How do you plan your social media calendar for your podcast? If you want to grow your audience, engage your fans, and promote your episodes, you need a consistent and strategic approach to your social media content. In this article, you'll learn how to create a social media calendar for your podcast that aligns with your goals, showcases your value, and saves you time and stress.
Before you start creating your social media calendar, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your social media presence. Do you want to increase your downloads, get more reviews, build a community, or generate leads? Your objectives will guide your content strategy and help you measure your results. Write down your specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals and keep them in mind as you plan your social media calendar.
There are many reasons to launch a podcast and many reasons to promote it on social media. Regardless, a good communications goal is to be relevant. Relevance, by any measure, is that overlapping space between what matters to you (the podcaster) and what matters your audience (listeners). Therefore, if your goal is to gain more downloads, be sure to give listeners a clear and compelling reason to follow your show. Do that by sharing content that makes people smarter, makes them laugh or makes them share your information with others. If your goal is to build a community, ask for input and respond, quickly. While it's important to know why you're launching a podcast, don't forget to ask yourself: Why should my audience care? That's relevance.
Of those SMART elements, be sure to nail the A and the T -- achievable and time-bound. Over the last ten years, the podcast medium has exploded in popularity, due to rising listenership and ease of production. Like anything else, that makes standing out at the top of the charts difficult and time-intensive. Don't be fooled by the recent decline in new podcast launches -- it is still very tough to rise the ranks. Above all, understand that long-form media requires a long-term, long-tail effort. Interest in your content will compound as listeners invest. While it's enticing to dream about large download figures, it may benefit to start conservatively in setting goals, as far our as your first year of production.
A good thing to do is to post interactive content. When people can participate, it increases engagement and it can result in more podcast downloads. This can include asking questions, running polls, sharing user-generated content, or hosting giveaways. In my newsletter, I give away actionable content that can help with leveraging your expertise with AI. Remember: Posting interactive content on social media is like throwing a boomerang, where you send out content to your audience and it comes back to you in the form of engagement and interaction. Remember:
Some ways its always best to make them short and sweet at first! make them fun as possible as well! for like www.chefs-approval.com i make the show short and well to the point. I'm not doing funny bits, but that don't mean they have to be boring.
You don't have to be on every social media platform to reach your podcast audience. In fact, it's better to focus on a few that suit your niche, style, and target market. Consider where your ideal listeners hang out, what kind of content they consume, and how you can best showcase your podcast on each platform. For example, you might use Instagram to share behind-the-scenes photos, Twitter to start conversations, and Facebook to create a group. Research the best practices, algorithms, and trends for each platform and decide how often and when you'll post.
The beauty of producing podcast content, especially if you include video, is that your content is incredibly portable across platforms. Each vertical-cut clip can live nimbly across TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. In that specific case, you don't necessarily need to choose -- you can spread one asset across three viewing audiences. That gives each piece of your podcast multiple chances to shine!
Defining your target audience is a crucial first step. One way to do this is to conduct market research with a simple survey for your listeners to answer in exchange for your lead magnet. In addition, you can analyze your podcast metrics to see where your listeners are coming from and based on that you can create unique podcast listener personas to help you tailor your message. Based on that, you'll know what platform to concentrate on the most. Remember: This is pure research. Research is like a treasure hunt, where you're constantly searching for clues to uncover valuable insights and knowledge.
My Show Chefs Approval are focused on Food, the Chefs of course. and most importantly on their story. So, one's podcast needs to have a foundation.
Now that you know your objectives and platforms, you can start planning your content. The key to a successful social media calendar is to have a balance of different types of content that serve different purposes. For example, you might have content that educates, entertains, inspires, or persuades your audience. You might also have content that promotes your podcast, showcases your personality, or encourages engagement. A good rule of thumb is to follow the 80/20 rule: 80% of your content should add value to your audience, and 20% should promote your podcast.
