How to make a social media calendar?

[JillAc]

I'm trying to get the social media team to put their daily posts into Workfront so that we can see how they align with our other marketing and to use one calendar (now that the calendar functionality is vastly improved). However, they see it as duplicate work because their calendar is much more comprehensive in Excel -- with 6 "tasks" for each day (1 for each SM channel) and if they enter 6 tasks per day, it will be too many tasks on the calendar and be unreadable. How do other people manage this?

[kynabaker16]

Hi Jill,

I have one with multiple options on our calendar (one for each channel) with a custom form and then you can just turn off the ones that you don't want to see if it gets super crazy. I honestly like having them all in one place because then you get a true picture of what's happening.

I included how I set it up in this blog post. Thinking through the work your social team would have to do to create 6 separate tasks for each channel and then add the custom form, I could easily see them balking at that level of work, but an idea to get around that is if you could set up a template where the form was already attached and pre-selected the right channel, then they wouldn't have to do anything but edit the name of the task and the date and then things would start showing up on the calendar automatically.

Kyna

[JillAc]

Thanks Kyna, your blog post is exactly how we are currently using the calendars. My issue is that to add 6 tasks for each day blows the calendar up and there is no other view other than monthly. Also, if they need to use the calendar to view only the social media posts, you can't even see 6 things on a day adequately and the functionality won't be as good as Excel where they can stretch columns and have longer descriptions about what content is being posted on each social media channel.

The other issue is getting them to use Workfront period, they don't find any value in it. I"m wondering how other marketing social media teams use Workfront for their Workflow and to calendarize their work, which is really essential with so many moving parts that change very single day multiple times.

[Heather_Kulbacki]

I haven't fully read Kyna's blog post yet, but from her note above it sounds like we do something similar. Our projects have 1 task for each daily post with a task custom form attached where they indicate through a multiple choice dropdown which channels that post goes to.

Then on the calendar we have different options for each channel in that form dropdown. To keep the calendar from blowing up, they can show/hide the different channels as needed.

[JillAc]

Thanks Heather that’s a good idea to use a form. Wondering if your team uses this calendar for planning, as it’s hard to read the post topic on such a small calendar interface, or if the entry of this into Workfront is housekeeping and they have to also keep another calendar with more detail elsewhere. The complaint I have is that it’s duplicate work for little reward.

I want the calendar in there for visibility into their work integrated with the rest of marketing efforts but they are resistant to duplicating their efforts.

[Heather_Kulbacki]

For us, the calendar is mostly for the person who does the posting - for planning and for reference. The copy/design team who do the creative rely on a task that is assigned to them like they would for any other type of project.