There’s no denying that social media is a powerful tool for businesses to reach their target audience and promote their brand. This has become especially true on LinkedIn for B2B and SaaS products. However, many of us aren’t content marketers, or even expert writers for that matter.
That’s why today we’re talking about how you can create a content calendar for your LinkedIn page. That way, you can keep things organized, on track and hopefully hit your conversions. Now let’s get into it:
Table of Contents
What Is a Content Calendar?
A content calendar is a tool used by social media marketers to plan, organize, and schedule their content in advance. These calendars keep your content consistent, on-brand, and posted at the optimal time. They also allow for more efficient use of time by allowing you to plan ahead and avoid last-minute rushed posts that don’t perform.
Depending on how in-depth your content calendar is, it can also provide a clear overview of content themes, types, and formats, which helps with content creation and curation. Overall, a content calendar is an essential tool for social media marketers to stay organized, consistent, and effective in their content strategy.
Other than posting content, you should be engaging with leads on LinkedIn. We recommend doing that via influencer campaigns.
How Can You Create a Content Calendar For LinkedIn?
We’ve compiled everything we know about content calendars in hopes that you can create your own. Here’s what we recommend doing:
1. Analyze Your Current Content
For starters, you want to see what you’re currently doing. Recognize things that are working alongside what isn’t working by detailing how your calendar will change your strategy. Additionally, try and pin down any content that is outdated, irrelevant, or no longer aligns with your brand.
During this process, you should also analyze your engagement metrics to see which posts received the most likes, comments, and shares, as well as which ones did not perform well. This will help you determine what type of content resonates with your target audience and what needs to be improved.
You’ll want to look into your analytics to see when your content performs best. Ideally, you’ll be able to see what time you should be posting, as well as how often. For most companies, we recommend posting 3 to 4 times a week.
Speaking of auditing your content, what about your lead-gen campaigns? Learn how to here.
2. Decide on Social Media Channels
It’s important to have a solid plan for the types of content you post on social media, and this includes creating a social media calendar. To get started, there are a few standard strategies for a content mix that you can consider:
- Rule of Thirds: One-third of your posts should promote your business or drive conversions, one-third should share curated content from industry thought leaders and one-third should involve personal interaction with your followers.
- The 80-20 Rule: 80 percent of your posts should inform, educate, or entertain, and 20 percent of your posts should promote your business or drive conversions.
It’s also important to decide which social channels are best for each type of content and to remember to schedule user-generated and curated content to avoid overwhelming yourself with creating everything from scratch.
We’ve talked more about what channels are best for what types of content here.
3. Narrow Down Your Content Calendar
Keep in mind that your social media calendar should be unique to your needs and preferences. That means, depending on the size of your business and your social media team (or lack of it), your calendar may be more complex or simpler than others.
To make the most out of your social calendar, prioritize the information and functions that are most important to you. Start with the basics, such as the platform, date, time (and time zone), copy, visuals, and links to assets and published posts. For more advanced information, consider adding platform-specific formats, campaign associations, geo-targeting, paid or organic status, and approval status.
If you’re just starting out, a simple Google Sheets can suffice. However, for a more powerful solution, we recommend using a social media tool like Hubspot.
Want to learn more about some new tools using AI? Here’s a list of the top 10.
4. Get Feedback
When creating your social media calendar, it’s important to ensure that it’s effective for everyone on your marketing team (or, again, lack of). To achieve this, you should ask for feedback and ideas from stakeholders and team members to ensure that it serves everyone’s needs.
As you start using your calendar, it’s important to continue to evaluate how it functions – as well as continue to ask for feedback. If it feels too complicated or burdensome, consider simplifying it. On the other hand, if it’s not detailed enough, you may need to add more information.
It’s important to remember that your calendar will probably continue to evolve as your business grows, and that’s perfectly normal!
What Tools Should You Use For a Content Calendar?
What Tools Should You Use For a Content Calendar?
1. Google Sheets or Excel: These are great tools for creating a basic content calendar. You can use them to create a spreadsheet with columns for dates, content topics, channels, and any other relevant information.
2. Trello: This is a popular project management tool that can double as a content calendar. You can create boards for each month or week and use cards to plan out your content.
3. CoSchedule: This is a comprehensive marketing calendar tool that allows you to schedule and plan out all of your content, social media, and other marketing activities in one place.
4. Asana: This is another project management tool that can be used as a content calendar. You can create tasks for each piece of content and assign due dates and team members.
5. Airtable: This is a database tool that can be used to create a custom content calendar. You can create different views for different team members and filter by due dates, content types, and more.
What Type of Content is Best For Your Content Calendar?
Of course, you should know what type of content to add to your calendar. While you can (and should) get creative with it, there are always a few classics we recommend sticking to. Here they are:
- Promoting blog posts and other content on your site
- Industry news
- Focus on your company culture
- Polls that engage your audience
- Visual content, such as infographics, carousels, and videos.
- Thought leadership posts
- Customer success stories
Conclusion
In conclusion, incorporating a content calendar into your LinkedIn strategy is an effective way to stay organized, consistent, and aligned with your content objectives. Whether you’re producing blogs, social media posts, videos, or infographics, having a clear plan in place can significantly enhance your success on LinkedIn.
By monitoring engagement metrics and adapting your strategy accordingly, you can continually refine your content and grow your audience on this vital platform. So, why not begin planning your content calendar today and witness the positive impact it can have on your LinkedIn presence?
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