Do You Have Your Plans Sorted For Blue Monday Yet?

Full-service agency The Works celebrated their decade in business last year with a year-long social media campaign, amongst other things. Here, they discuss how a social media content plan helps them keep on top of their own social channels, as well as their clients'.

Imagine logging into Twitter, scanning what’s trending and seeing that you’ve forgotten there’s a major event taking place or you’ve missed a big holiday. Just to clarify, we’re not talking about the traditional holidays, like Halloween or Christmas (who could forget those?!), but the social media events and holidays that quickly become trending topics and present some of the most valuable opportunities for marketers online. Think #NationalBurgerDay or #BlueMonday.

These days, there really is a ‘day’ to celebrate everything – from music to politics, food to emotions and everything in between. Some are meant to generate awareness and promote a cause while others focus their attention on the cute, quirky or nonsensical. But depending on what field you work in, they present a real opportunity for you or your clients to get involved and reach new audiences.

In today’s digital world, the number of platforms people are using is constantly increasing, the way we share our content is changing and demand to publish engaging content is at a high. You now have different audiences across a number of different platforms, who all connect and engage in different ways, meaning the content you need to produce and the way you manage your social media is more challenging than ever before – enter the content calendar!

Content calendars are exactly what they sound like: a way to plan, organise and schedule content. They are the perfect way to see the bigger picture of your plans for the upcoming week/month/ year. We sit down at the end of the year and plan content for the upcoming months for ourselves and our clients, plotting the usual holidays and key dates that are relevant to us and that we know are always happening. Having the content calendar makes it easier for us to plan and implement our ideas, while also upping our social media game. Posting frequent, relevant content is the only way to increase social media following and engagement organically, nobody wants to follow an account that does otherwise, do they?

Having a plan, plus the ability to pre-schedule on social media means there should never be a mad scramble to create content or turn a graphic around promptly. You can sleep easy knowing you have clever, witty or relevant content ready to post at peak time. Pre-scheduling saves so much time in the long term, it means you aren’t spending an hour a day working on content, you can plan a month’s worth of content all at once, saving time and let’s be honest, sanity at the same time.

Of course, you need to be spontaneous – never make the mistake of doing otherwise, as some things can disappear just as quickly as they appear, but knowing you have most of the major holidays or events ticked off and something to fall back on during busy periods puts you at ease – as the old saying goes, fail to plan, plan to fail.

For most of us, December marks the countdown to Christmas, but did you know it’s also Tie Month, Human Rights Month and Write a Business Plan Month – we did, it’s on the content calendar!