Marketers Take Flight

140: Mastering Social Media: How to Plan a Three-Month Content Calendar

• Lindsay Diven • Episode 140

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Do you often find yourself scrambling to find engaging content for your social media platforms? Are you tired of the constant stress and headaches it brings? Don't worry, I've got you covered. In this episode, I'll be sharing my foolproof method of planning a three-month content calendar in just a few hours.

What's more? You'll also have access to my personal quarterly content calendar that I use for my companies to get you started on your planning journey. This strategy has been my secret weapon in staying ahead of the curve and ensuring the content is always relevant and engaging for our audience.

But that's not all! I also want to help you diversify your content. So, I'll be guiding you on how to create a variety of content that keeps your audience engaged. I'll be sharing the content pillars we use to keep our posts diverse and captivating. Plus, I'll give you a sneak peek into how I use my podcast topics to inspire my social media content.

This episode is going to revolutionize how you plan your content. So grab your favorite drink, find a cozy spot, and get ready for an enlightening journey into content planning.

Don't forget to grab your free quarterly content calendar to use while you listen to the episode. Just plug in the dates and content to get your firm’s online marketing engine started!


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Speaker 1:

Can you really create a three month content calendar in just a few hours? I say yes, it can be done. I know because I do this not for one, but two companies, and in today's special Mod Marketing episode, I'm gonna show you the steps to create your own quarterly content calendar. This is a jam-packed episode, so grab a cup of coffee, a pen, a paper to take notes. I'm going to walk you through the same step-by-step process I use for both full sale partners and marketer's take flight to plan out three months full of content in just a few hours time. This process will save you time, headaches and frustration, not to mention getting the internal approvals needed or being able to work way ahead to get the technical content you need from your busy subject matter experts. So if you're ready to have the next quarter's content planned out, including the content you'll release each week and your social media posts, I've got you covered. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Hey there, I'm Lindsay Dibbin and I'm passionate about everything marketing, productivity and career growth. With over 17 years of experience in the architecture, engineering and construction industry, I know firsthand the ins and outs of this exciting field, from my early days as a marketing coordinator to becoming an award-winning marketing professional in firm principle. I've learned the ropes through countless late nights and challenging deadlines. Now I'm thrilled to bring you the AEC Marketing Strategies podcast. Here I'll be sharing simple yet powerful, step-by-step marketing strategies that you can implement to achieve the same level of success. Consider me your go-to marketing mentor, someone who truly gets the unique challenges you face in the AEC industry. Whether you're an AEC Marketing Pro or industry newbie, this podcast is your personal coffee date with your marketing bestie. Together, we'll navigate the ever-changing landscape of online marketing and digital trends, ensuring you stay ahead of the curve. If you're ready to unlock the marketing secrets they never taught you in college and tailor them specifically to the AEC industry, then you're in the right place.

Speaker 1:

Now let's get started. Well, hey there, friend Lindsay here and I've got something special for you today. Do you remember that episode where I dove deep into creating a three-month content calendar in just a few hours? Yes, that game-changing episode that had so many of you sending me messages about how it transformed your content planning process. Well, I've heard you and I know how valuable that episode was. So, for those who missed it or for those who just want to revisit this gold-mind of information, I'm doing a replay this week's episode. I'm gonna break down the exact steps to plan out a quarter's worth of content without the overwhelm.

