Content Calendar Creation

If you are going to have a job in the social media industry, you had better know how to organize yourself! Personally, this is a great strength of mine, and one of the things I take the most pride in. Currently, I am the Social Media Coordinator for the Good News Bears program here at ONU, and let me tell you I was STRESSED when I got this position, because I didn't know how I would be able to keep track of everything. One of the most helpful things that I started doing was creating a content calendar to keep track of when and what I want to post. In many ways honestly, setting up the calendar and getting everything organized was more of a time commitment than the actual job, but once you get that set up everything comes so much easier. Having a social media calendar allows me as a creator to plan, create, and schedule my weekly content. Mine consists of the content type, the date it will be posted, the post topic, the post text and caption, the photo/video that will be there, and any links that may need to be included. However, all content calendars can be different, depending on what the social media manager is using it for. If it is for a business then the calendar may include key dates, holidays, or times. It is essentially a living document that is constantly being updated. I think that having a content calendar helps me to feel so much more put together when making posts, because otherwise I feel like I don't know where I am going with it and I am kind of just winging it. One thing that I really want to try to get into is using a platform called Hootsuite, which is like a really fancy content calendar. But that costs money and I don't have any of that right now. 

Steps to creating a content calendar:

1. Identify what platforms you are going to be utilizing (ex. Instagram and TikTok)

2. Analyze and come up with an audit of your social media channels

        - this simply means reviewing certain things about your channel and its followers. For example you may look at the demographics of your followers, your amount of engagement, where most of your followers come from, etc...

3. Decide what things you want to track/include in your calendar

        - for me, this was the type of post, date of the post, caption, and content

4. Plan your posting schedule (how often are you going to post)

        - for my job here on campus, I have to post one to two times a week

5. Start making the posts! 

        - you definitely want to start this process pretty far in advance!