Organize Your Social Media Efforts with Editorial Calendars: A Social Media Week Presentation
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
14 likes•4,655 views
An editorial calendar is a tool used to plan, schedule, and manage content across various media like blogs, podcasts, social media updates, emails and more. It helps organize efforts, ensure a steady flow of content, and keep stakeholders and teams on the same page. While not everything can be planned for, editorial calendars provide benefits like increased sales, donations, or brand awareness by strategically promoting expertise and addressing goals. The process involves brainstorming content ideas, selecting appropriate channels, and scheduling posts over weeks or months using tools like Google Calendar or Word documents. Timing, relevant information for audiences, and an 80/20 focus on quality are also important to consider.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (20)
Similar to Organize Your Social Media Efforts with Editorial Calendars: A Social Media Week Presentation
Similar to Organize Your Social Media Efforts with Editorial Calendars: A Social Media Week Presentation (20)
More from Fletcher Prince
More from Fletcher Prince (7)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Organize Your Social Media Efforts with Editorial Calendars: A Social Media Week Presentation
- 1. Organize Your Social Media Efforts: Create an Editorial Calendar Mary Fletcher Jones @MaryFletchJones #SMWEdCal
- 2. So, what is it? An editorial calendar is a tool used for planning, scheduling, and managing publication of content across different media • Blog posts • Podcast episodes • Twitter updates • Email newsletters • Facebook Pages • Direct mail campaigns • YouTube videos • Online press releases 2
- 3. Why do we need it? 3
- 4. BUT… You can’t plan for everything • Daily monitoring • Breaking news and developments • Crisis response 4
- 5. Benefits: Why it Pays to Plan 5
- 9. Focus on Goals • Increase sales or donations • Obtain more repeat business • Stand apart from our competitors • Promote our expertise and successes • Launch a new product or service • Persuade people to make a lifestyle change • Win acceptance of a viewpoint • Report developments or innovations • Manage crises or repair reputations • Attract and retain quality employees 9
- 10. Planning Content for Your Audience • Informative, relevant, useful, timely • Original and entertaining/engaging • The 80/20 formula • B2C content • B2B content 10
- 11. Selecting the right channel 11
- 12. A planning resource for nonprofits 12
- 14. Drafting a plan with wall calendars 14
- 15. An editorial calendar using Google Calendar 15
- 16. A basic editorial calendar in Microsoft Word 16
- 17. Timing is Everything Frequency Scheduling 17
- 18. Planning and Scheduling Blog Posts 18
- 19. Planning and Scheduling Facebook Page Wall Posts 19
- 20. Planning and Scheduling Twitter Content 20
- 21. Using HootSuite to Schedule Tweets 21
- 22. Planning and Scheduling YouTube Content 22
- 23. For Advanced Users… • Use Google Calendar for group editorial calendars you can access anywhere • Customize editorial calendars for different media and channels – blog, Twitter, Facebook • Create separate editorial calendars for different audiences, programs, or campaigns 23
Editor's Notes
- Hello and welcome to our session on Organizing Your Social Media Efforts with an Editorial Calendar. Are you enjoying Social Media Week so far? I hope so.I wanted to introduce myself and say a few words before we get started with the presentation. I’m Mary Fletcher Jones, and my company is Fletcher Prince. We provide marketing, PR, social media and design services.David Hyson and Tim FaheyIf you are tweeting this presentation, the hashtag is #SMWEdCal and my Twitter handle is @MaryFletchJones. Feel free to enjoy your lunch during this presentation and help yourself to refreshments and the handouts. The restrooms are in the back.We’re going to talk about organizing your communications efforts with an editorial calendar. I’ll share my tips for 20 minutes or so and then we will move to your questions and comments, and we should have about 10 minutes for a break for the next session on blogging. CLICK
- So in this presentation, we are going to talk about the benefits of planning, some best practices associated with using editorial calendars, and show you some examples.I hope by the end of it you’ll walk away with lots of fresh ideas for planning your own communications efforts. So an editorial calendar? What is it really? Well, you can call it whatever you like. What I’m referring to is really a hybrid tool: a marketing calendar and an editorial calendar. You can add anything you want: events, promotions, presentations, Twitter chats.It can be basic or sophisticated. Different businesses will have different needs, and approaches.It’s a tool to plan and organize your work, so customize it so it works for youCLICK
- So, when we think about marketing communications today, we are not only considering the audiences who will receive our messages, but also search engines.Our businesses depend on search engine results and the more results you have, the better. Search engines love content, especially frequently updated content. Along with this increased search engine results, we get more visibility. This builds trust in your brand among prospective customers, the media, or partners.Creating an editorial plan also helps you deliver on the promise of your brand, since your audiences will come to expect the helpful and relevant content you disseminate at regular intervals.CLICK