Speaker 1:

Whether you're juggling multiple market sectors or geographic locations, or just trying to streamline your content process for just one company, this episode is your roadmap. So grab your favorite drink, find a cozy spot and let's dive back into this fan-favorite episode. And if you've already heard it, trust me, the second time around might just reveal some new insights. You missed the first time, so are you ready? Let's dive in? Well, hey there, marketers, are you ready for this episode to change your life? You've learned that content is the fuel that gets your mod marketing strategy fired up, and creating content is often a chore that gets created in between proposal deadlines. I think we all know that. But in this episode, I break down this process into a simple, step-by-step approach that will ensure you know exactly what you're creating, when you're creating it and how to get it created, even with all of your proposal deadlines. I'll cover exactly how to fill out a content calendar so you're aware of all of your events, any holidays or anything else that may influence your content, and the two ways to make sure your content gets done and released every single week. Then I share how to plan out your social media posts to align with your weekly content. I've got all of this in this episode for you. Plus, I put together a free resource. So when you're ready to start planning out your content, go download the quarterly content calendar and it's like a plug and play with your dates and your content, so you'll be all set. It is the exact one I use for both full-sale partners and marketers take flight, and really quickly. Would you do me a favor? Would you share this episode with one of your AEC marketing friends? Or, if not, this episode, whatever episode of marketers take flight that you love the most, as you do with your own content for this podcast. I work really hard to create it and I wanna make sure that it supports and reaches as many marketers who need it as possible. So if you could share it with one, two or heck even 10 AEC marketer friends, I'd be forever grateful. All right, let's do this Now.

Speaker 1:

When I'm talking about a content calendar, when I say the word content, I'm talking about the content that you are creating every week, your original content. So your ideas, your insights, your message, your firm's message. For AEC firms, this is typically in the form of a weekly blog article, maybe a YouTube video or possibly even a podcast. I'm seeing some firms put those out. You want your firm to be creating original content every week and, using this system, you'll be able to plan out what that weekly content will be far in advance, so you can begin creating it far in advance. And then we'll add some social media posts around that. You're planning that in advance as well. So that's why this episode is so important because you're planning out your week original content, whether it be a podcast, a blog, a video, a pre-recorded video or a live video. You're planning this out in advance.

Speaker 1:

So how do we do this? Well, we do this with the first step. The first step in creating your content calendar is all about identifying ideas that your ideal client, your ideal audience, your ideal community wants to learn, wants to know about, wants to hear about. And you wanna give yourself a little time to work on this ideation. And I say I like to give myself deadlines. So give yourself the next seven days to do this. Like, give yourself an internal deadline to create all these ideas. Deal, okay, you agree with me? And to give you some ideas.

Speaker 1:

I've talked about a few ways to find these ideas or come up with these ideas in this Mod Marketing Podcast series. Specifically, go back and listen to episodes 76, 78, and 80. Through this idea brainstorming and topic creation, you may also discover some common themes. Identifying and setting themes really helps you to narrow down and decide on topics that would entice your ideal audience, and you might also want to Google National Holidays or Holidays. There's several websites that you know. The days are recorded federal holidays, but then there's some fun holidays and months that pop up. There's a ton of food-related holidays, but there's also a ton that could work for AEC firms, and so now you've brainstormed some topic ideas, you have some themes. Maybe you've identified some specific holidays. This will help guide your content and make it easier to come up with more specific ideas for each week.

Speaker 1:

So I even look for, like these fun holidays, or what I've heard them called, hashtag holidays, and let me give you an example. So July 1st this past year was National Joke Day, and so, for Full Sail Partners, I asked employees to send me videos of their best like awful dad jokes, or their best like corny jokes, and some people even send in videos of their kids telling it, and so I put them all together into one video and I posted it on July 1st. And you could even take this further to do your weekly content around all about jokes, so like maybe a blog post could be called times when accounting reports are no joke, or something like that. You kind of use this quote unquote hashtag, holiday or this theme to guide your whole week, and I'll get through that. You'll see this a little bit more in the next couple steps. So once you have, you wanna start listing out all of your holidays or themes or fun national days. You wanna write those down and then do another brain dump how can you use this information to plan the content around that?

