Many community managers fall victim to reactivity. As the community grows, urgent issues increasingly take priority over the community manager’s work. Thus time spent on initiating activities, building relationships, recruiting members and creating content gradually diminishes in favour of responding to the urgent issues of the day. A calendar helps resolve this issue by highlighting what needs to be accomplished every day of the week.
Creating A Calendar:
A content calendar should identify the categories of content that will be used and also the specific content that will feature within that category for that particular date.
To identify the most popular categories you can look at both the online and offline content produced within the sector. These categories are easier to identify in online content because you can look at the number of comments they receive and where they are placed on the community platform.
It is important to remember that you are not competing with existing media platforms, you are simply identifying which categories of content are most popular.
From these categories of content (examples listed below) your next step will be to identify which ones you will use and on which days.
- Announcements
- News
- Feature articles
- Guest columns
- Classifieds
- Promotions
- Statements from the community
- Misc
Below is an example of a calendar at a single-week interval:
- Monday: Daily Community News + Feature interview with Mark Smith about {topic}
- Tuesday: Daily Community News + Opinion column from a community member {John Doe}
- Wednesday: Daily Community News + Promotion of live-chat about {topic}
- Thursday: Daily Community News + Feature interview with Jane Roddis (VIP)
- Friday: Promotions day {sponsors discount offer} + Welcome newcomers
- Saturday: Summary of the week
- Sunday: Preview of the week ahead
Each category has several sub categories. If you look at the calendar above you will see that ‘daily community news’ is a constant update about the latest activity in the community. Categories can be reused every week.
On a calendar with a monthly interval, categories such as newcomer of the month, member of the month and offline-meet up content, may also appear. In addition, a major event will have a significant impact upon the calendar. In this situation you can set usual calendar events aside and focus on building up excitement for the event, covering the event and summarizing what the event achieved.
Publish the Calendar
It is a good idea to publish the calendar (in category form) to community members.
- This way members who would like to volunteer content, be featured in content or otherwise be involved can highlight where they might best fit into the community.
- By publishing the calendar in advance, members are able to have an input into the content process. They might give recommendations for community content or criticisms.
- A published calendar highlights openness on behalf of the community manager. The community content will no longer feel imposed upon members from the organization, but publicly open for comment and opinions from all community members.
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