One topic that is constantly set to repeat at our Digital Ready sessions is planning. Whether it's a one-on-one session or group workshop, the art of planning your socials, when done well, can be the difference between success and failure. When you sit down to brainstorm your content ideas, it's important to set your goals, build timeframes and incorporate them into your overall marketing structure. We build our content strategy on our social media calendar.

What is a social media calendar? 

A social media calendar can be used to plan your social media posts in advance, allowing you to be more organised, more consistent, and more efficient. This enables you to become more focused and the best part, it saves a heck of a lot of time. (Honestly, it’s the best thing to grace the Digital Dandy office)

No more scrambling, or those "it's 7 pm and I should probably post something" groans. Calendars are a great way to pre-schedule content so that you don't have to think about it when you're making dinner!

A calendar can be a list in your notebook, using an online calendar, a template you stick on your office wall. Whatever works best for you.

Our tips for creating an effective social media calendar: 

• What audience are you targeting? Always start with your audience. Ask yourself, will they love this content? Images and content that feature your demographic will relate to your demographic. We have a guide on this right here.

• Keep your content consistent: Posting a client success story? How about a new range of doughnuts in store? Post about the same theme next week, next month, and so on. That way your audience becomes familiar with your content and your brand.

• Quality: Always opt for quality over quantity. Not sure if a post will fit with your brand? Is the photo slightly blurry? Then don't post it. Your readers, fans and customers will thank you for it.

• Relevancy: Is a photo of your lunch relevant on your business page? Maybe it is, but most of the time it’s probably not. Save it for your personal page.

• Create a visual mood board: How do you want your social media to look? We suggest creating a visual mood board of colours, fonts and types of content you want to use. We’ve got a really great mini-visual content planner that is perfect for your this kind of planning.

• Find out what content works best with your audience: Start by trialling video, images, text or even sharing through some links on Facebook – pay attention to which ones work and then repeat, repeat and repeat.

• Use themes: Is your business having a sale? Launching a new product? Is it Christmas? (5 months and counting!) National Cat Day? Creating themes within your calendar will allow you to effectively create relevant content and expand on existing content.

• Schedule: We recommend using our mini-visual content planner to get you started, and then using a scheduling app to automatically post your content such as Planoly, Later or Hootsuite.

We are always here to help, so if you have read this and need help with implementation, get in touch. Email hello_at_digitaldandy.com.au