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149: The Social Media Calendar: Planning Your Way to Consistent Engagement · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome back to another Imperfect Marketing Brief.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, kendra Corman, and today we are talking about the social media calendar planning your way to consistent engagement.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about why this will help keep your marketing game strong and consistent.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, in a digital age, where social media has sort of become pretty crucial and it as a platform for connecting with your audience, having a well-planned calendar can be the key to maintaining a steady and engaging online presence, and that's what's really important.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Now, I will never tell anybody that they need anything, except for, maybe, email marketing, even though I have found someone who didn't really need it that much Only one person, though.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: But so you don't necessarily need social media, right, and if, but if you're not going to use it as a way to reach a large base of people, that's okay.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: What else are you going to do?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: So if you're one of the people that have chosen to use social media, let's jump in and talk about why you should have a social media calendar.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: So, first off, it helps with consistency.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: If you can keep a regular posting schedule, your audience will remain engaged and growing.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: It works the same with, like podcasting, so I release a new podcast every Tuesday and Thursday, right?
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: So people know that if they're at the gym or driving into work that there's going to be new content twice a week and they're not constantly going oh, when is she going to release her next episode?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So, again, that just that regular posting schedule, that consistency really breaks through in marketing and adds up to engagement.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: When you do a social media calendar, you're organizing your thoughts.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: I received an email from a friend of mine once and she's like, oh my gosh, I totally forgot about this special themed month that was so essential to her business, and it was like three days before the end of the month.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: She's like how do I keep it all straight?
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I sent her an Excel document where she could load in her social media calendar and that she could note those on each of the months.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: And then she put it on her calendar so that she would remember to look at her social media planning content calendar, so that she would be reminded on what kind of content to produce that month.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: And then having a content calendar, social media calendar provides a clear framework for when you're analyzing what worked and what didn't work in your social media strategy what got engagement, what didn't, and if it's not themed or grouped or well thought out.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: That analysis is sort of going to be haphazard right.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: So when you're when you're creating a functional social media calendar, there's a couple of things to keep in mind.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So you can use an online scheduling tool like Trello or Asana, or a special social media scheduling tools like Hootsuite, buffer, metrical, which is I use.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: So I use a combination of Asana and Metrical.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I use Asana for planning my tasks in advance and reminding me of when I need to be doing certain things, and if there is a key post that I need to do or a key event that I'm attending and I want to make sure that I get that next post done, I make sure I put that task in Asana.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: But I also use Metrical so that when I'm looking ahead at my month or my week or my year, I can see it right there.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Now, when we talk about building your content calendar, one of the key things that you should have are content pillars.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: What are the things that you talk about?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: What are the pieces of information that you share, like educational posts, testimonials, promotions, sales, whatever that happens to be?
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Those are some of your key topics, and if you're doing educational posts on more than one topic, like I do a lot on email marketing, ai, podcasting and, clearly, social media, because it supports all of those efforts.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: You can break those out as part of your pillars also.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Now, then you want to also think about your schedule, okay, determine the frequency of how often you're going to post and allocate slots for different content types, and feel free to rotate those amongst your different platforms.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: Now I will add my personal special caution Do not sign up for more platforms than you can manage.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: I am guilty as charged.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: I've done it myself.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I watch my clients do it on a regular basis.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: If you can't maintain it, don't use it.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Okay, Now let's talk about measuring and adapting your social media calendar, because, yeah, you could sit down and plan out the whole year.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: If you did that in January of 2020 or December of 2019, things might have changed a little bit come March 2020, right.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: And so when you're thinking about your social media calendar, you need to be flexible enough to move along with it.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: You want to make sure you're looking at your analytics and your engagement.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: You want to adjust your calendar based on what you learn, and don't hesitate to try new things, like I learned that one of the most engaging pieces that I do are when I do the interview posts, and I do little snippets from those.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: That gets the most engagement out of all of my social media posts.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: So I've done more of them and I release three to five of them for every podcast I do.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: That's the type of thing that you want to be looking at and, again, you don't want to necessarily plan the whole year in advance.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Now, if you have some like close, hey, we're going to be closed this day and that day, feel free to schedule those now in whatever scheduling system that you're using.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Again, I use Metricool.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: I'll put an affiliate link in the show notes for you if you're looking to check it out.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I really love it and it's pretty affordable overall as a social media system Scheduler.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: The other thing that I want you to think about when you're doing your social media calendars it's a way to not forget.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Like I mentioned before, you won't forget the themed months or the other pieces that are coming up, because it's a living document that you're using all the time.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And again, social media is meant to be social.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's about interaction.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: That's why I don't want you signing up for more platforms than you can manage, because I do want you out there interacting and responding on social media.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So definitely respond to comments and messages, ask for feedback, ask people to comment and ask questions, put up a story and have them vote.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: There's so many different ways that you can garner engagement on social media and it's very simple.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Whether you're just starting out or going out there to your millions of followers, it's all relevant and if today added value to your marketing toolbox, I'd love for you to subscribe, share and leave a review for the imperfect marketing podcast, for this imperfect marketing brief.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Your engagement really helps me grow and deliver the insights that you need to amplify your marketing strategies, perfectly or imperfectly.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Stay tuned for our next episode, where I'm going to delve into cost effective marketing strategies for bootstrap startups.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: So we're going to be talking about how to keep that budget tight, which is really important as we are in the holiday season here.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you again.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So much for tuning in to another imperfect marketing brief.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: You'll get another one of these next Tuesday.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: In between, there's always my interview episodes.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: See you next time.