Get ahead of the social media curve in 2015 with an editorial process and the right tools in these seven easy steps.
The end of 2014 year is rapidly approaching and that means time to prep for the new year ahead. You’ve likely begun planning for 2015 with your marketing budgets, measuring 2014’s performance, researching potential campaigns, and funneling requests from other departments. Why not incorporate your social media strategy? Let’s make 2015 the year that you take your brand’s social presence by storm.
We’ve collected seven simple steps to whip your social content calendar into shape next year. These steps will help you get ahead of the social media curve and engaging with your fans by providing them rich, valuable, and relevant content.
1. Re-evaluate your social media profiles.
First and foremost decide which platforms you want to focus on for 2015 – and here’s a hint: it doesn’t have to be all of them. Be honest with yourself, your team, and your brand to analyze where your audience is and then go there. Downsize if you must but the goal is to be realistic about your brand, your social media goals, and your ROI.
2. Add recurring events, holidays, and other company specific dates.
Sit down with a full 2015 calendar and simply layout all the major holidays, company milestones, and important brand deadlines for the year. These dates will help you plan out your social media strategy and ensure that it is consistent with other departments and their goals. This easy step will help you avoid any faux pas on major holidays.
3. Start using automation & to-do list tools.
There are a variety of tools available ranging from free to paid plans to help you schedule, monitor, and engage with your brand via social platforms. Using a to-do list platform will allow you to assign tasks related to creating, curating, reviewing, and scheduling social media content within your team. An automation tool will help you schedule messages in advance, which is a huge time saver. Favorite tools include: Sprout Social and Hootsuite for automation, Asana, and Trello are great for managing tasks.
4. Develop a review and reporting system with your team.
Gather your team and decide the flow of social content. You may decide that one person curates content, another writes copy, and a third reviews and then posts to platforms. Next develop a reporting metric or review the metric currently in place. Analyze what numbers you are reviewing, what is missing, what doesn’t need to be included, and how often are reports created.
5. Determine a publishing schedule.
Now that you’ve gathered your social profiles, anticipated dates, reporting and creation processes handled you can determine your publishing schedule. Keeping in mind your brand and your goals decide on the frequency of each platform as Twitter might be more frequent than Facebook. You could post daily on each platform or multiple times a day depending on your brand. It is important to be realistic, social media platform specific, and keep it simple.
6. Assign tasks.
Now that you and your team have set up a to-list or project management tool, assign everyone their projects and deadlines. Be sure to set up as based on your previous content creation work process and procedures as recurring tasks on a weekly or even monthly basis. The main goal is to automate these tasks so that the social wheels keep turning throughout the year and you or your team don’t lose steam.
7. Brainstorm potential topic ideas.
Create an open spreadsheet document for your team to keep a running tally of potential topic ideas, images, links, videos, and more. Designating a specific tab for each form of content will help keep information tidy and easily searchable. Having a resource library will be your best friend during those times of social media drought. Don’t forget to keep the ideas relevant to your brand and audience. Google Drive (Drive) is a great free tool to collaborate on living documents with your team throughout the year.
Bonus tip: Follow social platforms and tools via their blog, newsletters, or social channels. It is an easy way to stay current on changes, how to best use the program, and answer questions.
You’re all set to rock your social media presence in 2015! These simple steps will help you engage with your fans and add value to your content calendar.
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