How to Create an Editorial Calendar for Social Media

Do you want to stay in touch with your customers or attract new ones? Are you using social media without a clear plan?

Ok! The first thing you need to do is create an editorial calendar.

What is an editorial calendar?

The editorial calendar indicates what, when and where you will publish your content.

What to publish?

To get started, you need to think about what to share: make a list of content relevant to your company and a list of content searched by your audience.

The intersection between the two "lists" will be the contents to be inserted into the calendar, paying close attention to:

• engagement : bring your audience inside the company. For example, tell the story of how the company was born, show the point of sale/work area with photos or videos

• information : inform your audience in detail about the features of your service or products. For example, explain what makes the service you offer unique, show how to use the products.

• enthusiasm : Keep your community informed. For example, announce new products, share discounts, inform about upcoming events.

When to publish?

To define the “when” in your editorial calendar you need to ask yourself when your audience is online.

Let me give you some examples: if your audience is made up of mothers, analyze when they take a break on social media.

I recommend experimenting with post times, posting at different times to try to catch customers’ attention when they’re online.

Where to publish?

Which platforms do your customers use? Facebook or Instagram? Both.

You can find out, for example, by sending them a short questionnaire via newsletter.

Also take a look at your competitors, it can be a good starting point to get more information about your audience.

Then move on to drafting the plan on a real screen: Facebook provides one, click here to download it .

Or if you want to create it yourself, remember that the following must be present:

• date: when will it be released

• topic: what is the topic of your post

• description: include the caption, that is the text that will accompany the photo/video

• Format: Choose between photo/video

• platform and positioning: Facebook or Instagram? Stories or posts? Reels or IGTV?

Content Suggestions

So let’s dive into what content to create to engage your audience and how to create it.

Social media content is made up of two main elements:

text and visual content , i.e. photos or videos.

The caption must:

• present important information immediately

• encourage followers to take action

• written in a direct style

• only for the Instagram platform: contain relevant hashtags. If you need to know more about which ones to use, I wrote a short article about it. Click here to read the article "Hashtags for Instagram: which ones to use?"

Visual content

Here are some tips for creating visual content:

- quality of the material: it is not necessary to have a photographer always available but try to take photos and videos in the best quality

- the rule of thirds: to make your shots more balanced, place the most important elements

important elements of the photo places the most important elements of the subject in the golden points of the frame respecting the perspective not in a random way but having a clear message that we want to reach the observer

- different angles : shoot the subject from different angles, so you can create more content on a single product.

- video : when you create a video you have to grab attention and convey your message within the first few seconds, even without sound. Remember that social media is mostly viewed from mobile, so optimize the shooting of content vertically.