Social Calendars: How To Do It and What to Post

Like it or not, social media is now considered to be an essential feature of a successful marketing strategy. We don’t recommend joining every social platform, but it’s important to find your best-fit channels and use them consistently. But what to post? Sometimes keeping up your social media presence can feel like feeding an insatiable beast. That’s where some social media strategy comes in!

A strategic social media approach ensures the following:

• You’ll always know what to post

• Your posts will be in service of your short-term and long-term goals

• Your presence will be consistent with your brand style guide

• You’ll create a recognizable brand

• You’ll have less back-and-forth and steps of approval with your social media manager because standards and guidelines will be clearly laid out

Ready? Let’s get started on your own social media strategy!

1. Presence

a. What social media channels are we working with?

b. How many times a week am I posting on each one?

c. What time of day makes sense to post? When will my audience be looking? What time of day will people be most likely to purchase my products or services?

2. Brand Identity

a. What are my business’ core values?

b. What are my short-term goals? Long-term goals? Write down what is true for this moment: you’ll revisit these periodically.

c. How would I describe my visual branding? Colors, feeling, etc.

d. What is the tone of my brand? Who is speaking, and who am I speaking to?

3. Social Media Categories

Your social media categories are topics you post about repeatedly. Look at your answers to 2a and 2b. What types of posts do they inspire? If a core value is sourcing products ethically, maybe you have an Eco Spotlight feature. If a short-term goal is to increase sales to your brick-and-mortar store, maybe you have a Saturday Sale item with a deal that can only be redeemed in-store. Think about what your business stands for and aims to accomplish, then translate that into consistent topics to post about. Establish at least 10—you can come back and edit again after some experimentation.

Social Media Categories: An Example

The following is a real example of social media categories we developed with a Portland coffee shop. When we were finished, we used these categories to determine what to post about at the beginning of each month.

HOW OFTEN TO POST: At least 3 days per week
WHEN TO POST: In the morning to catch people before they've had their coffee. One weekend post, 2 weekday posts.
CORE VALUES: Highest quality coffee, sourced as equitably as possible, spreading coffee education
BIZ GOALS: Increase retail orders, increase foot traffic at new location, spread local awareness
AESTHETIC: Bold, earthy colors
VOICE: Clear, simple, friendly like a trusted and knowledgable barista, limited emojis, we take what we do seriously

CATEGORIES:

• New coffee releases and highlights

• Staff Favorites

• Upcoming releases (sneak peeks), low stock alerts

• Subscription push

• Brewing tips Q&A's

• Roastery Features

  • What the production process is like

  • How we establish consistency in roasting

  • Cupping protocols

  • Sampling new coffees

  • Palate training

• Transparency in sourcing and business practices

• Cafe features

  • Seasonal drinks

  • Vibe shots

  • Merch for sale

  • What’s brewing (drip of the day)

• Staff features

  • Who is who and what do they do?

• Where to get our coffee (local and non-local)

• Supply chain partner features

  • Coffee importers

  • Farms/co-ops we work with

  • Cafe suppliers we work with

• Special circumstances

  • Last-minute closures

  • Holiday hours

  • Event announcements

4. Build Your Principal Calendar

Create a shareable calendar so you never forget to acknowledge an important event, holiday, enrollment period, etc! Then, consult this calendar every time you sit down to plan content for the week or month ahead.

Some dates to add to your business content calendar:

• Annual holidays you want to acknowledge, such as Christmas or Memorial Day.

• Significant business days and anniversaries, such as the founding date of your business, or an annual staff retreat.

• National days, weeks, and months of acknowledgement that are significant to your business, such as National Malbec Day, Small Business Saturday, Black History Month, etc. nationaldaycalendar.com is a great resource for this.

• Product releases, promotions, enrollment periods, and other significant times for your business.

• Staff birthdays if you would like to highlight them on social media.

• Days of significance that resonate with your business and audience. For example, the winery Gonzales Wine Company highlights the birthday of Emiliano Zapata, the namesake behind one of their wine labels, every year. Or, a woo-woo candle company might highlight Mercury in Retrograde or the full moon.

5. The Process Starts Sooner Than You Think

One of the best things you can do when building out a social calendar is to give yourself plenty of time to write captions and create content. A general rule of thumb is to be planning your content at least a month in advance. This gives you enough time where you won’t feel rushed preparing your content, but it will still feel fresh and relevant by the time it’s posted.

Can you post spontaneously in addition to your scheduled posts? Absolutely—please do! But the point is, you won’t have to rely on day-to-day inspiration: you can let it come naturally.

6. Invest in a social media scheduling platform

When you can upload the entire month’s content and schedule it to post, you can spend the month ahead focusing on community engagement. We recommend a platform like Loomly or Hootsuite. Both platforms are incredibly user-friendly, and while they do require a membership, are well worth the low monthly subscription price.

7. Bring it all together.

• Consult your SM Categories to make sure you're balancing types of content.

• Be seasonal. Consider the month ahead, what the weather’s like, what people care about this time of year, and check for national days and holidays.

• Check your feed -- are your images balanced in colors, subjects?

• Make sure you're taking breaks from hard advertising (selling vs sharing).

• Check your principal calendar for dates to acknowledge / product promotion timelines.

• Update your link in bio to include relevant links referenced in captions.

• Uplift your community. Can you repost, share related accounts, or promote relevant resources?

• Engage in quality control: only share high-quality photos and videos to your permanent timeline. Rougher content is great for stories.

Creating social content can be challenging, so don’t feel down on yourself if you’re having a hard time coming up with ideas or knowing what to write. The more consistently you do it though, the easier it will get. But, if you don’t want to do it at all, you can always outsource your social content with us! Contact us and let's talk social calendars.