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Blog Post Planners and Social Media Calendars

By Becky McCray

Blogs and social media can be effective marketing tools for small town businesses, but they take planning to make the most of.

This is true for small businesses and for tourism groups. Don’t let important events, holidays, and tie-ins sneak up on you. Use your calendar to connect your social efforts to the real world.

First, plan out your blog posts. Use the free blog post planner from Productive Flourishing, updated every month. Go to their Free Planners page, and scroll down for Blog Post Planners. You can read their instructions page for more detail.

The Blog Post Planner, below, helps you brainstorm for new posts by category.

Blog Post Planner

The Blog Post Calendar, below, organizes the process of scheduling those posts. You can also make note of local events, fairs, festivals, sales, and other things you want to be sure to write about.

blog post calendar

Second, plan out your social media. I don’t mean to be artificial about what you share on social networks. I do mean to think ahead about what it makes sense to share at certain times. To help you plan that out, customize this Social Media Calendar. It’s available as a DOCX or PDF.

Blog and Social Media Calendar

For example, you know you want to promote the local car show, so schedule it in on your calendar and what you might do for it in different media.

I’ve used these tools to plan out special campaigns that spanned several months. What do you use to plan ahead for your online promotions and content?

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.
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July 17, 2012 Filed Under: Best of, entrepreneurship, marketing, planning, social media, tourism Tagged With: Support

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Comments

  1. Charlie Gilkey says

    July 18, 2012 at 4:53 pm

    Thanks for mentioning our planners, Becky! Much appreciated.

  2. Cooksey Connects says

    August 6, 2012 at 1:19 am

    Nice tools!

  3. Becky McCray says

    December 16, 2012 at 10:23 pm

    My Twitter friend Danielle Hatfield @DHatfield posted a link to the social media calendar and blog planner at Experience Farm (you know I love a farming reference).

Trackbacks

  1. Building a strategy for social media in destination marketing says:
    April 7, 2013 at 8:52 pm

    […] getting into the weeds of tactics like Facebook ads or how to plan blog posts, define what a successful marketing strategy looks like. What are our top overall goals, and what […]

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