Pivot to Profit Week 3 Day 3: “What is a Content Calendar?”

Boy, yesterday was a real eye-opener, wasn’t it?

Even if you are already super solid on your content and messaging, it’s always good to take time to review your content and make sure that what you are creating is in alignment with the message that you want to be sending.

Last week, we talked all about organizing and setting systems for yourself and in your business so that you can free up your time and energy to focus on creating. 

Today, we are talking about your social media content calendar and why it’s important to have one.

Social media and email marketing are going to be the two biggest drivers of customer traffic to your website, so it makes sense to say that these are the places where you need to be sharing new content regularly.

A content calendar is a simply a plan for what content you are going to share, where you will share it, and when it will be shared. Today we are talking about a social media content calendar, but you can apply the same principles for your email marketing calendar. 

Your content calendar can be as simple as a spreadsheet (I love using Google Sheets because it’s cloud-based, meaning you can access it from any device!) where you write out your post wording, link to (or drop in) the images that you want to post and the date/time you want to post them.

The idea is that you have everything in one place/one document, instead of having to hunt and peck around every time you want to post something.  

Side note: if you want to see this in action, check out this post and tutorial from Megan Minns. She walks you through how to set it up, and even offers a (super affordable!) shortcut to just buy her template and work from that!

The biggest benefits of taking the time to create a content calendar are:

1. You are able to get a LOT of work done in one chunk of time: you get into “social media mode” and it goes much faster (we will be talking about this more in-depth tomorrow)
2. You are able to plan out things like sales, promotions, holidays, etc. and have content that is always relevant and valuable to your audience
3. You are able to be consistent and reliable to your audience, establishing that ever-important “know-like-trust” factor

Today’s Task:

Use your challenge workbook to help you start to set up a basic content calendar.  Decide which channels you want to post on, how often you’d like to be posting, and if there are any themes or events that you want to be sure to address with your content.

Don’t try to get all nitty-gritty at once (unless you are a spreadsheet nerd, in which case have at it!): this is just to get yourself prepared to create and share the content that will get your audience engaged and excited to shop with you when the time comes. 

When you are done, come over to today’s post in the group and let us know what you come up with!