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Hello Reader,

It's Too Late

It is not too late to plan your content for the upcoming year, one to two hours is all you need to catch up! So, let's not waste any time and jump into it.

Levels of Content Calendar Planning

When I talk to clients about content calendar planning, I break it down into three levels:

1. Yearly Level Planning: Focus on holidays and annual events.
2. Monthly Level Planning: Cover mid-level promotions and story arcs.
3. Weekly Level Planning: Detail the specifics of individual posts.

At the start of the year, dedicate an hour to yearly planning. Each month, spend another hour planning your monthly content. Then, set aside about an hour each week (perhaps on Sundays) to create your weekly content. I recommend keeping roughly 20% of your posts loosely scheduled to accommodate timely and user-generated content.

Using Your Content Calendar to Plan Your Yearly Content

During your yearly planning, identify key holidays and promotion periods for your business. Determine if sales and events will align with the same fiscal weeks as the previous year. This planning ensures you don’t miss any important holidays or events and that your social media plans align with your business goals. Break down your business goals on the yearly calendar to help track your progress.

The Importance of Yearly Content Calendar Planning

Yearly planning is crucial for both social media and overall business strategy. It provides a clear view of major events and promotions for the year, helping you align social media activities with business goals.

For example, if your goal is to have one major promotion supported by in-store marketing and social media each month, you can identify any gaps in your promotion schedule. This allows you to plan evenly distributed promotions throughout the year, avoiding last-minute scrambles to fill gaps.

Only 4 Spots Remaining

If you need help planning your content, creating content quicker, or getting more clients out of your social media content, hurry up and grab one of the last four spots in the Signature Style Intensive starting January 21, 2025.

Monthly Content Calendar Planning

The next step is your monthly content planning. At this level, you’ll define themes, story arcs, and details for the monthly promotions you scheduled during your yearly planning. Use the same calendar from your yearly planning to add this monthly information.

Month-to-Month Plans

In this stage, you’ll flesh out your month-to-month plans. Start by identifying the major events and promotions for the month, and plan your posts around these first. These yearly events provide structure for each month.

Once you’ve scheduled posts for these significant events, outline your themes and story arcs for the month. For example, in February, you might choose “love” as the theme, with story arcs like #foreverlove and #bestfriends. These arcs support the monthly theme and contribute to your promotions, with the specifics of each post to be defined in your weekly planning.

Weekly Level Content Calendar Planning

After completing your yearly and monthly content calendar planning, it’s time to move on to weekly-level planning. At this stage, you’ll create the actual content for your posts, ensuring that each post contributes to an engaging story. This part of the planning process is detail-oriented. If multiple people are involved, make sure to allocate sufficient time to avoid scrambling to create, approve, or post content.

Only 4 Spots Remaining

If you need help planning your content, creating content quicker, or getting more clients out of your social media content, hurry up and grab one of the last four spots in the Signature Style Intensive starting January 21, 2025.

The Details and Post Creation

During weekly planning, focus on the details and specifics of your posts. Utilize the holidays, promotions, themes, and story arcs defined in the previous planning stages. This is where you bring your storytelling to life, creating posts that align with your brand story and themes.

Once this planning level is complete, you can load your content into your scheduling and posting tool.

The Planning is Complete

With your planning complete, you are ready to tell compelling stories, provide valuable content, and promote your brand on social media.

These planning steps ensure your social media efforts are focused and goal-oriented, moving away from random acts of posting to a strategic approach. Your story will be clearer, and even with potentially fewer promotional posts, they will be more impactful.

Keep Creating,

Jonathan