- Let’s just take a moment and recognize what a planning calendar can’t do, but you still have to plan for in your communication..You’ll get flashes of inspiration or there will be a news development and you’ll really need to respond to that.You also have to know when to switch gears or stop the plan altogether. An example of this is when Representative Giffords was shot. It was mid-day on Saturday and understandably, a lot of companies had theirTweets on auto-publish, for example, through Hootsuite. But when these companies and individuals continued to distribute their scheduled content during a crisis and breaking news story, it inadvertently made them look unaware, and even callous, which caused anger among some Twitter followers. CLICK
- So, given that it’s important to be responsive and spontaneous and conversational in social media, why should we go to all this trouble? Why should we plan our broadcasted content?The personal benefits are many. Planning organizes your efforts and helps you stay on track. A calendar you distribute content on a regularly scheduled basis. It saves time and can help divide the work into manageable chunks, or among several different staff members.When you look at the plan, visually, it can help you identify recurrring themes and topics, that you might want to build on… or incorporate more vareity to keep it interesting. It can also help you measure your results, and integrate your content with other tactics, such as events, PR and advertising campaigns, etc.A calendar-based plan helps you time your content to other events – such as national holidays, or major conferences in your industry – and that keeps your information timely and relevant for your followers. CLICK
- Before we proceed with some of the nuts and bolts of planning, I would like to present a real-life example to give us some perspective on editorial calendars and their uses. We’re so fortunate to have Brittany Brown in the audience with us today. Brittany is a social media manager for the U.S. Army and this example of one of her social media calendars is so impressive.I wish you could see this close up but you can see it’s complex and detailed. Brittany, would you mind stepping up and speaking for a moment about how you develop a social media calendar. Any tips for us? CLICK
- So if you are new to this, you might want to start with something basic, and there’s nothing wrong with just doing one month if you want to see how it works. There are lots of free editorial calendar templates online you can customize.Keep in mind: it’s a changeable document. You can add to it, or delete, or change it. One easy way to get started is to jot down your company’s recurring events, milestones, holidays, conventions, and speaking engagements. If holidays or seasons are important to your business, then you can incorporate those and start thinking about thematic content. One resource that may interest you: each month, I will feature upcoming events and holidays and other events, along with Twitter accounts to follow and hashtags. CLICK
- This was a great image I found online from a SXSW meeting. To me, it captures all those complex concerns a communicator has in his or her head when strategizing and planning communications today.You can approach the planning process any way you want, but I’m going to suggest this path:Review business goals and marketing planDetermine what content and tactics will support the goals and planBrainstorm topics and ideas for contentCreate a publication schedule (and decide on staffing)Produce, distribute and promote contentMonitor response daily and measure results perioodicallyAdjust and refine, as neededCLICK
- So as you’re planning, you want to keep your business or organizational goals in mind. You’ll also thinking about the specific audiences you hope to reach..And it shows you, at a glance, this visual picture of what you want to achieve, who you’re trying to reach, and what you’re going to do. Kind of like a map. It can also help you see gaps, or identify places in the plan where you can measure outcomes. And having this concrete, visual plan is a way to demonstrate to your team and upper management what you’re trying to do. I mean, at the end of the day, not only are you going to be more effective, this is going to look pretty darn impressive to your boss!So in this respect, this is a very gratifying. No matter how simple you make it, it really does demonstrate that you have your act together and that you have a goal-driven plan. CLICK
- So the same basic rules of good communication apply: useful, informative, relevant and timely. Original and entertaining content is a great bonus. And you want photos and video wherever possible.The 80/20 formula that I’m referring to here is the ratio of informative content to promotional content. Now what do people want to hear about? Most of all, like all of us, they like to hear about themselves: their community, their problems, concerns they can relate to. But they also likeInsider looks; behind-the-scenesQuick tips. How to videos are the 2nd most popular category on YouTube.Special offers and events. Especially on Facebook.Breaking news and developments.. Especially on Twitter.Now if you’re targeting the business audience, the number one thing they’re looking for in online content is business news, insights and advice. When they’re looking at YouTube, they’re interested in customer testimonials, product demonstrations, and product reviews CLICK
- Blogs: Most important and searchable of all, tell your story, establish subject matter expertise.Facebook: Establish and maintain relationships, make special offers to a fan base.LinkedIn: Get testimonials! Use on your website. YouTube: Tell a small part of a story, record client testimonials, build trust, tremendous searchability.Flickr: Tell your story, personalize your brand, display portfolio, Google image search. CLICK
