Planning your social media content always pays out. We’ve already covered the components of a social media plan for your event marketing. So, today’s question is how to develop a media and event schedule?
To start, you need to understand the benefits of a social media plan. In other words, why would you spend the time to develop one? Essentially, is it worth it?
Then, you can find a step-by-step guide on how to develop a media and event schedule, along with several strategies, tips, and tools to organize your work easily.
Benefits of Scheduling Your Social Media Content
According to Marketo, companies usually face one of the following two social marketing problems:
- The marketing team cannot think of anything to post, or
- They have too much material to post; which is overwhelming for the audience
A social editorial calendar can solve both these issues at once. And here’s why!
Maintains A Consistent Cadence
The key to success in marketing is setting expectations with your audience and maintaining them. For instance, you cannot post for ten days consistently on Facebook and then disappear for three days. Your audience will expect updates. So, if you decide to “go incognito,” you’ll lose credibility.
With a social media content calendar, you can avoid this issue. More precisely, you can spread out your content evenly. When you have more content than needed, you can postpone the posting for when you lack materials in the future.
Coordinates Your Team
Another essential issue is coordinating your team. It’s not easy to get all the PR, demand generation, content, SEO, and PPC teams on the same page, especially if you are a giant company.
With a social media content calendar, you can give all teams the same access simultaneously. They would weigh in on social posts and perform the needed updates and changes before posting.
Helps You Enforce Rules
You can choose to enforce different rules when it comes to your editorial calendar. For instance, you can go for the 411 rule, stating you need four educational, entertaining posts for every one soft promotion and one hard promotion.
You can also choose the 5-3-2 rule of social media sharing, the Rule of Thirds, or the 20-to-1 Rule. Either way, you need to plan ahead to keep on track with the ratios, and a social media content plan is just the right way to do so.
Now, one thing to understand is that social media content has short lifecycles. Information today moves rapidly. So, you and your team need to find a way to leave space for real-time updates.
Even though you cannot follow a strict and limiting schedule, you still need to plan at least a part of your social media content. In turn, the key to success is a balance between an enforcing plan and flexibility for real-time engagement.
Now that you get why you need a social media content calendar, along with several strategies, here’s what else you need to consider regarding your posting strategy.
How to Develop a Media and Event Schedule?
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to develop a media and event schedule.
Plan the Events for The Upcoming Year
It would be best to always start by identifying what you have set for the upcoming year. At this point, you should consider any launches, content you wish to reproduce from the past year, conferences, or significant cultural events.
We would suggest starting with the broadest plan, the yearly social media content plan, and breaking it down into more details.
The annual social media content plan should be the most flexible one. You should include all events and launches you have planned and the sharing ratio you wish to enforce. However, keep in mind, you can always come back and rearrange these plans.
The monthly plan should be more precise than the annual one. Here, you can also add the monthly plans and goals. Also, feel free to come up with some experiments for the month. At this point, you can chart your strategy. Still, you need to leave some space for unexpected updates.
Your weekly social media content plan can also include some blog posts and pre-prepared images. At this point, you can schedule some reshared posts, along with new content.
Finally, your daily social media content plan can also include promotion plans for the upcoming day. You can also use some tools to schedule the posting, such as Sprout Social or CoSchedule.
Determine the Types of Updates
Onto the second step; today, there’s a wide variety of updates you can post on your social media platforms. For example, Buffer’s founder Joel introduced five main types of Tweets:
- Links
- Images
- Quotes
- Retweets
- Questions or comments of your own
After you identify the types of updates for your business, he proposes to choose a “staple” update, the one that will make up for the majority of your shares. Then, you can schedule four “staple” updates, and one different type of Tweets, following the 411 rule.
Identify the Perfect Posting Frequency
Each entity should determine its “perfect posting frequency.” What works for one company and its team doesn’t have to work for another. So, after deciding the general framework or what you plan to post, you need to set out its frequency.
Buffer performed an in-depth analysis regarding the best frequency of posting for the top social media sites. Essentially, they came up with the following formula of posting:
- Five to 20 Twitter posts per day
- At least two Facebook posts per day
- At least one LinkedIn post per day
Final Thought on How to Develop A Media and Event Schedule
As you can see, there is not one straightforward answer on how to develop a media and event schedule. It’s a subjective formula you need to determine for your company. Your marketing team needs to consider different components of your work and act accordingly.
You can also find ways to incorporate all steps as mentioned above, strategies, and tips to facilitate your organization.
