If you have a business, you need to develop and increase your online presence for the success of your business. The digitised world is constantly expanding and changing, so in order to keep up, employing some tactics to ensure you stay organised to help deal with social media platforms is crucial. The biggest pro tip for managing your online presence is through a social media or content calendar. Social media calendars are an effective way of staying organised and on top of your game. Instead of going through past emails from a client for an event you have to promote on a particular day, you can just jot it down in or log it in your social media calendar. This way you have everything in one place and - for all you forgetful folks - you can even get reminders!
There are so many online platforms a business may have to manage, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, online blogs and more. Having a social media plan helps you as a business owner so you can concentrate on the bigger aspects of your business. Here is a step by step process to help you get there:
Step 1: Create a Social Media Calendar Template
The World Wide Web is huge… and I mean HUGE. As of March 2019, approximately 1.6 trillion websites on the internet exist. That’s a lot of information to keep track of and organise! When you’re trying to organise your own business and log all relevant information, it is important to have a fixed format that you can always rely on, so your documents don’t get lost among the sea of content being uploaded. Having fixed templates helps you keep track of the content you need to post. It also helps you organise the dates and times for when to publish campaigns or content. Once you have your template ready, it will be easier for your copywriters or content writers to focus on potential topics and posts. If you are not sure on how to make one, try downloading one of these templates.
Step 2: Bridge Communication/ Content Gaps
In order to publish worthy content pieces online, thorough research is required to ensure your work is headed in the right direction. Having a social media calendar gives your copywriters plenty of time to research on a topic before its deadline. Depending on the frequency at which you create and publish, having no planner or calendar can result in heaps of missing content, especially if your team consists of more than one employee working on media marketing content. Informing all employees on how they should operate the calendar is vital so no important files get lost and you avoid any miscommunication.
Make sure all downloads for content are stored in corresponding folders. This ensures your content writers are saving all their work, communication is kept open and all processes are updated so no double-ups or mistakes occur. The worst thing to experience in an office is having to search for data that you know already exists somewhere in your database. Sort everything out by client/topic and make folders for each relevant material. This way everything has a ‘home’ and nothing gets lost. Google Drive is a great option for office cloud computing.
Step 3: Plan Ahead
Last minute ideas may be exceptional sometimes, however you can’t rely on great last minute content ideas and expect continuous growth in your business. They say ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day…’ So it is essential to safeguard all your content and ideas into one place to avoid missing deadlines or submitting sloppy work.
Having a list of future ideas will also give your copywriters/content writers ample time to let their creative juices flow and to churn out quality, engaging and insightful content! Planning ahead ensures you do not have to face the horror of possibly missing a critical deadline, or worse… falling behind schedule and having to answer to your paying clients. Yikes! Planning and researching ahead also makes sure your copywriters have enough time to double check their work, edit thoroughly and make sure there are no grammatical errors. I mean, you wouldn’t take advice from someone who can’t nail the difference between ‘there’, ‘their’ and ‘they’re’, would you? How embarrassing...
Step 4: Schedule and Set Reminders
Being random hardly works, especially now when there is an endless pool of data and content all over the internet. Posting content at random or uneven times can easily result in your content being lost like a needle in a haystack. Schedule your posts according to when you can get the best online reach. You may need to conduct proper research in order to determine the best platform and time for publishing/ promoting content. There are various platforms that allow you to analyse insights or user engagements. Different pieces generally have different mediums, attract different audiences making certain dates and times more suitable for promotion. Without a proper schedule you may end up overwhelming one platform with too much content and another with too little.
Keeping an eye out on your schedule from time to time ensures that you are promoting your business the right way. If you are a busy bee, sometimes scheduling itself isn’t enough. Juggling so many balls in the air can lead to you eventually missing one and having everything come tumbling down. Set reminders to get alerts for important work deadlines. Sometimes one just isn’t enough. You can even set weekly or daily reminders to complete tasks.
Bottom Line
Public worthy content via the right online platform can be the most powerful tool when it comes to the social media game. Having a calendar to brainstorm your great ideas is the most effective way of executing your work. There are so many factors to consider when using the internet and social media to increase your online business presence. It can sometimes get too overwhelming when you’re trying to manage multiple documents and co-ordinate people all at once, especially if you are dealing with various clients or focusing on developing and growing your business within the industry. Which is why at Anchor Digital, we have a team of trained marketing professionals to kick start and grow your online presence exponentially. Contact us today to see how we can help you!
