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December 6, 2021 Content Chat Recap: How To Build An Effective Social Media Content Calendar For 2022

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How will your marketing team use social media in 2022? As we continue to adapt to a primarily digital-first life, social media channels can be vital in helping brands (re)engage their communities and provide new content experiences.

The reality for many teams, though, is that they are unable to drive meaningful results from their social media activities. There are many reasons for this, often including a lack of team resources, competing priorities, or a misunderstanding of how to best engage a social media community.

An essential way to address this problem is to build a social media calendar that strategically balances your team’s priorities and provides a roadmap of content for your social media channels.

In this #ContentChat we explain how to build an effective social media content calendar with digital marketer Brandie McCallum (@lttlewys). Read the full recap below, where we explain what to include in a social media content calendar, how often you should update your content calendar, our favorite tools for social media management, and more. If you’re looking for further support in setting your social media strategy, check out our past blog post that details how a social media audit can improve your content strategy.

Q1: What should a useful social media content calendar include? Do you have a favorite template you can share?

A social media content calendar should only include the necessary information your team needs to execute its social media strategy. Some teams document only a few details, while others detail a range of key information.

Brandie recommends tracking hashtags and images in your social calendar.

Erika’s social media calendar details the type of content that should be posted on a specific channel at a specific time. Download her template calendar from this blog post.

The community shares a few other details you can document in your social media calendar, including the goals, team to-do’s and status updates, links shared in your social media posts, and handles or accounts to tag in your content.

However you structure your calendar, ensure that you plan time and resources to monitor for engagement, reply to your community content, and engage in “social” activities that can be impossible to plan for.

Q2: How often should a social media content calendar be updated? How far ahead can and should you schedule out your content (quarterly, weekly, etc)?

Start with an annual planning cycle to draft the content calendar and establish your year-long goals and KPIs.

Each quarter, update your calendar to reflect social media campaigns for those months.

Monthly or weekly, identify third-party content to curate for your social media communities.

Daily, review your content to ensure it is still appropriate.

Q3: How should marketers start to build their social media content calendars? What initial steps should they take?

Start building your social media content calendar by conducting a social media audit. This will identify the content types, topics, and hashtags that you should use and the best channels to reach your community on.

Next, review your business goals and create complementary social media goals.

Create an initial calendar with content placeholders for known holidays/days of significance, planned company news, and general evergreen content.

If you run into challenges when building your social media content calendar, ask a colleague or industry expert for help.

The process gets easier each time you do it, and a social media content calendar is vital for ensuring your team’s success.

Q4: What social media content KPIs should marketers use to inform their 2022 planning?

Map your social media content KPIs to the goals you set for your channels. We recommend you primarily focus on engagement metrics like click-throughs, shares, comments, and sales. However, traditional “vanity” metrics like the number of followers and volume of posts may also be helpful to track (with less importance placed on them).

Erika uses UTMs on her social media posts to track how the content drives community members through the customer journey. She shares an article below that explains how you can use UTMs.

Q5: What challenges do teams often face when building or maintaining a social media content calendar, and how do you recommend teams overcome these challenges?

Marketers face many challenges when building and maintaining a social media content calendar. These include details falling through the cracks or a lack of coordination across teams (overcommunicate)…

Getting distracted in your day-to-day execution (use a calendar)…

Staying consistent in posting on social media (follow your calendar)…

Adding operational hurdles that detract from the team’s ability to succeed (assess your social media roadblocks)…

Using an inconsistent voice or style in social media content (create a style guide)…

Creating engaging visuals for social media content (use tools like Canva)…

And treating social media as an afterthought (integrate social media into all planning conversations).

Q6: How do you recommend that teams integrate their social media content calendar with other marketing team trackers or planning hubs?

Break down organizational silos to run an effective and efficient content marketing program. One way to do this for social media is to include the social media calendar as a tab in your overall content calendar.

Ensure that your social media goals ladder up to your larger marketing/business goals. Highlight these goals across key planning documents.

Share a weekly ‘posts to come next week’ email or calendar invite that highlights the upcoming content priorities.

Q7: What tools do you use to assist with your social media planning and management?

The community shares their go-to tools for social media planning and management below. Did we miss your favorite social media tool? Let us know what it is and how it boosts your workflow in the comments.

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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