Social media delivery

Hi, my name is Julie Atherton, and I'm the founder of the social media advisory and consultancy, Small Wonder. I also write books on social media strategy and social media marketing. Today, I'm here to talk about social media delivery.

We're going to cover two tools which are really important in social media delivery. They are the content calendar and the hero-hub-help model. I'm going to start with the content calendar.

What is a content calendar? It is a visual workflow that helps us plan, schedule, and organise content production and its publication over a specific period. It's really an important tool because the content marketers, the editorial teams, and the social media managers all use it to ensure consistent and strategic content delivery. The content calendar allows everyone in the organisation, who is involved in its delivery and production, to be able to see at any one time exactly what's planned to happen, when it will happen, and who will be doing it.

Social media content calendars include several elements, all of which are important to give that clear visibility of what's going to be produced and when. Let's take each element in turn. First of all, the timeline. This shows what time period the content calendar covers. It provides a structured timeline for when content will be created, how it will be reviewed, and when it will be published. The second element that's important is the content pillars themselves. These were discussed in a previous session. The calendar includes the main topics or themes that will be covered during the period. An organisation might have three or four content pillars, but may only choose to cover one or two within a specific time period. The content types and formats are also important. They vary according to the channel selected and the resources available. It may be that you have a large amount of video content within one planning period, or perhaps you're trying out new tools on a specific channel. These will all be shown in the content types and format section. Publication dates are used to show when each post will appear so that you can make sure that you've got a strong balance across the period of the plan. The distribution channels detail which social media platforms are going to be used and where content will be published. Calls to action or links define what the call to action will be and where it will go to. Sometimes calls to action are internal, going from a post to perhaps asking you to follow that brand's page. Other times, the link can be external, taking you to a website or another location on the Internet. External links are not really preferred by the social media algorithms, so if possible, if an external link is needed, keep those links internal. Finally, any key dates, perhaps events in the calendar or other important dates need to be included in that social media content calendar.