Hey everyone, welcome back to Stronger Social. I hope you are all having a great week. Busy week over here for me, as I have been heads down prepping for a huge campaign here at Cadence. Can’t wait to share more about this soon!
In this issue, we will go over the following:
How to approach social media calendars (and work smarter)
What stopped my scroll: Did Oura win April Fool’s Day?
Social Pro Spotlight: Taela shares the truth and business impact of community management
5 hot social job opportunities that you should check out
Let’s get to it.
-Sam
“Can you share with me the social calendar?”
“Can you add this post into your social media calendar?”
“When is the launch post going out? Can you share with me the social calendar?”
These are the kind of questions you will be asked daily as a social media professional. Because the reality is that a social media calendar is one of the most coveted documents/resources by team members within a marketing organization.
Everyone likes to have eyes on and access to the social media teams’ social calendar. It gives them peace of mind. It provides context on what’s going out, when it’s going out, and the channel it’s going out to. For me? I like to use Sprout Social for my social media calendar. But then I also like to create one in powerpoint for external team members to easily view and have access to.
I love a good social media calendar more than anyone. But I feel that as social media professionals, we sometimes waste too much time and put too much effort into social media calendars.
Because at the end of the day, it’s just a distribution plan.
Let me further clarify…
It’s not a strategy. It’s a distribution plan.
So what should you do instead? Well, I think we would be far more productive in creating content libraries and content engines over content calendars.
We should be putting more time into creating content libraries that fuel our social calendars. Not meticulously filling out and planning a calendar.
I’ve made this mistake before. And I don’t want you to make this mistake as well.
Here are some action items and tips on implementing this today.
📸 Create a library for your social media content. One library. One hub. All for your social media content. This can be a google drive folder, a Sharepoint folder, or even within your social media management suite. I know Sprout Social provides this which I love.
📁 Within your content library, create folders for each content pillar or content engine to keep yourself more organized.
⛽️ Focus less on your social calendar and focus more on building content franchises and content engines that can fill a content library. Collaborate with your content team on building these libraries and keeping them full.
🗓️ A full content library means a full content calendar. This is where you just distribute. If you see a day on your calendar that needs a post - go straight to your content library to see what you can fill it with.
This approach has saved me so much time and I hope it does for you as well.
Calendars are great and have a role.
But we should be focusing more on WHAT we are posting, rather than WHEN we are posting it.
What Stopped my scroll
April Fool’s Day is the one day of the year where every brand jumps out of their shell and wants to be playful. I get it, it’s a cultural moment and it feels like a competition on who can have the best April Fool’s prank and post. I get it. A lot of fake flavors being launched, most are mildly disgusting and unhinged.
But the one that stood out to me the most was Oura Ring’s. It wasn’t geared towards being the funniest, or the most unhinged. This was just…clever. Oura leaned into a fake product line and extension, for pets. This carousel was beautifully crafted and guess what? It crushed. 72k+ likes & 122K shares. When others are being silly, be clever.
Social Pro Shoutout
Community management can get a bad rap, as leadership and brands don’t fully understand the business impact it can foster. It’s bigger than just responding to comments. It’s a mechanism for driving community, increasing brand loyalty, and creating customer retention. This was such a great post. Make sure to go give Taela a follow on LinkedIn!
Social Opps
If you’re on the job hunt and exploring new Social Media Opportunities, here are some roles to check out.
✌️ KBYG (Know Before You Go)
Here are some things to know before you head out…
⛽️ Follow Cadence I lead social & brand over at Cadence, a fast-growing sports hydration brand. Be sure to give us a follow here and follow along.
😯 Instagram is going after TikTok Shop? In case you missed it, Instagram wants all the smoke with TikTok Shop. Creators can now add affiliate links and tag products in reels content.
📱 Interested in learning more about creating shareable content? Check out last weeks issue to catch up here.
‼ Forward to a friend! If you do find Stronger Social helpful, be sure to forward to a friend.
🤔 Got a topic that you want to see addressed in a future issue?If so, respond to this email and let me know!
Sam Wells
Thanks for reading and hope you have a great week!
Follow me on LinkedIn here
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