Your Most Powerful Social Media Tool for 2013

It’s amazing how fast something changes when you focus on the thing you want to change. Like losing weight, or playing a particular song on the piano.

Amping up your results on Facebook, Twitter, and your blog is no different.

We may think to ourselves how badly we want more followers and subscribers, or more engagement on our updates. But just won’t create results. We have to actually do something!

But even taking action is difficult without a framework for that action. That’s why I love using content calendars!

What is a content calendar?

A content calendar is essential a framework to make your content strategy more refined and actionable. It also helps you better organize and utilize resources.

Yesterday, Beth Kanter asked people if they use an editorial calendar and “editorial meetings” to get ideas and manage content for a content strategy. There are lots of great responses and ideas over there so check it out.

3 Benefits to Using a Content Calendar

1. Get more done–A content calendar helps you map out the people who will share the workload of creating content and posting it online.
2. Plan better–When you use a content calendar you can more effectively plan out topics and how different topics relate to each other as a whole. For example, during an entire month, a dog shelter could talk about a new kennel they’re building, on Mondays talk about a sponsor who’s helping, and on Tuesdays post a picture of the construction.
3. Ask difficult questions–Creating a content calendar is a lot like creating a will in that it forces you to ask the important but difficult questions. Questions like “Who are we?” “What do our people deeply care about?” “Does what we’re saying really matter?” and “What do we expect to accomplish with this piece of content?”

2 Free Content Calendars to Get You Started

Here are two free content calendar templates to get you started:

• A guest post on Beth’s blog includes a free multi-tab content calendar made with Google Docs.
• Here’s a simple weekly calendar  template I created that focuses on daily topics and who will be posting.

How is your nonprofit using a content calendar?