The 5 Tools I Use to Set Up My Automated Social Media Calendar

It’s time to automate your social media calendar

I remember when I first started blogging, my posts were purely informational…kinda boring…not ME at all. I began blogging (very short posts) every single day just to get the words outa my head and try to figure out who I was on paper…er…screen? (Don’t forget the mini-journal I gave you in the welcome email! It has a journal attached to it that will get you into the habit of writing a mini paragraph a day, documenting something humorous.)

Don’t lose heart if you read back your work and it just doesn’t sound right. Keep plugging away. Writing takes refinement, repetition and persistence!

Today we are creating your daily routine to tackle all of these.

What to add into your work calendar

So what should we add to your calendar?

• Days off (most important day! I usually have one a week)
• Holidays/events that will keep you out of the office
• Daily social media posts (3 Tweets Daily, 1 Instagram Daily, 2 Facebook Posts, 3 Pins a week)
• Any launches you have in the works
• Your office hours
• Exercise and breaks
• Breakfast, Lunch and dinner
• Blog Posts
• Newsletters
• Product Creation

Of course, there will be days when things come up, stuff gets added and unexpected diary gnomes appear in the yogurt bin the fridge. You just can’t help these things! But having an established agenda will help you create the humor habits we are talking about AND know where to pick up when your work ethic slacks off.

Using Canva to Illustrate

If you haven’t already, make sure you’ve created your free account in Canva. I HIGHLY recommend signing up for a business account, which will allow you to set your brand colors, save templates to more than just the two file folders the free account gives you, and best of all…allows you to upload your primary business fonts to use on your templates.

I’m telling your right now, this is the one tool that pulled my entire brand together in less than a week (and I’ve been an advanced Photoshop user for nearly 15 years!).

Even if you decide to NOT go the paid route, get all signed in to canva. You’ll need to have you HEX# colors for your brand available. I recommend keeping these somewhere you can access them easily, all the time! (I scotch taped them to my lapdesk…#rememberthatonetimeIgotanumberwrong?).

You’re going to want to create a Blog Image (the primary image that represents your blog posts) in each color, a Twitter template in each color, a Pinterest template in each color and a Facebook template in each color. These are what you’ll use across your social media platforms to represent your brand!

Remember what I said about using branded images? Make sure your images work well with the colors you’ve chosen…and make sure you are using your business fonts! These two picks are ACTUALLY more important than using your logo on anything.

From now on, each time you need to create a new image, you’ll just use this template and adjust the title.

Tools to Automate the Funny

Next, I’m going to over all of the tools you’ll need to make this amazing calendar happen! (A few of these are affiliate links…but I freakin’ LOVE every one of these guys. We are bros. Besties. Luvahs.

SiteGround - I’ve been through EVERY website hosting service known to man. GoDaddy’s bimbo brigade, Bluehost, HostGator, Dreamhost and I’m sure a few more. To me….hosting sites are like banks. Kind of necessary…but kind of bastards. Then stepped in SiteGround. Dear LORD I love those people! It’s like having a tech crew on hand 24/7! If I have a hosting issue, or even just a question…it’s answered (or fixed for me) in about 5 minutes.

The time they’ve saved me over the last year has been worth their weight in gold.

Canva - I’ve pretty much waxed poetic on this one for the last two emails…but I’ve got more in my bag of glitter glue sticks. Canva, in a nut shell, is a brand manager. It keeps your marketing and designs all in one place…and all looking shiny and gorgeous. This is an absolutely necessity…even if your a self proclaimed PicMonkey Pro.

Airtable - SERIOUSLY??? If you haven’t started using this system yet…you’re just being dumb. I’ve told you about five times now, it’s free, and it’s a game changer!!! Go. Sign. Up. NOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!

ConvertKit - Kinda like my web hosting platforms, I’ve been through the hamster wheel of email platforms. In fact, up until 6 months ago, I BARELY new how email worked! Between automations, blasts, and the lists themselves, I was a mess. I was sending the same emails multiple times to my readers. I wasn’t sending weekly emails. I simply wanted to send an email to anyone who had clicked a certain link. *sigh*

Quite frankly…email could bite me.

Then came ConvertKit. LITERALLY, within a week I had an email system in place that was EASY to understand, did ten times more than any other system I’d ever used…and just made sense to me as a sub blogging platform. My sign ups, traffic to the blog and sales have quadrupled since signing up with these guys. I’m never looking back on this one.

Social Warfare - When I first downloaded Social Warfare, I thought to myself “this looks like the rest of the social bars at the bottom of blog posts…why don’t I just grab a free plugin?” That question was answered when a post when viral THAT WEEK. Social Warfare keeps all of your posts branded across every platform and easily shareable. What makes this one different? Customizable text, baby!! After I write each post, I fill in my social warfare plugin with the exact image I want shared across every platform AND the text I want shared with it? I’ve been able to create tweet’s that praise a post…and words that seem to come directly from the person tweeting them.

Boardbooster - What can I say about Boardbooster? It’s taken hours out of my week and years off my business life. Boardbooster has the ability to automatically post to group boards as well as repost older pins to your boards…all while deleting pins that haven’t received a whole lot of attention. A ton of my older pins have garnered thousands of new views for my blog post…and the whole system only requires about 10 minutes of maintenance a month.

Yep. Not a typo.

All of these tools are used for the automation and creation of an easier work weak…which means your brain won’t be SO exhausted at the end of a day…which also means your humor will be on point, even when things aint so humorous.

Create Your Calendar in Airtable

WHEW! Alright…so FINALLY it’s time to put all of this information into action! Open up the Airtable website/mac desktop app and create a new base! Call it something like “Weekly Agenda” or “It’s Been Brough-ten”.

Across the top of your agenda, you’ll create the columns “Task”, “Due”, “Category”, and “Notes”.

Task = Sing Line Text

Due = Date Field

Category = Single Select (Social Media, Product Launch, Event, Blog Post, Etc)

Notes = Long text Field

Then, down the left hand column, you’ll plug in as many of the bullet points I mentioned above that you can! Figure out what time you want to start work, when you can realistically end your day, events, product launches, etc!

After you’ve plugged in everything, set dates for the month, classified your category and added any notes you need to about launches or how many times to schedule social media…you’ll want to view your final calendar!

Click the “View” arrow in the upper left hand corner and select “Calendar”. This will show everything with a date in one calendar. Make it a habit to log into your Airtable calendar every morning to see what tasks you have for the day. You can click this link to see how I’ve set up my example calendar!

If you don’t think you have time to get your business all set up and organized (my sister said it took her a whole day to get her biz spreadsheet happy!), check out the Airtable Small Business Blueprint! It includes links and full set ups to every spreadsheet I’ve been using in my own business for over a year…and it’s super easy to copy over!

TIP: I recommend setting an alarm on your phone to update your calendar at the end of every month! This will give you a chance to reassess your goals, add new product launches, and add any new social media events you need to!

Terra Dawn