Somene would say, “It takes little.”.
The facts are far from this statement.
Because everything that comes before the fateful moment of publishing a post online requires time and skills, even if the publication itself requires just a click on the “Share” or “Publish” button.
Posts published on social media are part of a broader content marketing campaign, not a casual and circumstantial action. Therefore, the published contents must be calibrated to build a continuous presence and to address communications and marketing objectives such as lead generation, awareness, conversion, and loyalty.
Companies, brands, freelancers, influencers – and more generally those who work and want to operate in the digital space – are responsible for creating, organizing and publishing content today. Social media editorial plans are essential for anyone who wants to build an online presence and organize content properly on the platforms in use, according to a specific social media marketing strategy.
What is the editorial plan and why is it needed
You can use the editorial plan to organize content for social media, blogs, magazines, editorial publications and newsletters.
The objective is to organize them as well as to share them with the team working on the project, and if it is not an exclusively internal document, with the client as well. Everything that must be published within a certain time frame is included in the editorial plan. The frequency can be weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. However, the planned timeframe must allow for a thorough review of the content strategy.
It is important for professionals to follow a schedule-track that takes into account longer periods even in the case of short editorial plans.
In the case of a bi-weekly planning and approval of contents, the organization and creation of the posts for social media must necessarily have a broader vision of the distribution of the posts over time (preferably monthly).
The social publishing plan is not simply an agenda that keeps track of deadlines and organizes workflows. It is a strategic tool that can be used to pursue specific marketing objectives and to keep track of various distribution channels.
Create a social media editorial plan
Therefore, the editorial plan is the output of a series of preliminary actions, reasoning, and analysis that cannot be separated from knowledge of:
- brand
- customer values,
- history,
- products and services;
- strengths,
- weaknesses,
- opportunities and threats
- unique selling proposition (USP)
In case you work for a company or agency, these elements are usually provided to the social media specialist during the briefing process.
In any case, they must be collected directly by the professional during the alignment phase with the client; competitors: who are they, what do they do, how do they operate on social media? Monitoring the behavior of competitors does not mean copying it.
Monitor your competitors (competitive research, benchmarking) to find ideas, understand the behavior of your potential audience, but, above all, to differentiate yourself and find your own communicative uniqueness; audience: who are you communicating with?
- Who is the current audience of the channels in use?
- Who is the ideal and desired consumer (the so-called buyer personas)?
- Where do brands and audiences meet?
- What are their habits and interests?
A market analysis, site traffic analysis, insights from social media channels or specific research commissioned to companies specializing in analysis can provide the information necessary to answer these questions.
Publications on social media should follow and be designed according to the objectives of the social media strategy of which they are a part. Among the objectives that can be achieved through a social communication strategy implemented through an editorial plan are: brand awareness, loyalty, brand reputation, lead generation, promotion, conversion, traffic generation to the website, social engagement;
Selecting the right channels to supervise and preparing an editorial plan for each of these channels is a very important reflection for any company.
In fact, each social media is different and, regardless of the current trends, it is crucial to carefully choose which channels to control for a coherent and efficient communication. We usually begin with a question as simple and underestimated as this: “What is your goal?”
What is your target?Knowledge of the particularities of the different social media: each platform used by individuals and companies has formal specificities (image size, ability to insert links, space for text, etc.) as well as others that foster certain purposes or strategies for fruition. Cases range from the search for information and inspiration to networking, from entertainment to the educational function.
Knowing these characteristics allows content creators to create content that is compatible with the publication platform and with the way it is used by online users. A social media strategy is also designed and created based on the resources that can be used for its implementation.
A social editorial plan can involve a wide range of professionals such as a social media manager, project manager, community manager, copywriter, graphic designer, video maker, motion graphic designer, social ads expert, etc.
Topics of social planning: narrative lines
Once the various analyses on brands, competitors, audiences, and objectives have been conducted, it is time to define the topics and headings to be rotated within the editorial plan. It is always difficult to come up with topics for discussion, since there is no magic formula to make a topic popular.
To begin identifying the narrative lines of the editorial plan, we can outline some thematic macro-areas:
Characteristics, peculiarities, uses, curiosity, staging of the needs it solves; values: what the brand believes in; shared worlds: where and how brands and people connect.Values, ways of being; anniversaries, events, days: they alternate throughout the calendar year as holidays, events of interest, such as Design Week, European Week for Waste Reduction, and World Chocolate Day.
These are recurrences that, if in line with the brand’s vision, can enrich social planning. For calibrating the topics and improving the content, it is useful to continuously monitor the insights provided by the posts in order to develop a data-driven approach built on the satisfaction of the public with the posts.
The effectiveness of the strategy cannot be determined with one post, but must be evaluated over time. In addition, common sense always goes hand in hand with data.
It is important to always keep in mind, when developing individual contents, for whom and for what purpose we are creating the contents.
The editorial plans, and therefore the content shared on social media, are too often self-referential. There’s no space left for the other, for the relationship. In order for a brand to tell about itself, it must use a relational lever that enables it to reach out to people rather than talking at them.
When talking about products and services, this means finding a communicative key that involves, entertains, connects with emotions, informs and educates where necessary.
It doesn’t just say “me” or make a shopping list.
Content types Social media content typically consists of two components: copy and visuals.
The copy is the textual part, which can be long or short. A social media copy’s length can vary depending on the social network and the communication style (essential, direct, narrated, explanatory, etc.).
When it is clear what to communicate and for whom, it is time to prepare a social media editorial plan. It is therefore necessary to enter all the details of the posts to be published within a calendar.
When it comes to scheduling, the first questions we ask ourselves are: “How many posts?”, “When should they be published?”.
It is often said that there is a perfect number of posts per week and a perfect time for users to enjoy social media, but in reality this is not true. Pages, channels, and audiences are all different: therefore, the number of contents and the posting time will differ.
After a testing phase of course, the insights of your audience will help you when publishing. It is important to keep in mind, however, that for effective social communication, what matters is not the quantity of releases, but the quality of content posted online.
The elements of a good editorial plan
Regardless of the social media marketing strategy adopted, the number of issues and the time of publication (which, as we have outlined, varies from case to case), these elements must be included in each editorial plan: indication of the social media; publication date: day and month; topic: specific topic of the post; copy: text of the post; visual preview; visual: image or video name and link; mentions and hashtags; note. The specifics of each post can be outlined on paper to help organize the work and share the planning with everyone involved in the phases of content creation, approval, and publication. Social editorial plans are often created with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a similar program.
In spite of the fact that the spreadsheet doesn’t have an “attractive” design, it allows you to organize everything you need to create a clean, clear and – most importantly – functional editorial plan
Sheet by Google is a similar alternative with the added benefit of being digital and collaborative.
Spreadsheet program included in the free Google Docs Editors suite that integrates with cloud-native collaboration tools on Google Drive.
By using Google, the team can work together on shared documents that can be edited simultaneously and in real time. The tool also allows you to store all the materials necessary for creating and publishing content in a single location: the editorial calendar on Sheet, images, information materials, project briefs, documents, and indications on narrative lines in dedicated Drive folders.
For those who don’t like spreadsheets, there are some alternatives such as: Google Calendar, also provided by Google, which allows you to create an editorial plan (by inserting posts as events) and which allows you to report copy and links as well as attach files. In addition, by overlaying the various editorial calendars, you will be able to have a more complete picture of multi-channel planning; Management and project management platform Trello, which, through the “Calendar” function, allows you to organize content; PostPickr, an Italian tool for social media management, which, in addition to scheduling publication on various channels, shows an editorial calendar showing the planning for a project.
