I’m going to begin by saying this: if you don’t have a social content calendar, you need one. It’s vital that you’re staying consistent and visible to your followers and potential followers. Additionally, it’ll free up hours of your time that you would otherwise be spending wondering what content to post each morning. But I’ll go into my obsession with content calendars in a later blog.
—
Every month, after I sent my monthly social reports to my clients, I update my “client progress” report. This report is a spreadsheet of every client and each of their platforms, and it’s a compilation of all of their data [that matters]. It includes how much a client has increased or decreased in any area, month over month. I mark increases as green, and decreases as red, so it’s easy for me to see how an account is doing at a glance.
One of our clients is tough because they’re an MBA admissions consultant, which is a time-specific industry. Once people have gotten into their MBA program, they’re going to unfollow. Which means we have a steady decrease in followers, and we need to constantly figure out how to bring in new ones. This client went on a year-long hiatus on social media, so their followers thought they died.
They started posting again and saw an enormous decrease in followers because old followers saw their posts for the first time in a year and said “Uh I don’t remember following this account, and I’m already in my MBA program.” Because of this, I’m happy when I see this client’s progress report, and I see that they have a decrease in followers and increase in engagement. It means we’re combing out the right people, and our client is becoming relevant. It means we’re pushing out the right, fresh content.
Determining if your content is getting stale
Every client’s KPIs are different, depending on their needs. For the most part, clients care about engagement and following. I sent weekly and monthly comprehensive social reports – monthly for most clients. However, that doesn’t mean I wait an entire month to see if we’re doing a good job. The best thing you can do for your client is to be proactive. Here are some of the things we do to ensure we’re providing for our clients:
- Bi-Monthly Engagement Report
- Bi-Monthly Social Media Audit
- Bi-Monthly Competitor Report
Our engagement report is a spreadsheet containing all of our clients and their various platforms. Every two weeks, we go through each client to identify the highest-engaging post, the second high-engaging post, and the lowest-engaging post. We do this so we always know what types of content our clients’ audiences enjoy seeing. For example, if we start noticing that our audiences aren’t engaging with content pertaining to our clients’ services anymore, we need to stop posting that type of content. Of course, always consult with your client before you deconstruct your calendar categories, but for the most part, they’ll be open to suggestions when you have the numbers to back them.
Every two weeks, I go through each client and perform a social media audit on each of their platforms. I have a spreadsheet with items to confirm, and if I can’t confirm them, I mark it red and return to the problem once I finish my audit. Some of my items include checking if the clients’ business information is up to date, if their websites link correctly to their accounts, making sure everything has a CTA, and ensuring their accounts have taken advantage of the latest platform updates. For example, when Facebook rolled out their “Our Story” feature for pages, my audit helped me identify clients that hadn’t optimized this new feature.
Competitor reports – these are vital in ensuring you’re staying on top of the game in your clients’ industries. Hopefully, you’ll have a social listening tool to assist with this. Here are some great options if you’re still shopping around: Top 6 Social Listening Tools for 2019.
Take Advantage of the Now
Keeping with your calendar doesn’t mean there isn’t room to update or add content. In fact, if you have the time and the team, you should absolutely be constantly updating and adding content as it becomes relevant.
Every day, my team takes 15 minutes out of their day to research trending Twitter hashtags. Trending hashtags constantly change, especially if there are national holidays, a movie is coming out, or there’s big political news. Checking what’s trending allows us to take a handful of those hashtags and apply them to already-scheduled tweets for the day. We can also take that time to create new tweets for our clients. Of course, this is dependent on the hashtags and if they’re relevant to our clients’ industry. Sometimes they’re not relevant.
My team also takes a few minutes on Mondays to review any weekly trending hashtags or conversations that need to be followed throughout the week. Again, this allows us to keep our clients relevant in the conversations.
It’s critical that you’re staying relevant and promoting content that your audience wants to see. It’s okay that it’ll break up your social calendar a little bit – your job is to make sure your clients are on top of the game as far as news goes.
Remember when Oreo took advantage of that Super Bowl blackout in 2013? That’s what I’m talking about. Constantly being on the lookout for these sorts of engagement opportunities will keep you creative and will improve your creative workflow as time goes on.
—
I’m sure I’ll end up creating a “Part 2” of this blog, but that’s enough to get anyone started. Getting into a rhythm is important, and it all gets easier over time.