How to create a social media calendar for retail?

We all know that being present on social media is not just about posting photos and moving on. It’s about capturing your customers’ attention and giving them a reason to pay attention to you and buy. This is where a well-crafted editorial calendar comes into play. It goes far beyond simple planning; Helps you maintain engagement, relevance, and consistency of your content across all your social networks.. Likewise, a social media calendar is particularly relevant for retail.

Why is it crucial for traders? It is simple. The world of retail is evolving at lightning speed, with new trends, intense sales seasons and ever-changing customer preferences.

The world of social media is evolving even faster. Without an editorial calendar, it’s easy to miss key moments. But with a tool like this you can Make sure your social media content is always up to date.

In the following sections, we’ll explain how to create an effective social media calendar in retail. So, let’s move on after a brief description of the term.

A social media calendar, or social media editorial calendar, is a schedule of what to post and when on your different social media platforms.

It’s the game plan, the strategy, the secret weapon to keep your social media more organized than Marie Kondo’s sock drawer.

So why should you use a social media calendar in retail? Well, if you value your mental health, it’s probably a good idea. But if that’s not reason enough for you, here are some other benefits of using such a calendar.

Increased store traffic

For retailers with physical stores, an editorial calendar can help drive in-store traffic by planning content around events, promotions, or exclusive in-store offers.

Retailers who use social media effectively have even seen up to a 35% increase in traffic to their physical stores.

Standardization of the brand’s tone of voice.

Consistent, well-planned content contributes to long-term brand recognition and loyalty and increases revenue by up to 23%, according to a study conducted by Lucidpress.

Brand recognition is particularly important for food and fashion retailers, as they often have repeat customers. An editorial calendar can help you keep that brand identity and messaging consistent across stores. This ensures that your customers receive the same brand experience, whether in a store in Paris or on the French Riviera.

Targeted sales campaigns

A study by the National Retail Federation He noted that year-end sales account for about 25% of annual retail sales. An editorial calendar ensures you make the most of this high-volume sales season, with well-planned and targeted campaigns.

A long-term vision and a better strategy

The rest, a Bain & Company study found that companies with long-term growth strategies outperform their peers in revenue and profits. Therefore, a social media calendar in retail can help visualize the long-term strategy. It’s important to keep in mind that your social media efforts contribute to overall business goals.

This approach will help you plan strategic posts, rather than simply taking advantage of the latest TikTok trend.

Limit the risks of inconsistency between your different stores

Have you ever had two stores offering different promotions at the same time? A nightmare. A social media calendar provides a clear overview of what is posted and when. Using it can also help avoid costly mistakes, like different social media promotions from store to store or posting at the wrong time.

Integration of influencers and other associations.

For collaborations with influencers or brand partners, for example, an editorial calendar ensures that these partnerships are strategically highlighted throughout the year, for greater impact.

Compliance with advertising regulations

Planning content in advance allows for proper review processes to ensure compliance with advertising regulations. This is relevant for both large and small businesses, as long as they must comply with advertising laws in certain sectors.

Harmony within the marketing and communication teams.

Aligning your teams allows your business to run better.

Using a social media calendar facilitates this alignment by clearly defining roles and responsibilities, ensuring all departments are working toward common goals. This organization of your teams is also crucial to ensure smooth operations and avoid last-minute misunderstandings.

Before we get into the details of creating your calendar, ask yourself this question: Do you know your audience? I mean, I really know them. Because if you want the content on your social media calendar to be effective, you need to know your audience better than the back of your hand.
So if you haven’t created strong buyer personas yet, now is the perfect time to do it! (And even if you’ve already created some, it’s always good to review them to make sure they’re as detailed as possible.)

And if you don’t know what buyers are, this is for you.

What are buyer personas?

Buyers are fictional representations of your ideal customers, based on market research and real data about your existing customers.. They go beyond basic demographic information. Rather, they include deeper knowledge such as:

• Customer motivation
• Your habits
• His objectives
• What they see as weak points

Finally, your characters guide you to make better business decisions. Therefore, your marketing strategy, the layout of your stores or even the location or opening hours of your stores can be dictated by buyers.

This system helps you personalize the shopping experience, both online and in-store, to meet each person’s unique needs. This way, you can be sure that your decisions are aligned with the preferences and expectations of your buyers. In turn, this creates satisfied and loyal customers who will return.

Collect the right data

Start by collecting data from your current customers. This may include:

• Demographic information
• Your purchasing behavior
• Your comments
• Data from your loyalty program

Surveys, individual interviews and analysis of your social networks are also valuable sources of information.

Explore the types of content and topics that interest them. You can do this by reviewing your competitors’ content, analyzing retail trends in your niche, or even simply asking your current customers what they’re interested in during one-on-one interviews. (See the Agorapulse tool Social trends to further analyze social media trends).

Other tools can give you detailed information about your audience, such as SparkToro or Agorapulse sleep function. With Agorapulse, you can track keywords associated with your brand or niche and see what people are saying about it. There are many different ways to use social listening.

Identify trends and repetitive patterns.

Look for recurring trends and patterns in your data. This can be related to purchasing habits, product preferences, lifestyle choices and many other relevant factors.

You can then segment your audience into different groups based on the trends you’ve identified. Each group represents a potential buyer persona.

Detail each person

For each person, create a detailed profile. This may include:

• Demographic information : Age, sex, place of residence, income level, etc.
• Elements of consumer psychology. : Interests, values, attitudes, lifestyle, etc.
• Your purchasing behavior : Motivations, preferred purchasing channels, purchasing frequency, average spending, preferred products, etc.
• Your goals and challenges : What are you trying to achieve when you shop with your brand? What obstacles do they encounter in the process?
• Name and view people : Give each character a name and a face. This helps visualize them as real customers and makes personas easier for your team to understand and remember.

Start using your characters

Use these personas to guide your marketing strategies, select your products, design your stores, and conceptualize your customer service. For example, if one of your personas is a tech-savvy millennial, you know that he should focus on improving his e-commerce platform and using social media in marketing.

Once you’ve done your research, you should have a general idea of the types of content your audience interacts with. This will be of great help for the next step: determining the pillars of your content.

Choose your content pillars

These pillars serve as a guide to ensure your content is consistent with your brand identity. Plus, content pillars will make brainstorming ideas for your posts much easier.

We recommend that you choose 3 to 6 content pillars for your brand. Some of the most used pillars for retail are:

1. Highlight products

These are posts about a specific product. Often these posts will highlight new releases, bestsellers, or limited edition products.

This is how Veja presents, for example, its pairs of V-90 sneakers in a TikTok video with more than 300,000 views :

@see The V-90🔥 choose your favorite! #see #vejav90 #vejasneakers ♬ original sound – View

2. Success stories

We all love to hear a good story. It could be a post about a product that sold out very quickly or sharing a great customer testimonial. These real-life insights are not only eye-opening, but they also provide real social proof that you are a company people want to associate with.

GoPro is a brand that does this very well by showing the User Generated Content (UGC) on his Instagram page.

3. Behind the scenes

This content pillar provides a behind-the-scenes look at your business operations, values, or culture. These types of posts can include highlights of your equipment, videos, or photos showing how your product is made. Your “behind the scenes” content may even be a co-branded partnership, such as this Instagram post from Sephora and Sarah Tanno Makeup.