If you’re managing social media for a large enterprise, you’re probably pumping out high volumes of social posts on a daily basis. Planning, drafting, and scheduling all those posts can be a beast, but leveraging an effective social media schedule template – one that can tie in with your current content marketing platform – is the only way to fly on the social web.
It’s a nuanced approach – but we’re all about making life simple for social media managers. That’s why we’ve created a template that can untangle and simplify the process of social media posting for enterprise-level companies.
The jury’s in (as much as we hate to admit it); a spreadsheet is the most widely used tool to plan and manage social media posts. So we’ve created a universal Excel template that ticks off all the boxes for your social media needs.
A Part of Your Overall Content Management Methodology
Social media simply must fit in with your overall content strategy. Coherent, consistent messaging is a must for successful, integrated, content-marketing campaigns.
Foremost among the priorities that must be present to have a coherent content methodology is getting all your teams on the same page. Engaging teams outside your content team to pitch in with subject matter expertise or sales insights can help drive your message home to your target customers. Collaboration is the key to content management success.
For instance, if your sales team discovers that potential customers just don’t know enough about the nuts and bolts of your product – or how it can work for them – your engineering team can help you create social media posts with images and videos dealing with both the how and the how-to for them. Medical equipment manufacturers, on the other hand, might need some input from the healthcare professionals on their staff to explain the product to large healthcare facilities.
Social media is often a great way to convey that message. With social media analytics’ ability to target their prospective customers’ demographics, interests, and even when they’re likely to be on social media, this format can be the most timely way to get across a company’s message.
Having a social media schedule template that you can integrate with your enterprise-wide content calendar – and your content analytics tool – is a must for a successful approach to enterprise content marketing.
Social Media Scheduling Template Must-Haves
A successful social media scheduling template for an enterprise-level company needs several easy-to-understand, easy-to-deploy features that cover all the bases for their social media team. Here’s what we’ve included in ours:
- Comprehensive coverage: For starters, a social scheduling template needs to encompass all the fields and columns for the company’s entire range of social networks. In some cases, separate tabs may be needed for Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and all your other networks can help you organize your posting at a glance. As your company grows its social assets in some areas and trims the poor performers, a digital spreadsheet that you can change at the touch of a button is a must.
- Columns to organize image assets: If you don’t use your image assets strategically, they can nickel and dime you to death. Keep them organized and easily accessible with spreadsheet columns that note the location and file name of all your assets. Linking directly to the image assets located on your server or cloud-based file system (ex: Dropbox, Google Drive, DAM, etc.) will make reviewing posts easy. And don’t forget that you can get more mileage out of your images by leveraging the power of content repurposing.
- Built-in validation for reviews and approvals: Like most large organizations, your company probably has a set workflow policy for internal and external reviews, as well as the approvals they need. A status column with a built-in dropdown menu that contains specific options (ex: “Planned,” “To Review,” “Approved”, and “Published”) can define the workflow for your review and approval process and communicate the status of each of post.
- Important Metadata: Although not necessary for the actual social posts, you may have a variety of important metadata fields that aid in guiding producers and aligning social posts with some sort of strategic objective. For example, social posts often alternate between recurring themes. Having a “topic” or “theme” column can help producers follow the alternating schedule. Additionally, having an “Audience” column is helpful to guide the setup of sponsored posts that should target a specific audience.
- Easy-import content management format: To make sure that everyone on your content team is on the same page with your social posts, it’s wise to set up your social scheduling template to mirror the format of whichever content marketing platform (CMP) you may be using. Any fields that are native to the platform and important for your internal reporting (i.e. topic, audience, campaign, and keywords) can make importing a snap.
- Easy-import social media management format: Last, but certainly not least, your template should also consider any formatting requirements that make it easy to import it into your social media management platform (SMMP). Several SMMPs have a native bulk import function (ex: Hootsuite’s Bulk Composer) that make it much quicker to set up large batches of social posts for scheduling in the future.
With such a template, you can more easily automate your social media posts, getting more posts out in less time. Streamlining the social posting process – from brainstorming to final approval to the moment you hit “Publish” – can free up more time for research, testing, and tweaking your social posts to perform even better.
Without a designated template for social posts, you run the risk of mangling your message with an inconsistent brand voice or information that doesn’t align with that of your other content. That’s especially true when you empower your employees to post on behalf of your brand.
Employee activation is, of course, one of the most effective messaging strategies in the industry today. Not only does it provide employees with a sense of a higher purpose, making them three times more likely to stay on the job, but it also increases profitability by 22 percent.
That’s not all. When your employees share your brand messages on social media, the messages’ reach increases by a massive 561 percent. And, people engage with those messages eight times more often than those your official team shares.
When you have a template that lays out every step, including reviews and approvals, your employees – and you – can be confident that their posts will echo your brand voice, provide timely information, and see impressive results like these.
Download your new template now.
Final Piece of the Puzzle
If you don’t have the final piece of the puzzle – a content marketing platform that can help you make the most of your template – we can help. DivvyHQ is a comprehensive content platform that allows you to manage all your social media and other content all in one place. Start your free 14-day trial today!