- So here is another resource for planning your content. I would like to invite Kristen Milhollen from the Good Speaks Project to share about this special resource for nonprofit organizations.CLICK
- So you do what works for you.Low tech: paper calendars, notebooks, easel paper, markers, wipe on/wipe off calendars and white boards. CLICK
- And here’s another example where I tore up an inexpensive desk calendar and papered a blank wall with months, so I could see the year at a glance, and make notes. CLICK
- Here’s a planning example using Google Calendar, which as you know is free. Although they can take more time to set up than an Excel template, online calendars are easily accessibleand can be a good option for teams who work on marketing communications together. CLICK
- Many people use Excel spreadsheet templates and you can find lots of those to download and customize online. I like the table format, so I built my plan in Microsoft Word. This one is just for my own small business, so you can see that it is much simpler than the Army one. But it still took me quite a while to pull it all together. It’s a project! CLICK
- So the editorial calendar is helping you decide not only what kind of content to produce, and who to target but also when to put it out there and how often.Let’s look at some individual channels to see how that might play out CLICK
- Blogs, along with email marketing and video, should be the cornerstone of your online engagement and content marketing strategy. They offer superlative search results, and you can integrate your other social media with it.You can even use your blog to schedule your posts, as you can do on Wordpress.com, or plan out your entire editorial calendar with the WordPress.org plug in.Planning and Scheduling -- Blog: 1 x week (e.g., Thursday a.m.)Write and schedule monthly recurring features or themes. Leave room for timely posts. CLICK
- Did you know people spend more time on Facebook than on any other website? It’s true. We know now that Facebook marketers cannot neglect updating content for their brands on evenings and weekends. These tend be the times when people relax and interact most with the posts, bestowing likes or comments. Posting every other day or up to twice a day tends to be the most recommended frequency for FacebookHere’s an example of a Conversational Calendar that Facebook provides that suggests one way to plan a week’s worth of wall posts. This is taken from the the Facebook Guide “Building Your Business with Facebook Pages” which is freeand worthwhile downloading and reading. CLICK
- Keep Twitter in perspective. Twitter is a broadcast medium – only 6% of Tweets elicit a retweet and only 23% get a response (Sysomos, 2010). Only 12% of Twitter users are considered active (that is, they use it at least once a month), and it still tends to skew to certain professions. As fascinating as it can be for communicators and the media, Twitter is not yet representative of the general public. And importantly, those tweets evaporate. They’re not searchable that long.Still, you have to be on Twitter and it can be useful for some customer service and media relations.Frequency? 2 x day minimum. plus monitoring. So for the broadcast style tweets, you would brainstorm trending topics that occur monthly and seasonally and relate them to your brand, then schedule those tweets for auto-publishing. You can use a third party app like Tweriod to determine when your account should be posting, and just keep in mind that most views will happen in the first hour, and then the tweet is basically almost empty of use. CLICK
- What I do: Schedule some tweets on HootSuite. But I would not put all your tweets on Hootsuite. I also post “Unplanned” tweets. Of course, I interact with, retweet, and @mention people on Twitter a few times a day. Since I follow a lot of people on Twitter, I created a custom Twitter list that is my “speed-dial” – it includes my clients, friends, and brands, journalists, bloggers, and other people I especially like to follow. CLICK
- There are no hard and fast rules about video content, but I would advise setting goals and creating a YouTube communications strategy, since the American audience for online video increased 43% last year and it has become so influential on the purchase and conversion decisions.The overall peak time for uploading video to get views is mid-week at lunchtime, but that will vary depending on your audience.I think most brands should be able, at minimum, to put out a monthly video, and that is my recommended minimum frequency. CLICK
- So, with the U.S. Army, we’ve seen a good example of advanced level planning. And I hope you’ve been inspired by my simple and basic approach that really anybody could use for their own solo effort, small business, or smaller organization. There are many free templates available that you can download and I’m happy to share my template with you, if you’d like to use it. Iwill be publishing those monthly content ideas and hash tags for you, and also check out the Good Speaks resource for even more content ideas, plus video.
- Thank you so much. We have 10 minutes for questions and comments, then we’ll take a 10 minute break, and the next session on blogging tips will begin at 1 pm. Feel free to move about and get refreshments.Does anybody have a question or comment?So, let’s take a break. If I didn’t get to your question today, please come see me or email me later.