I am a huge supporter of taking the time to create a plan when you have business goals that you want to achieve. Plans save time and money in the long run, simple as that. And this holds true for your social media marketing efforts as well!

Two great examples are diets and road trips. In each scenario, you want to get from A to B. We all know that having a written plan (or map) is crucial in finding your way effectively, and efficiently; whether with diet and exercise, or on the highway – a plan keeps you from getting lost along the way. Consider your social media marketing plan that written map to success.

A crucial aspect of a successful social media marketing strategy is strong valuable content. I’m sure you have read all about the importance of good content before, so I am not going to go on and on about it here. The short story on good content is….you need it to be successful on social media.

Good content takes time to complete, so it is handy to have shortcuts to help you organize your plan in advance so that you are not spending hours on end trying to keep up with writing and posting your content on a consistent basis.

My secret weapon for you? An editorial calendar.

While you may think these are just for journalists, they come in handy for organizing the business content that you want to share in the social media world. This will help you identify the messages that you want to share and pinpoint the most effective times to share them.

What you will need is a calendar (online or printed) and an hour or two to organize your thoughts. First I suggest that you make a list of all of the information that you would like to share during the month (events, announcements, email blasts, etc). Then I would suggest that you choose a goal for your month. Whether it be more email signups, leads, in-store visits, or whatever your own personal business goal would be.

Then, think about how you would drive those results and what type of content makes sense. Presto! You just found out what your theme of the month will be. So if you are choosing newsletter signups, you need to weave the theme of your newsletter through your posts during the month.

Also, you should know how many posts you want to do per week. I would always suggest a minimum of 7-14 per week. Which would mean 28-56 per month.

Do you have an email blast that goes out on Tuesdays? Make sure to mark that on your calendar to share a link to your email blast every week on a Tuesday. Want to run a contest to promote your newsletter signups? Promote it three times per week and mark on your calendar when you want to do this.

Then continue to add items to your calendar and before you know it – it should be nearly full! By creating an editorial calendar you will enable yourself to consistently brand yourself across online and offline as well as come up with quality content that engages your audience. Now get to it!