Today, digital content is everywhere. For your content to stand out, quality and consistency are key. On Instagram, this means posting solid content on the regular. And that means you need a plan. Enter the content calendar.
A content calendar is a resource used to coordinate digital marketing efforts. Content calendars unite the planning, organization, and scheduling of monthly content, helping you deliver engaging content that drives conversions and grows your social following.
AiSchedul is an amazing tool for content calendar creation. In this post, we’ll walk you through how to use the app to create a killer content calendar.
Table of Contents
The first step to building a content calendar is gathering information. First, decide on the main themes or categories of content that you’ll post. Then, put together details on the 5Ws of your categories:
Who is your target audience?
Why will they engage? Think about the value you’re offering to your followers, and how you can convey that in the captions and CTAs you’ll schedule throughout the month. Tip: Giveaways boost engagement. What can you offer? Use the AiSchedul Post & Reward tool to easily schedule reward posts into your calendar.
What will you post? Tip: Use AiSchedul’s social listening features to follow popular hashtags and accounts. Use this information to help you decide on the best content and tags for your chosen themes.
Where will your content come from? Decide on the sources of your content, and how you’ll unite them to give your Instagram a consistent voice and aesthetic. Tip: You can monitor and repost great content directly from your AiSchedul app. You can even see who’s mentioned you, and repost mentions!
When (the best dates and times to post for the month). Now that you have your content types and CTAs, decide how best to distribute them through the month. Tip: The Social Calendar on your AiSchedul app is a great resource for this, featuring popular holidays and observance dates plus high engagement hashtags.
A content planning grid such as this can help with the task of organizing this information.
From here you can develop templates for the types of posts you’ve chosen and a plan around how you’ll schedule your content.
After you’ve gathered and organized the information you need, you can start building your content calendar. AiSchedul’s scheduling function is a great tool for this. You can schedule content days, weeks, even months in advance to automatically post across multiple accounts. There are four basic types of posts you can schedule through the app, all of which can be used to build out a killer content calendar: Feed Posts, Story Posts, Reposts, and Reward Posts. In this section, we’ll run through how to schedule each of them.
Reposting content is a great way to stay on top of trends and connect with your audience. Whether you’re reposting user generated content, inspiration, or the latest industry stats, there are lots of reasons to share existing content. Just make sure to give credit to the original creator.
Tip: You can also repost relevant content from the Social Calendar in your AiSchedul app. Just click “Schedule Post” on the date of your choice to be shown a feed of top related posts for that date.
Running an Instagram contest or giveaway can grow your followers 70% faster in three months. Add regular reward posts into your content calendar to boost engagement and grow your followers with AiSchedul’s Post & Reward tool. Simply schedule a post and set criteria. Our AI will monitor and automatically send a DM to followers who complete your conditions.
Once you’ve scheduled all of the posts for your content calendar, you can view and edit your scheduled feed, story, and repost posts in the “Scheduled” section of the app. To view the reward posts you’ve scheduled, see the Post & Reward section of the app.
Now that you’ve scheduled your content calendar, take a breath! Your scheduled posts are fully automated; you’ll never be asked to approve content before it posts, and you’ll always have fresh, engaging content going live.
Use that time you would have spent posting to interact with followers, analyze your Instagram insights, and review what’s working and what isn’t for next month. Play with your categories, content types, hashtags, and post timing until you have a killer content calendar that works for you and your business.