7 reasons you should use a content calendar for your business
As a small business owner or entrepreneur, you’ve probably heard that you need to have a content calendar for creating consistent content for your business—but like most things you should implement in your business, it might have fallen lower on the to-do list than it should.
If you’re still hedging on whether or not you should get that content calendar on track or not, I’m here to give you the breakdown on why it’s important for your business.
What is a content calendar?
A content calendar is a working document or spreadsheet used to pre-plan and schedule what and when you'll post across which platforms for the month. A really detailed content calendar is best for large teams, with details about the week, day, and even sometimes the time of day of each post if need be.
A content calendar is also used to plan when and which content will be shared, manage campaigns, and track deadlines for yourself and your team.
You can find a content calendar typically built using one of three different formats: printed paper, spreadsheets, or software services.
A content calendar can sound like a big commitment at first, but rest assured it’s worth it and you will not regret it in the future!
So why should I use one?
1. Save time by pre-planning
Having a social media or content calendar lets you plan ahead, batch your work, avoid multitasking, and keep your platforms from going stagnant while you search for inspiration on the fly.
Really successful social media feeds involve posting multiple times a week—or day, depending on the social media platform—but that doesn’t mean you’re actively posting all the time.
By pre-planning the content, you’re able to batch schedule up to 30 days in advance, which means your social media will be active without your constant attention. So you can get back to actually running your business.
2. Post consistently
Whether you’re trying to increase Instagram followers, Facebook likes, or bump up the reach of your latest post—the first tip from experts is always to “post consistently.” There’s simply no shortcut around it.
Consistently showing up with engaging content in your audience’s feed is the key to reaching them on social media.
By engaging, it increases your organic reach (the views/clicks/engagement you get via unpaid content) on each platform’s algorithm. So your posts have an opportunity to be seen by new eyes, and new people will start following your brand.
Making genuine real connections with a growing audience is the key to success.
Having a social media calendar and pre-populating your social media feeds ahead of time allows you to post consistently and gives you more time daily for engagement and to build relationships.
3. Make fewer spelling mistakes and mistakes in general
Planning your posts ahead of time means that you can work on your content on your own time and when your brain is at its best.
When you’re creating content in your best thinking time, you have more time to think about the text, fact-check the information, or even making sure you have the correct names/organizations ect. This makes it a lot easier when you’re working days or weeks in advance.
A social media calendar is the best way to avoid embarrassing situations by planning your content in advance.
4. Accomplish more with your social strategies
When you’re posting content on the fly without a pre-planned calendar in place, you are posting without a strategy.
A social media strategy is a plan around how each of your posts provides valuable information to your audience—and more importantly, how that content relates back to your business.
Are those posts on Facebook providing the information your audience needs? Is an instagram contest going to be the best place to reach new followers? Is it time to branch into a new platform? (TikToc, anyone?)
With a calendar in place, you know that the time you’re spending on social media is making a difference to your business.
5. Don’t miss out on relevant moments
Pre-planning your content and looking at a calendar ahead of time will give you more opportunities to include big events, like the Super Bowl, or smaller hashtag holidays you might not think about like National nachos day.
Being able to target events on the calendar provides an opportunity for you to reach new people you might not otherwise come across without paying to boost your posts. It’s important to think carefully about these events ahead of time so that your content can be crafted in a way that feels natural and not just taking advantage of a trending hashtag.
Another bonus? Having major holidays, events and national celebration days covered leaves you free to engage with anything that crops up on a day-to-day basis without feeling pressured to take advantage of everything.
6. Make better quality content
Better content = better engagement. In today’s world it’s not unusual for a single social media post to have a whole team behind it: writers, designers, video editors, photographers.
Extra hands being involved means that dropping a quick post last minute isn’t always feasible.
A social media calendar helps you do all the work ahead of time, which looks better on everyone!
Bonus: having that long-range vision means you’re able to batch create content, which costs you less in terms of production time. This means consistent quality over time—which means building trust in the quality of your platforms over time.
7. Track what works, what doesn’t and how to improve it
“What gets scheduled gets done, and what gets measured gets improved”- Hootsuite
Your social media analytics are the make or break of your online presence. When you’re investing time in content creation and high quality post production, having an understanding of what’s working and what’s NOT working will mean exponential growth—or throwing money out the window.
A content calendar provides the opportunity to experiment and track results over time. You can see if posting during the superbowl was a success or a flop, or if sharing the company cat on national cat day managed to get you new followers.
Your online presence should be growing over time—no one is an overnight success—and you should be tracking that progression and altering your content calendar over time to make sure your social media mix is just right.
How can I get started?
Getting started the first time can be overwhelming, to say the least. That’s why we built a content calendar for you. This will give you a starting template for a fraction of the cost of working with a social media strategist one-on-one.
With this static calendar, you can start plotting out your social media strategy and grow your online platforms.
Have any questions? Leave a comment below letting us know, or just tell us your favourite part of using a content calendar for your business for a chance to have your business highlighted on the KA Social Media platforms!