Speaker 1:

And another way to do this and to come up with topic ideas is to also revisit old content that you've posted that's done well in the past, or content that's in proposals, or content that's in your SOQs or your brochures or shortlist presentations or conference presentations. Really, we have so much content, so you don't necessarily have to create new content, but revisit all of your old content. And here again, another deadline set yourself, set a timer for 20 minutes here, right, maybe 30 minutes. Go back to your weekly content, even your old social media posts, what resonated, what got a lot of people out of engagement. Look at your comments, what was shared in the. You know what was your most popular or most shared social media posts that you've done. Choose a topic or two that you can expand on, shed new light on or dive deeper or put a different spin or come at it at a different angle. And so let me give you another example.

Speaker 1:

This entire mod marketing series is an example of this concept. Last year, I presented how to develop an online marketing program at several S&P S&PS regional conferences, and I got really great feedback, and so I knew I could expand on that one 45 minute presentation by breaking it up into separate podcast episodes. So I'm doing just that, and this is episode. I don't know four or five in the series. So this is just a reminder that you don't always have to reinvent the wheel or start from scratch when creating new content. You can get inspiration from others in your industry from revamping and expanding on your own content. So if, because if you always feel like you have to create something new or talk about something new, you're gonna run out of ideas fast, right, and it's really hard to get new technical information from your staff. So you just wanna try to utilize all the content that you have. Alright, so the next portion of the content calendar planning should really only take 30 to 45 minutes. So set a timer and let's do this At this stage.

Speaker 1:

You're gonna start filling out your calendar, so be sure you have all those awesome type topic ideas that you just came up with from the previous steps, along with important dates, and then start filling out the calendar. You can either create your own calendar or, if you use the software, if you already have one, or you can head to the free resource that goes along with this episode, because I made a content calendar for you that you can just plug and play. You can find a link to that in the show notes over on marketerstakeflightcom, forward, slash 82. So, no matter what, you're using my template, your template, some other template put in the first thing you want to do is put in the dates of the upcoming three months. So I'm recording this in September. So literally this week when I'm recording this, I am filling this out for quarter four, so that's October, november and December. So I'm going to fill out all the dates for that. Then I'm going to fill in all of the important dates. So this could be anything from your project milestones or conferences or events, to the holidays both national and hashtag holidays to themes or anything else you might be celebrating within those three months, celebrating or promoting within those three months. So fill that out for each month.

Speaker 1:

Now it's crucial that you put maybe your project milestones or your conferences or special events dates in at this time, because this is going to be a good guide for a lot of your content and any specific marketing campaign promotions you also want to know. Let me give you an example. If you're planning to unveil a new service offering or open a new office, you'll want to note those dates along with either any pre-event or launch excitement, promotional excitement leading up to that event, and put it down in the calendar. So you're not creating too much content and you're creating content that goes along with that to build that excitement for that promotion. For example, when I'm getting ready to open my Proposal Pro course, for the five to six weeks before that course opens that registration for that course opens, my weekly content theme is related to that course. The time and the content before the registration open is focused on the basics of proposal management, being a new proposal coordinator and so on and so on. So that's the theme I'll use in that those several weeks before I open that registration and any podcasts that fall within that timeline you bet are going to align with the course that I'm opening registration for.

Speaker 1:

So look at what your firm will be promoting for the quarter. Are you going to be announcing a new service offering? Are you going to be chasing a big project where the RFP is coming soon? Is there a major conference that one of your subject matter experts is speaking at? Take a few weeks before that event or announcement and use your weekly content to inform and educate and talk about the different aspects of that to create excitement around it.

Speaker 1:

All right, so at this point you've got your topic ideas, you've got your calendar all marked up with the important dates and now it's time to fill it out and this is the fun part, at least for me, to be really playful and creative. And in the content calendar I've provided, or on your own, now's the time to go week by week and add the specific theme or topic that your core content is going to be around, and you'll also want to add the exact date. You will be releasing that piece of core content each week. So, remember, you're using the ideas you've already brainstormed here, so you shouldn't be coming up with new ideas. You should just be filling in the ideas you've already come up with. So let me walk you through another example. So at Full Sail Partners, we publish a new blog article every Wednesday. So on the content calendar, I fill out every Wednesday with that week's blog article topic. We might not have the actual name yet, but we have the topic of what we're going to be talking about in that blog. And then, for marketers, take flight, a new podcast episode drops every Wednesday. So I do the same for that content calendar. So, as you're filling out your calendar at this point, you have the national or hashtag holidays noted, any major promotional or event dates and then your weekly content themes filled out for the next month. You're not done yet.

