How to plan your social media calendar

Nothing stays the same on social media for long so take my professional advice in today’s blog post and save yourself from time having to experiment:

Story is key

Gone are the days where we can just take a photo of something nice and post it *cries*; now we have to be innovative story tellers as well! (Honestly this is why if you can, I’d advise hiring a social media manager like myself because this can be incredibly time consuming to do yourself as a business owner.)

People love a story and are much more likely to engage with your posts if you’re creative, a little bit vulnerable and can reach them on a more intimate level.

How to build story content

Take photos every day (even if some things seem incredibly mundane), write notes on your phone whilst out and about so you remember how you felt and little things that happened that day. You can then overlay text over a series of photos (try to go for 10 at least) and give your audience a tit bit of the story per photo. This works best for Instagram and TikTok.

Try not to focus on numbers

You know what I mean – you do well on one post and then you’re too scared to post another in case the likes and view count aren’t as high. Try to keep the bigger picture in mind; what are you trying to do on your platform? If you’re like most small businesses you’re trying to reach people on a daily basis so you get more traffic to your website and more sales. Posting regularly and often is crucial for this. Ultimately it doesn’t matter if you get a few less likes, if people are visiting your profile and then visiting your website or your physical shop then the post has achieved what it needed to.

How to work out how often to post

The days I tend to have the most success (in the UK) posting on social media for all accounts that I manage are Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. If you’ve gone from posting once a month, I’d start with three times a week and then increase as your audience gets used to this and start knowing when they can expect content from you. You should also be posting at consistent times. Check your statistics on whichever social media platform you are using but for most accounts I manage; the best times seem to be evenings at 6pm. I’d post stories any time during the day leading up to your post in the evening.

Build up a collection of drafts

I don’t personally like the method of scheduling a load of content in one day and watching them go out pre-planned. This may shock a lot of social media managers but I guess this is where I’m different. I much prefer my method where I design a number of draft posts and then I publish them depending on what I think the audience will respond better to on each day I’ve planned to post. For instance, I’ll know I plan to post for a client on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday and I’ll pick a post on each day from my draft collection. This way, you can learn from each post and slightly edit each one using findings from the previous one before posting.

Use lots of hashtags

In my experience, using the max amount of hashtags on Instagram yields a greater reach. Make sure you choose your hashtags carefully; research your hashtags and choose ones with a post number between 50,000 to 500,000.

Need some help?

Like I said, all of these strategies are effective but my word are they time consuming! If you need any assistance with your business social media, my rates are £30 per hour with no set monthly amount required. You can get in touch with me using the form below for a no obligation call.

I also offer social media audits and power hour sessions where I can advise you on strategy and build a plan for you.