Developing a social media calendar is an excellent way to stay on top of social media posting and continually engage potential customers. Here’s how to create a social media calendar that works for your tree company and effectively leverages the power of social media marketing. For assistance with tree service marketing, call Tree Service Digital today.
1. Audit Your Existing Social Media Presence
Before you can develop a content planning strategy that works for your business, you need to understand your current social media performance and determine necessary areas of improvement. Conduct a social media audit to examine your:
- Audience engagement
- Existing posting schedule/frequency
- Number of followers
- Variety of posts on each platform
If you currently only post on one social media platform, such as Facebook, you may want to expand your monthly content planner to cover other platforms.
2. Set Short-Term and Long-Term Goals
Once you complete your audit, you will be in a good position to set goals for your content posting schedule. For example, short-term goals might include:
- Gaining 10 new followers
- Receiving at least three comments each week
- Getting at least one post to 100 views within the first month
These can ultimately help you reach long-term goals like:
- Increasing brand awareness about your tree company
- Building a loyal social media following
- Generating demand for your services
- Establishing social proof of your business’s trustworthiness
When creating goals, also determine your target posting frequency. Marketing experts often recommend posting at least three to five times a week on each platform to consistently stay in front of your audience. If this doesn’t seem doable, you can scale it down to two or three times a week to start with.
3. Create Calendar Posting Templates
After establishing your goals, the next step in how to create a social media calendar is developing templates that you can use to streamline the content creation process. You can also find editorial calendar templates that make creating the actual posting calendar easier.
Your social media post templates might include spots for the following information:
- Photos/videos
- Captions
- Hashtags
Within your calendar, leave room to track data such as:
- Date and time of the post
- Social media accounts you will post it to
- Social copy
- Collaboration and feedback notes
- Key performance indicators (KPIs)
Staying organized with templates can streamline your social media workflow and help you strategically map out your content.
4. Brainstorm Content Ideas
Now that you have set up your social media calendar, it’s time to begin filling it with content. Creating content in advance is one of the main benefits of following a social media calendar. It allows you to spend just a few hours a month on social media rather than needing to sit down and create new content every time you want to post.
Start by brainstorming potential content ideas that you can use to flesh out the calendar. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
- Before-and-after photos of recent tree projects (with the homeowner’s permission)
- Interviews with your team
- Behind-the-scenes footage of your work
- Holiday posts (especially Arbor Day, Earth Day, and other tree-related holidays)
Once you have a list of ideas, start creating posts around those concepts and assigning them to certain days in the calendar. Be sure to spread out the types of posts you make to each platform; for example, perhaps your Facebook feed features one video, one photo, and one text post per week.
5. Analyze Your Performance
Once you’ve begun rolling out your social media calendar, you’ll want to check performance metrics frequently to determine whether your strategy is successful. Review how your engagement has changed since you started social media scheduling. Determine which types of posts perform best on which platforms and focus more on that type for future content.
Your social media calendar should be constantly evolving based on the data you learn from past posts.
Let Tree Service Digital Manage Your Social Media Calendar
Creating a social media calendar is one thing, but following the schedule and filling it out with creative, high-quality social media content is a completely different task. If you feel overwhelmed, turn to our digital marketing experts at Tree Service Digital for assistance.
We’d be happy to take your social media strategy off your shoulders. Contact us today to learn more about our digital marketing services.
