Determine Your Social Media Platforms

Though it may seem like a basic step, identifying your social media channels is crucial for optimizing your posting schedule and enhancing your marketing efforts. Often overlooked, this initial phase requires taking a moment with your social media team to address a fundamental question: Which social media platforms should we prioritize?

To make this decision, consider the different formats available, such as feed posts, stories, reels, polls, ads, and shoppable posts. Evaluate these options to identify where your efforts will be most effective.

Ask yourself: Is there a platform that doesn’t align well with our audience? Alternatively, is there a popular platform with our target demographic that we haven’t fully leveraged? Are there any neglected social media accounts for our company that need attention?

By determining where your audience is most engaged, you can concentrate your efforts on those key platforms. This strategic focus enables the development of platform-specific content strategies, ensuring that your posts—be it a poll on one platform or a live stream on another—resonate with your audience effectively.

Perform a Comprehensive Social Media Audit

A key benefit of establishing a social media content calendar is the ability to measure progress, making it crucial to understand your starting point. When auditing your current social profiles, take note of the following:

Your top-performing posts on each platform
The types of content that receive the highest engagement
The peak activity times of your audience
Performance comparison between different content formats (e.g., images vs. videos, company blogs vs. external articles)
The effectiveness of evergreen content compared to timely content
The demographic makeup of your audience across various social media channels
The current status of each social platform

If your audit reveals a lack of clarity on what’s effective, don’t worry! Your content calendar will help you track and report data, enabling continuous improvement over time.

Determine the elements to monitor with your social media content calendar.

With a clear strategy for your chosen channels and an understanding of your current post performance, it’s time to build your social media content calendar. If you’ve utilized our free template, you probably have a solid foundation for tracking the basics. To enhance this further, incorporate metadata in your social media calendar tool to monitor additional aspects—such as the hashtags you employ, the channels you’re utilizing, the exact posting times, target demographics, pertinent @-mentions, and other relevant details.

Determine Your Posting Frequency

While developing your content, establish how often you’ll publish posts and how far ahead you’ll prepare them. Understanding your posting frequency will aid in managing your workload and streamlining the content creation process.
If you haven’t done so yet, it’s also essential to create an asset library.

Consider if your posts often include images and videos, and identify their sources. If you work with a design team, planning your posting frequency allows you to submit requests in advance, preventing last-minute pressure. If you rely on stock footage, having an organized asset library will simplify the process of finding the right visuals.

Establish a Review Schedule

Now is the time to develop and synchronize a review schedule with your social media team. Determine who will be responsible for reviewing posts and the timing for these reviews. Assess whether posts require approval from the brand or legal teams. Utilize your social calendar to create structured processes and maintain a centralized record of all content reviews.

Monitoring and Analyzing Published Content

Leverage your content calendar as a comprehensive repository of historical posts, offering insights into past trends. Take advantage of this resource to retrospectively examine engagement metrics, incorporating social media analytics to gauge performance.

Delve into crucial indicators such as initial likes and impressions within the first hour of publication. Additionally, scrutinize audience interaction metrics for noteworthy observations. Utilize this analytical approach to discern effective strategies and iteratively enhance your social media campaigns.