Planning a Content Calendar: How to Never Run Out of Social Media Content Ideas

At Hyperchat Social, we are experts at filling up a content calendar with ideas and social media strategies that are sure to meet our clients' goals and expectations when it comes to marketing. Since this is quite literally our full-time job, we have developed strategies that help us time and time again come up with content calendars time and time again for all of our clients in their different verticals.

Planning ahead for a month at a time can feel like a daunting task, but you will thank us later. Consistency is key, but consistency can be so much more difficult without a plan. If your strategy is to post when you remember to post, you are definitely setting yourself up to fail. Planning content ahead of time can help ensure you never forget that St. Patrick's Day is coming up, you do not have any major typos, and you can be proactive when gathering the materials you need to post.

There are quite a few things that can make the content planning journey easier.

Define Goals

One of the most important steps when planning a content calendar is establishing your goals for social media. Are you wanting to garner more engagement? Are you wanting to grow your following? Are you wanting to educate your audience online? Are you wanting to drive more traffic to your website? Are you wanting to create a lead funnel online?

By asking yourself these questions, you can start to get a feel of the types of content you should be posting. If you are wanting to see an increase in engagement, you would want to have posts that pose a question or warrant a response on social. An example would be a this or that post, posting about a current event or trending topic to get your followers talking in the comments. If you are wanting an increase in followers, try posting a giveaway that prompts social media users to tag friends and follow the account to see that increase.

The way you plan your social media calendar should revolve around these goals that you have set for your business!

Create your Calendar

The next step would be to establish your calendar template. The easiest way to do this is some kind of spreadsheet. Whether it be an online Google Sheet that is easily accessible to your team or just an Excel sheet will work. It is all about finding what works best for you and your team to get the job done.

Once you have the template created, you must decide the frequency at which you will be posting on all platforms. You want to have a consistent presence without being overwhelming to your followers. We would either suggest a 3 post per week schedule or a 5 post per week schedule, but also incorporating stories into your strategy to keep your audience's eyes on your page. Whether you do 3 posts a week, 5 posts a week, or even a daily post at 7 days a week is all up to you and your capacity to create and schedule the posts.

The best thing about content planning is the fact that you can block an afternoon off to plan out your content once a month, and then you don't have to think about it the rest of the month! You can focus on doing what you do best - running your business!

Content Planning

There are a few different ways to actually begin filling in your social media calendar. The first step I always take is taking a look at any holidays/national days that are coming up that would be relevant to the industry or your followers! There are lots of fun holidays each month that can serve as a wonderful way to increase your engagement. Some of our favorites include National Margarita Day and National Dog Day. If you would like to download a full calendar of fun national days, we have one available on the Hyperchat Social website here.

Once you have your calendar filled out with the national days and holidays coming up, you can start to fill in the gaps. What you fill the gaps in the calendar with, all depends on the goals you set for social media. If you are struggling to fill the gaps in your social calendar, you can always post:

- Reviews

- Testimonials

- Staff highlights

- Behind the scenes content

- Your latest blog post

- Industry news

- Tutorials

- Industry education

- Fact or myth?

- This or that?

- Customer showcases

- Quote from an industry leader

- Answer a FAQ

These styles of posts mostly fall into the category of evergreen content or content that you can really post anytime. Another way to source content is through repurposing content that you have already created. Repurposing content is basically using content that you have already posted to make something new. Whether that is changing the format of the information or optimizing the format for a different medium, the content goes under some kind of major transformation. While it may seem similar to reposting, it is not. Repurposing is like reincarnation for the content you have forgotten about—It gives the content new life.

If you have longer-form videos, you can always chop them up into smaller clips and share on social as a series. Or if you have an eBook, you can take the points and turn those into a graphic series as well.

Scheduling Content

Once you have your content all laid out in your content calendar, all that is left to do is schedule it out! There are plenty of websites online that allow you to schedule content out in advance, like Hootsuite. There is also a future scheduling feature on the Facebook platform that you could utilize.

Building a content calendar can seem like a daunting task - and that's because it is! If you would rather leave the social strategy to the professionals, we don't blame you. Click here to schedule a free consultation to start Turning Social Into Sales!