Est Read Time: 4.5 Minutes
I’m sure as a busy professional you are using a calendar to keep track of your appointments, events, deadlines, and everything else that comes with managing clients and your brand.
(And if you are not I highly recommend you start doing that 🤓)
When you keep track of your appointments and start looking ahead and doing some planning you feel a weight lifted. There is something so calming about taking charge of your schedule and knowing what you have coming up.
Of course, things come up and plans have to change, but I personally find it mentally freeing when I have everything planned out in my planner because I remember important meetings and events and am less surprised because I am no longer remembering it at the last minute.
Well, that mental clarity also comes with planning out your content for the month. Some people plan up to three months, but I think with so much constantly happening a month is more than enough to plan –but you do what works the best for you!
To clarify, a content calendar is a monthly calendar with your social media content laid out. Personally, I like to keep it simple by using a Google Sheet. I keep a colour coding key in the top left, plan a theme or two for the month, highlight holidays and special days, and just write out a title or sentence for the proposed content which is colour coded for which platform it is being published on. As I create the caption and graphic I put checkmarks in the date box as they get done.
If you would like to see my example content calendar click the button below! Just save a copy to your Google Drive so you can use it for yourself.
Please note that you do not need to use my content calendar. My layout or system might not work for everyone. Some people might like more detail or will have a hard time with my system, but this gives you a base to start from!
Alright, let’s get into why you want to use a content calendar so you can understand its importance better.
1. Saves You Time
Having all your thoughts and proposed content in one spot makes things easier when you’re creating the content.
I know I follow my calendar and it makes my content creation process so much faster because I’m not sitting there trying to think about what I should post and when because it’s already laid out
2. Organizes Your Content
Writing content ideas and topics on post-it notes, napkins, or random notebooks isn’t a reliable method and it likely causes you to drift from what’s important.
A content calendar allows you to catch gaps and prepare for upcoming holidays and events –it’s great for having an overview of your marketing strategy!
3. Improves Your Posting Consistency and Keeps You on Track
When you have your thoughts organized and prepared ahead of time it makes it so much easier to stay on track and be consistent!
When I first started managing my brand’s social media, I was posting on the day, every day. It was TERRIBLE.
It was hard to maintain and quickly became a chore. Once I started laying the content out in a content calendar and found a flow I found it to be a lot easier to manage.
But it all started with taking time to plan out the content for the month.
4. Create Higher Quality Content
When your mind isn’t cluttered with stress from trying to remember to create a post, come up with what to create, post it, and then check in on it after it’s posted, it is so much easier to create good content!
Stress kills creativity, and the easier the process to create is the easier it is to create and come up with ideas. After all, creativity creates creativity!
5. Keeps Your Audience Engaged
When you’re just winging it there is usually no purpose established for the post and you’re not thinking if it will benefit your audience or if they’ll even like it.
Posting on the fly usually means you’re posting just to post –which I am going to strongly advise against because eventually, the algorithm will see that you get little to no engagement on your posts and will start to show your content less and less!
So plan your content around your audience. Learn what they like, talk how they talk, and put out content that will benefit them.
As you are probably starting to realize, having a content calendar has some incredible benefits! Not to mention how you will feel once you start following a content calendar –You will feel more relaxed when you are creating content because you already know you came up with a plan and you don’t have to stress out wondering if you’ve forgotten anything important.
You can plan ahead for upcoming holidays, events, and promotions, allowing you to breathe easy knowing you’ve got them covered.
When you feel the huge weight lifted off your shoulders and you feel the ease of creating content after planning it out in a calendar I am sure you’ll never go back!
So if you haven’t already, download my content calendar template to your Google Drive and start your planning –and if you don’t like mine just Google Content Calendar templates and I am sure you’ll find one that works better for you.
I hope you find this helpful and inspiring! May all your content planning days be easier from here out, friend.
If you need any help or would like further clarification feel free to reach out to me! To email me now, CLICK HERE.
Until next week, I wish you success, prosperity, and happiness!
-Jordan
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