Speaker 1:

The next step is just deciding what type of social media posts to create and schedule for the rest of the days. So you might have, you know you have your weekly content topic ideas. You might have some other event or promotional specific dates and maybe some fun holidays or national holidays. So there is, there should be space left in your calendar. So this is where you're going to identify your social media posts. To do this, first decide where you're going to share your social posts, so oftentimes this is LinkedIn. It could maybe be Twitter, youtube, instagram, facebook I don't know yet if anybody's on TikTok any firms, and it's okay to have multiple, but I encourage you just to focus first on one or two platforms, especially if this is all new to you, because it could quickly get overwhelming. And yes, I'm okay and I believe that you can post the same thing to multiple platforms if you need. Ideally, it's good to change up the text to align with the specific social platform, but if you're strapped for time, that isn't a must, right, so don't overthink this. In going back to the content calendar, if you download the one that goes along with this episode, you'll see where you can add what social platform or platforms that specific days post will be going to, and so you'll see the far right. You can fill out what platforms and just put an X of which ones that Days Post is going to. So from there, it's time to assign. So you've decided where, what social media platforms, you're posting to, and then it's time to assign content types, for I'm not going to go into detail in today's podcast, but I use what's called content pillars and I've established content pillars for both full sale partners and marketers take flight. They're different and you're free to kind of use these examples and adapt for your specific firms or goals. So when I say content pillars, this is what I mean for marketers take flight.

Speaker 1:

On Mondays it's something about around motivation or encouragement, and it's usually in the in a form of a short video or real or a tick tock type format. Tuesdays I share a photo. Wednesdays it's podcast day, so it's usually a graphic or a sound bite to promote the podcast. This is my weekly core content, right? My podcast is my weekly core original content. Then on Thursdays I post something that is a key takeaway from the podcast that week's podcast episode, usually in the form of a short video, real or carol cell type post. Then on Fridays I like to end the week with a photo and some kind of encouragement, and for full sale partners I have come up with a similar format or cadence with. Mondays is all about motivation with a graphic or a stock photo.

Speaker 1:

Tuesdays we do our webinar promotion. We do several webinars a month, and so that's usually Tuesdays are reserved to promote that webinar. Wednesdays is when our core content is released. And then on Thursdays we're just starting to do short videos or reels to highlight the key points from the blog posts and posting those on Thursdays. I have our marketing intern helping me with these and so that's something we are experimenting with. And then on Fridays we've been featuring employee spotlights on our Facebook and YouTube channels as part of our year long 10th anniversary celebration. So it's a little bit more of like get to know the full sale partner employees. Now these schedules do change based on what content actually created or if we're promoting something specific, like for full sale partners. We're getting ready to go into, get ready for Dell Tech Project Con, so we're going to be doing a lot of conference promotion to make sure people know that we're there. So those might get adjusted a little bit with the promotions we're having. But these content pillars are identified and are filled out for the next quarter to keep us on track and it helps to create a balance of you don't want to just promote, promote, promote, promote and like ask people things, you want to have engagement, you want to have you know. So this really helps spread that out.

