community events you want to promote, do you have a regular schedule of marketing activities? Add these to your calendar and plot out the dates. Remember to include holidays and special events.

Now search for relevant articles, social objects (videos, photos, infographics) and links to your own website to support the content. If you’re new to infographics, Visual.ly is a great place to start. If your strategy includes a blog post per week, this is where you decide on the general topic for those posts. A word or two, a link to an article and an idea for a supporting graphic should suffice at this point.

The Big Picture

Remember, a content calendar is a “big picture” document. Drill down for details as the dates approach. The most important thing to remember is, whatever you are sharing, keep it social and keep your audience in mind. What will add value to their day? What are they seeking?

Put in the effort up front on creating your calendar and you won’t be scrambling for content or neglecting your social spaces and your community down the line.

How do you decide what to share with your community?

Filed under Business, social media Tagged with , , , ,

Are You Using the 80/20 Rule to Your Advantage?

December 5, 2011 2 Comments

Are you part of the 80%? I’m not talking about an occupy moment here. Instead, I’m referring to the 80/20 rule or the Pareto Principle. Anyone that’s served on a committee or worked on a team class project has seen this rule in action. It goes like this:

80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

Or in business the distribution looks like this:

  • 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers
  • 80% of your complaints come from 20% of your customers
  • 80% of your sales are made by 20% of your sales staff
  • 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people

Named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto in 1906 after observing that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population, he developed the principle by also observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. Since that time the principal has been used in economic theory, optimization efforts and quality control measures. For example, Microsoft noted that by fixing the top 20% of the most highly reported bugs, 80% of the errors would be eliminated (Wikipedia).

How this works with Social Media

Simple. You’ll get the best results and engagement from your efforts if 80% of what do you adds value to someone else, either by providing free information, sharing articles written by others, offering discounts, crowdsourcing ideas or pointing out others’ successes. The other 20% can be about you, your products and your ideas. In other words, talk about yourself only 20% of the time. That’s 2 tweets out of 10.

Do you see this principle at work in your social media efforts? Share your ideas with me here.

Source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Filed under Business, Marketing, social media, Twitter Tagged with , , , ,

Social Media Trends for 2012

November 16, 2011 5 Comments

Now is the time when the media folks start making their predictions for 2012 so I’d better get on board.  Based on the trends I’ve seen in 2011, the conversations I’m having with clients and the widening gap between what we need and what we have, here are my thoughts on what will be trending in social media in 2012.

Content Curation

This was a trend for 2011 and I don’t see it going away. As social spaces become more crowded and filled with noise (and those pesky Klout seekers,) content curators will become a more important part of the stream. Curators that take the time to review the content before passing it on will become a valuable resource for peer reviewed articles. Taking cues from these curators, brands will become part of the de facto news media as they curate and stream relevant content to their followers.

Social Media Analytics

I’m amazed that we still don’t have a good way to track and analyze the data available to us in social media. As social media budgets increase and more time is devoted to these spaces, demand for analyzing all that data will become more pronounced. The problem is we’re still relying on APIs that are flawed and even (as Twitter admits) purposely throttled. Manual tracking is still the most accurate. While tools like Crowdbooster and Hubspot are promising, it is still very difficult to analyze the data and the trends well enough to structure spending decisions around it. I predict we’ll make progress toward a solution in 2012.

Tech Marketing

Many businesses struggle with where to house the social media team. Many land in the marketing department, which can cut them off from access to the technology they need to do their jobs effectively, not to mention run the risk of becoming too “marketing” in their messaging. As social media becomes more integrated into business I believe we’ll see an integration of marketing and IT. In my corporate position I’m housed with IT, which I believe is crucial. I have access to designers, SEO analysts, programmers and WordPress developers, so if I need a Facebook tab, help with optimizing a blog or the latest keyword research, I can just turn around and ask. Many social media professionals are housed in marketing departments, siloed away from IT functions. Some are dealing with an IT department housed offsite or even overseas. Time differences and lack of access to data make it difficult for these professionals to work quickly and effectively so I think we’ll start to see a convergence of IT and marketing as we increase our social technology.

Decentralized Social Media

Rather than siloed in one department (marketing or IT) I envision social media becoming part of many roles in business. For example, expect to see more customer service departments using Twitter with accounts like @name_brandname monitoring the brand with keyword analysis and intervening when needed. These folks will report to a social media strategist overseeing a team of tweeters. This is a move toward what I call the social transformation of business. Although I’m sure I didn’t coin the term, it describes a paradigm shift in the way businesses will organize in the next several years. As consumers demand less traditional marketing, more access to immediate feedback and better service, businesses will answer the call by incorporating social principals into their practices.

These are my predictions. What did I miss?

Filed under Business, Marketing, social media Tagged with , , , ,

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