5 Tips for Building Social Media Calendars

Social media offers a myriad of choices to small to medium-sized business owners. However, "One effect, paradoxically, is that it produces paralysis rather than liberation . . . and even if we manage to overcome paralysis and make a choice, we are less satisfied than we would have been if we had fewer options." according to the psychologist Barry Schwartz. The way to overcome the paralysis is to have a structure. I'm not talking about spending all your time planning so you have no time left for doing. Rather, I'm suggesting you commit to a schedule for social media marketing.

Initially, it seemed like a time-consuming task to me, but I quickly realized how comfortable it makes my life. We are lost without our Google calendars every day. The same logic applies when it comes to planning social media marketing. With so many tools available for creating a calendar, planning social media for an SMB entrepreneur or marketer has become much easier. Tools like timeline calendar helps in planning Facebook postings, tools like HootSuite, TweetDeck and SocialOomph come with many auto alerts. They help to pre-program your social media activities and also post on your behalf on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other social sites. This feature makes it very convenient for weekends or other times when you are away from work. Social media can also be planned using a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and shared on Google Docs, where all team members can see it and make suggestions.

Here are some tips for making your social media calendar:

1.        Focus on small periods of time initially

Do not attempt to create a whole year's calendar for two reasons: first, it is going to be such a huge task that it might put you off, and second, we are dealing with media in real-time here. The stories, discussions and trends change every day and we need to respond. That's why planning for a week or two to start allows you to be ahead of things while also having enough time to plan for new developments.