Speaker 1:

And, if you haven't guessed this yet, I try to actually use my weekly core content so the topic from my podcast, or the weekly blog posts, to inspire most of the social media posts for that week, and that's what I want you to do as well. So I want to repeat that I've got a weekly podcast and so I actually plan my weekly social media content around the topic of that week's podcast. So let me give you a real life example. I just did a podcast episode about going from an individual contributor to a manager of a proposal team. So that week I had a reels video about the tool I used to fight imposter syndrome and distractions, and I released that on Monday and this I find is a challenge that managers new managers often face. On Tuesday I shared my AEC recruiters starter kit that includes AEC marketing job descriptions, interview questions and performance goal examples specific to the marketing department Something a new manager would find valuable. On Wednesday, the episode was published and then on Thursday I created a reel that highlighted a key point from the episode and then on Friday I shared a photo of me explaining, like my why or why do I do this and why do I care about new managers. So you can see how that one podcast episode drove what I talked about on social throughout the week.

Speaker 1:

And a quick tip a really easy way to create an audio clip for social media is through a platform called Wave W-A-V-V-E. I'll link to it in my show notes. Canva is also another really cool tool. It's the tool I use to create all of my social media posts, and that is C-A-N-V-A. Also, you want to make sure that your social media calendar and your content calendar aligns with your business development pursuit marketing campaign calendars if you have them, like if you have any of those. You want to make sure that if you have something big coming up, your social media content is aligned to help amplify that message and or you're not asked at the last minute to post something without having time to fully create it or bump other things out of your calendar. So At this point, all you have left to do is to create your weekly content and then write your social media posts too.

Speaker 1:

So now I'm going to walk you through specifically how to use the free quarterly content calendar I've provided to you in the show notes. So it's time to take action. Head to the show notes at marketerstakeflightcom. Forward, slash 82 and grab the free quarterly content calendar. I know I've mentioned it a few times that you'll use it throughout today's episode, but let me break it down for you step by step, so you might want to pause here. Go grab the calendar and come back and listen to this. So once you've downloaded it, you'll be able to walk along with me on this.

Speaker 1:

First, you'll start with month one. You'll fill out all of the days and dates for each week in the columns A and B, and you'll do this the same for month two and month three. Then decide what day your weekly content will publish and fill that topic or title in that corresponding row to indicate the day of the week. So for me it's Wednesdays, for both marketersakeflight and for full sale partners. Next, fill in any of the upcoming holidays national or hashtag type holidays on those in those dates, and so now you're going to start to see where there are gaps in the template.

Speaker 1:

Column D indicates the special theme or the topic, and I typically fill these out on Mondays. So I know what that theme is for that week and it's based on the core content or the weekly core content for that week. This will give you ideas for your social media posts around that theme. Column E is the visual or media type. This is a great way you can indicate if it's a graphic, a stock photo, a project photo, a video, a GIF, and so by identifying it here, this is a great way to ensure that you're using a variety of media types and gives you enough notice of what to create.

Speaker 1:

And then column F is the opt-in or the call to action or CTA. What do you want your viewers to do with this piece of content? Do you want them to comment, to like to share the post, to visit a certain link? I like to think this through while I'm planning my calendar, because it helps with the social media caption writing and graphics creation. Columns G and H are links to the actual landing page or blog post that you want them to go to. You know from your CTA. And then H is notes, so just any other notes. Last is columns I through M. This is where you can indicate what social media channels you'll use overall and, more specifically, where each piece of content will be posted, by placing an X in the desired columns.

Speaker 1:

All right, my friend, let's recap. First of all, you'll fill out your content calendar, transfer any holidays, themes or promo dates over to it and finally, start filling out what your weekly topics will be, using your brainstorming ideas. After that, decide how you're going to create your weekly content. Again, head over to the show notes to grab that free resource. It's really good. I think you'll find it so incredibly valuable. Just listening to this is one thing, but listening to this, when you have your guide to walk you through it, it all comes to life. So now you've gone through this episode once, go grab the free resource and then listen to this episode again with the content calendar in front of me, in front of you. Forgive me, it's going to make so much more sense and you're going to go through it really quickly. All right, my friend, thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.

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Lindsay Diven, CPSM

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