B2B marketers know creating a social media strategy is an effective way to engage with customers on a more personal level, but it’s not always possible to have someone monitoring an account around the clock. A social media calendar can be a useful for helping you manage the scheduling and posting of content, allowing you to set up a month’s work of updates in just one sitting. For B2B businesses in particular, a social media calendar can help you nurture customer relationships without taking up all of your time. Learn how to maximize your B2B social media strategy by following these five steps for creating an effective social media calendar.
B2B Social Media Strategy: How to Create an Effective Social Media Calendar
1. Research your Content
To start, you’re going to need to research the performs that your audience prefers. Look back on your past analytics on each platform to see what content, voice, and style was successful in generating engagement. Meet with team members regularly to discuss their needs and developments, which will help you plan for specific industry or business-related content. Your engagement levels over the previous year will also give you an idea of the times of the year that you can expect a lot of attention.
2. Choose a Tool
Some social networks allow you to schedule posts in advance, but your best bet for a social media calendar is to find the right tool that will schedule and post across various networks.
Hootsuite: The original scheduler, Hootsuite is popular among businesses with a lot of content to handle (it’s also our social media scheduler of choice). It allows you to select different networks to post to, a time to schedule, and you can monitor all of your social feeds and activity in the dashboard.
Sprout Social: Sprout has become a popular favorite due to its easy-to-use interface. You can create, schedule, and post content, and Sprout also has a useful additional tool: the “hashtag holidays calendar”, which allows you to plan your topical content in advance.
3. Make a Schedule
There is a balance between not posting enough and posting too much, and it often depends on what kind of content you have and what platform you are using. Networks like Twitter should be updated multiple times each day while Facebook and LinkedIn can be updated just a few times each week. However, know what platform your audience is on and where your prospects are strongest so that you can focus most of your efforts there while still diversifying to other networks.
4. Find Shareable Content
You probably won’t be able to come up with fresh, compelling content every time you sit down to post, so find ways to identify shareable content in your industry. Platforms Buzzsumo, Scoop.it, and Feedly, are easy ways to quickly find content based on your keywords or topics.
5. Fill it up!
If you’ve done the research on what kind of content your audience wants to see, found the right scheduling tool, planned out your calendar, and identified plenty of shareable content, you’re ready to fill up your schedule. Ideally, you have a good mix of unique brand content, info from leaders and respected people to share, and topical content related to current events or holidays.
