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To-Do List: Make A Content Calendar

Marketing has always been important for small and medium-sized businesses (SMB). In this digital age, it is just as important to implement social media into marketing structures.  Integrating a strong, reliable online presence into your business can increase your brand awareness, sales and number of customers. To better understand the benefits of a strong online presence, CMO Council released these statistics:

  • Globally, 46% of consumers with a digital device used social media to help make purchase decisions
  • 54% of SMBs have generated consumers from social media
  • 71% of internet users are more likely to purchase from a brand they follow on social media

So what is the best, most organized way to make sure your business becomes part of these statistics? Create a Content Calendar.

Here at JUMP, we definitely consider ourselves as content calendar advocates. It definitely made my life a lot easier at my previous internship and it doesn’t hurt that I like the alliteration of “content calendar.” This systematic approach maps out your social media marketing plan for up to three months at a time and allows you to organize your thoughts, establishes the type of content your business will post and creates a cohesive and reliable presence that will draw customers to your site.

Tips to Create the Perfect Content Calendar

1.    Brainstorm Topics

Write down any ideas or topics you would like to talk to your customer about via social media. This is your chance to explore all topics relevant to your company and industry as well as give the opportunity to showcase your brand to potential customers.

2.    Organize Topics Into Categories

These categories include defining your company’s mission and goals, informing about services, a behind-the-scenes look at your company, newsworthy updates about your field of business, noteworthy employees etc. Establishing “categories” allows you to vary your day-to-day content and cover all of the important aspects of your business.

3.    Assign Categories to Days of the Week

This is where the reliability and cohesiveness of your content calendar comes into play. By giving each day a category, you can keep your content consistent and hopefully give your audience something to look forward to. A great tactic to capitalize on is hashtags. You could establish something like #MissionMondays or participate in common hashtags such as #FlashBackFriday and #ThrowBackThursdays (better known as #TBT) in order to stir up anticipation.

4.    Leave Some Wiggle Room

Things happen and sometimes more important news may need to be shared instead of what you originally had planned for that day. The beauty of a content calendar is that it is not set in stone. If your business has an unexpected occurrence or a newsworthy announcement, share it!

5.    Google Calendar

The Google Calendar is a great tool to set up and organize your content calendar. It allows you to color coordinate your categories, create sub categories where you can add descriptions about the topic, and easily access your calendar across desktop, tablet and mobile devices.

Once you develop an organized social media game plan through your calendar, you can then focus your time on other common goals of social media, such as gaining followers, collaborating with influencers, and increasing your “likes.”

Now go forth and get to work on your content calendar!

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