B2B Monday Myth: I Don’t Need a Social Media Editorial Calendar
by MGB2B
The Myth: I don’t need a social media editorial calendar.
The Truth: A social media editorial calendar can help your brand get ahead, and stay ahead, of the online chatter.
The continuing rise of social media for B2B brands means that the online platforms are not only here to stay, but they’re now some of the most dominant tools marketers have in their arsenal. Despite being a valuable asset, social media can also prove to be one of the most difficult tools to effectively manage. Due to this, utilizing a B2B social media editorial calendar can help marketers plan their content, maintain a steady online presence, and target key audiences. In fact, the use of an editorial calendar has proven to be so helpful that 56% of B2B marketers now say they’re using them.
But, there’s a lot more that goes into planning your brand’s editorial calendar than simply slotting posts in at miscellaneous days and times. Keep in mind that social media is just that: social. Your calendar should be carefully designed not only to target your audience, but also to engage them.
Here are 3 tips to maximize your B2B social media editorial calendar, and drive engagement:
- Develop and utilize categories for your posts. Building your editorial calendar requires ample research and planning. Make sure that your posts are as varied and diverse as your audience (while keeping true to your brand’s voice). As you develop your calendar, devise specific categories for your posts, such as holidays and campaigns, and decide which types of content you’ll be sharing, like videos and blog posts. Do you want to wish your followers a Happy Pi Day? Do you have tweets for a specific campaign running throughout the month of February? Do you share your blog posts to LinkedIn on Wednesdays? Managing these types of content helps to diversify your social media presence, and your audience will be thankful for it.
- Find out when your audience is online. One of the key features of your B2B social media editorial calendar is timing. You’ve developed a strategy and created content, but when do you post it all? Conduct some research on your audience. Are key market segments online most during their lunch break, or right after dinner? Do they interact more with content on weekdays as opposed to the weekend? Experiment with a variety of posting times, assess resulting engagement, and schedule accordingly.
- Be consistent, but tweak for each channel. The most important part of social media presence is maintaining your brand’s voice. This being said, you can still create a uniform narrative for your brand while tweaking your content for each channel. Moreover, some platforms are more prevalent among certain audience than others. Finding ways to craft your message to fit the channel and its audience can help target those demographics more effectively. For example, try scheduling an open-ended post on LinkedIn to spark discussion, but a tweet directing users to your website on Twitter.
The constantly active and ever-changing world of social media means that planning is becoming more and more vital for marketers. With news and updates continually rolling across your timeline, it’s important to develop a calendar and stick to it. Having a plan in place is a surefire way to prevent poor performance, and also allows you to focus on the here and now. Need help getting your B2B social media editorial calendar started? Drop us a line.
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