Social Media Calendar Buying Guide 2024
A social media calendar is a valuable tool for planning and organising your content and campaigns on socials. But how do you know which one is right for you?
Building a social media calendar is no easy task. It’s likely that you’re working across several platforms, working to tight deadlines, and under pressure to constantly improve traffic and engagement.
All of this in a social media world that is constantly churning out new trends and conversations every second. Understandably, it can be difficult to keep up!
This is why so many professionals are now seeking to buy social media calendar templates and applications, so they can streamline their workflow and produce content at a faster rate and higher quality.
To help you out, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide on how to buy a social media calendar in 2024:
- What is a social media calendar
- Why is it important?
- What are the different types of social media calendars?
- Social media scheduling tools
- Content planners
- Conversation calendars
- Native applications
- Choosing the right tool for you
- Conclusion
Let’s dive in!
What is a social media calendar?
A social media calendar is how you plan your upcoming content on your social media platforms.
You map out your posts by date so that you have a template and schedule to stick to, enabling you to maintain consistency and organisation.
Included in this plan should be details such as the social media platform, the date and time of your post, and any relevant copy, attachments or creative assets (links, photos, videos, tags).
Why is it important?
Social media calendars are important because they allow teams to plan and visualise their content plan in one place, making it easy for digital marketers, social media managers, and copywriters to work together and deliver consistent results.
Mapping your social media content out in this way also ensures that your posts are relevant and topical. You can forecast future conversations and social trends by looking ahead to seasonal moments and upcoming events, and leveraging them in your content.
Obviously, you need to be reactive as well as proactive, evolving with topical news and unexpected events, but so many conversations today revolve around cyclical, seasonal moments that are easy to forecast. Which is great news for social media professionals!
What are the different types of social media calendars?
When buying a social media calendar, you have a range of options, from scheduling tools to conversation calendars, there are a number of specially-designed applications to help you manage your content.
1. Social Media Scheduling Tools
If you’ve been looking to buy a social media calendar, you’ve probably come across some social media scheduling platforms. These tools allow you to input content in advance to be published by the application, whilst providing audience and engagement analytics.
These can range from the more rudimentary scheduling applications to all-in-one type tools that help you to schedule, automate, and manage your posts.
2. Content Planners
Content planners allow you to map out your content plan across different channels. These types of platforms vary in their abilities, and may sometimes include newsletter management, as well as the ability to publish your content directly from the tool.
Others are more limited in their scope and may come in the form of downloadable templates.
3. Conversation Calendars
Conversation calendars help you to map out events and occasions across the year that you can leverage and consider for content and scheduling.
Buying a ready-made social media calendar with all the year’s key marketing dates and occasions is an opportunity to bypass all those hours spent researching, and receive a stream of content ideas.
4. Native Applications
Of course, there’s one final option when it comes to buying a social media calendar, and that’s not buying one at all. You can utilise integrated tools on platforms like Twitter & LinkedIn to schedule content and track analytics.
You can also use excel spreadsheets and word documents to keep track of briefs or to plot your strategy manually.
Choosing the Right Tool
When deciding which type of social media calendar is right for you, you need to take a look at your existing workflow. If you’re currently managing your socials manually, think carefully about your current pain points and any gaps in your abilities.
Is it that you lack organisation and are failing to push posts out on time? Or is it that you lack inspiration and often struggle with finding the right thing to say?
Consider the features that you need in a social media calendar. Some common features include the ability to schedule posts, track engagement metrics, collaborate with team members, and integrate with social media platforms. Look for a calendar that offers the features that align with your specific requirements.
Wrapping up
Rather than sending out social media posts into the ether at random, mapping out the who, what’s and why’s of your future posts will allow you to think more carefully about when certain posts will perform best, and how they fit into your wider brand schedule.
There are a range of tools out there that can help you to optimise this process, all you need to do is identify the gaps in your workflow and find the best tool for addressing this.
Want to learn more about our own solution? Get in touch at info@thecontentarchitects.com to organise a test run or demo!