One way to think about creating long-form content, especially in today's short-form trending age, is to produce backwards: build for clips, and grow the holistic presence from there. Without a doubt, your clips will drive traffic upward to your longer-form content -- so you need to be able to reliably produce several different content pieces every time you sit in front of the microphone or the camera. Many large creators today -- and indeed many large media conglomerates -- have used this to their benefit. From the Barstool podcasts to late-night TV stand-up hosts, there's a common thread: the ability to condense stories into bite-size pieces. Master that, and you'll win your audience over.
In order not to get overwhelmed, I like to use content themes. Simply determine the main topics or themes you want to cover and stick to those. When you know what you're going to be talking about consistently, it reduces anxiety and that dreaded "procrastination" we get when we are unsure of where to start. My themes are around how creators can leverage their expertise by using AI. I talk about AI tools that can help, go over the latest AI news, and give ideas that can help content creators crush it with AI. Remember: There are four seasons. Those can be seen as weather themes. Think of your calendar in the same way.
I believe one's foundation will define your success with ones show. Even if you start a podcast for fun, you’ll position yourself and your new endeavor for success by defining your brand. In addition to fleshing out your big idea for a podcast, you’ll want to consider your goals and who you want to reach. Even though your answers can—and probably will—change over time, it will make all of the other steps along the way more straightforward. By starting with a brand strategy, you’ll be able to create messaging around your podcast, create messaging for your podcast, develop your logo and visual identity, create your podcast art, build marketing graphics, and capitalize on your efforts.
A template is a handy tool that helps you organize your content and streamline your workflow. You can use a spreadsheet, a calendar app, or a social media management tool to create your template. Your template should include the following elements for each post: platform, date, time, text, image, video, link, hashtag, and status. You can also add any notes, ideas, or feedback to your template. A template will help you see your content at a glance, avoid repetition, and schedule your posts in advance.
Just as important as the elements of distribution and copy for your content is the substance within it. The good news is, there's a simple way to start: When it comes to production, episode to episode -- it may be helpful, especially early on, to build segments into your podcasts. That way, you can reliably build consistent content each week, in a segment series which may gain as many loyal followers themselves as you have followers of your overall show. Building just 2-3 segments for your podcast can quickly establish not only a foundation of production for your content, but can help you to build pillars of recognition for yourself and your audience to grow with.
Using an online content template like Notion is a game-changer. It is so easy to input everything you need to create you content on a schedule. Now, with Notion AI, you can easily import pictures, create tables, and give you great ideas to use for your podcasts or other endeavors. Remember this: A good cook follows a recipe. That's exactly what a template does for your content. Follow it and it comes out looking great every time.
One of the benefits of having a social media calendar is that you can save time and energy by batching your tasks. Batching means doing similar tasks in one sitting, rather than switching between different tasks throughout the day. For example, you might batch your tasks by creating all your images for the week in one hour, writing all your captions in another hour, and scheduling all your posts in a third hour. Batching will help you avoid distractions, improve your focus, and increase your productivity.
The best way to eliminate distractions is by batching. I have set times that I write my newsletter and this helps me churn out the best information for my readers because I am only focused on that one task. Remember: When you eat a sandwich, you take one bite at a time. That's exactly what batching is for your content. You only focus on one small task at a time.
This is 100% the best practice for anyone that is responsible for pushing out content consistently, or maintaining a social media calendar. Canva is a great platform to do this on if you are creating visual content as it allows you to make copy’s. If you are focused on written content excel is a great place to store your blurbs for safe keeping and easy access!
The final step in creating your social media calendar is to review and adjust your strategy based on your performance. You can use the analytics tools provided by each platform or a third-party tool to track your metrics and see how your content is performing. You can also ask your audience for feedback and suggestions on what they want to see more or less of. Based on your findings, you can tweak your content, timing, frequency, or platforms to optimize your results and reach your goals.
As a writer, I do my best work when I step away and come back later and refine what I've written. There are always adjustments to be made. This helps you improve your content. Experimentation is a beautiful thing. If one thing doesn't work, simply try something else. Remember: It took Thomas Edison over 1,000 attempts before he invented the light bulb. That's the same way with your calendar. Keep trying till you find what works for you.