Not convinced that an editorial calendar is for you? Let me lay out other business-savvy reasons for using and implementing a calendar for your social media efforts.

See the forest for the trees

By placing a grid of the entire month before your eyes, you’re able to see two key rows– Saturday and Sunday. These days are sadly underused by brands in social messaging. It’s ironic since that’s when most demographic sectors have more leisure time to scroll through news feeds, isn’t it? Take advantage of the Saturday and Sunday rows and place appropriate messaging there. (By scheduling tweets and posts, you need not be by your computer on the weekend.)

Your calendar can help you plan for a variety of messages. Take message type for example. Photos are hot for engagement and they’ll continue to be so.

How do you currently decide to post photos — when you read an article on “photo power”? When you see a competitor post a funny image? Stay on top of things by mapping out a healthy mix of photos, simple status updates, videos, and links.

Strengthen your social team

Making a group editorial calendar facilitates collaboration among coworkers and crossfunctional teams. Will you need screenshots of a new product from a teammate in two weeks? Put the due date on the calendar and add their name to a “responsible for content” column.

In addition, a calendar that tracks messaging and metrics to follow are great to show the boss when her palms start to sweat over social ROI or she asks, “So what are you guys doing on Facebook these days?”

Internal calendars are also critical in times of national crises. If a natural disaster or terror incident occurs, your team can easily see pending posts, pins, and tweets and make decisions on modifying, postponing, or deleting such messaging.

Feel empowered

With a completed calendar in hand, you can rest assured that you have the upcoming month chock full of messaging that will engage fans and help you hit your business goals. The social age-old question, “What should I post today?” also disappears.

Your calendar can take any shape that works well for you and your business. Although I suggest a shareable calendar (such as a Google Docs spreadsheet) for teams, smaller groups can use a whiteboard or paper calendar to map out and revise social messaging.

How do you map out your messaging on your social media channels?

Headline Cover Photo: Flickr CC / joelanman

Unless you have the magic of Martin Scorsese behind your camera, aim for something more reasonable and quite possibly more profitable: driving viewers to your Website to conduct business with you. Here’s a list of six ways to combine your video content with a call to visit your Website or landing page.

1. End of video. If your viewers have made it to the end of the video, they’re probably interested in you. So why not conclude their viewing experience with a path for them to get more information?

In this example, HVAC company Maeser gives a directive to call for more information. But most savvy consumers use the Internet to research large purchases like tankless water heaters. It was smart of Maeser to also list its Website URL here.

2. Clickable annotations. YouTube viewers lead busy lives. Only the most compelling (and usually brief) videos keep people engaged for their entirety. (A quick glance at your YouTube Analytics will tell you this sad fact.) So catch people while you still have their attention by using clickable annotations that float on top of your video.

Tech blogger Amit Agarwal created this video on how to see the digits of your blocked out passwords. He also wrote a related post on his Webpage that people can print and reference at their leisure. About 10 seconds into the video, he placed an annotation that gives viewers a chance to get to his site for that additional help in viewing password digits.

3. Video description. YouTube gives you about 65 characters in the first line of the description to talk about the video. Use that real estate to share your Website or landing page with viewers. Be sure to put an “http://” as part of your URL so that the link can be clicked open in a separate tab.

See what I did in the video below? My hope is that if people like my talk and want to hire me to speak at an event about social media best practices, they have an easy way to do so.

4. One Channel banner. The new YouTube One Channel allows businesses to place clickable links in its custom header. Geico used its header as an opportunity to drive channel viewers to customized “get a quote” landing page.

5. Overlays. In fairness to nationwide insurance companies who use animals as mascots, let me explain how Aflac drives Web traffic with its featured videos.

It uses the call-to-action overlay feature. This video follows the rehabilitation of the injured Aflac duck. If viewers want the latest on his recovery, they can click the yellow link in the overlay.

Think about what’s compelling enough in your video to make people want to get more information on your Website. Then follow this YouTube tutorial on how to create a call-to-action overlay for your video.

6. Make a video that viewers will love. If your video doesn’t resonate with your viewers, no one will feel motivated to click through for more information about your business. Remember: It’s not about what you want to say in your videos — it’s about what viewers want to hear.

How does your business use videos on YouTube to drive traffic to your Website?

Headline Photo Credit: Flickr CC/lingaraj

Does your business have a plan in place to handle communicating with the public during times like these?

Your plan of action can be simply a simple one-page document that is shared with all employees. At a minimum, it should address scheduled activities, messages of support, and ways to help the impacted communities.

When tragedy strikes, be sure to first review your scheduled activities to determine if they are still appropriate for your audience.  Hangouts and chats might still be socially acceptable if you tweak them to address the crisis. For example, if you run a Twitter chat on parenting, you might change the theme of the chat to be, “How do we explain [the crisis] to our children?” If you’ve scheduled a Google Hangout with a historian, ask your guest to address comparisons of the current crisis and one of the past.

Once you’ve removed, postponed, or reshaped your scheduled activities, send a brief message of solidarity with those impacted by the tragedy. Write the message about “them,” not “you.” American Apparel learned its lesson when it offered a sale for those without power during Hurricane Sandy. Trust me — you don’t want to be like American Apparel.

But you do want to be seen as helpful. When you learn of ways that the community can help — whether it be information about donations or instructions from emergency agencies, share this news through your social channels.

Hate Facebook? You Still Need This Policy.

Your crisis guidelines should extend to all messaging you share with the public. If you have a noticeable offline presence, be prepared for what to say to customers in person and on your placards.

Let me tell you what prompted me to extend my definition of a “social media policy” to a more encompassing “social policy.” My husband has run the Boston Marathon four times. He didn’t run this year, but after the bombings, I wanted to return to the spot where I’ve most often cheered him on — Coolidge Corner, Mile 24. Three days after the attacks, I walked along the streets intersecting Commonwealth Avenue (the marathon route) and stumbled on two contrasting store easels within mere yards of each other.

What do you want your business to say in a time of national tragedy?

The first one used the entire easel to write a love letter to its community. The message it sent was, “We love you.” Period. It was social in the sense that it gave without any expectation of anything in return.

The second easel drew a powerful image of We Are Boston, but obscured its impact with a call to action to buy discounted women’s clothing. American Apparel flashback, anyone?

Imagine how powerful the easel could’ve been, both aesthetically and socially, if the clothing shop had simply outlined the Boston skyline with the phrase “We Are Boston” — and nothing else?

At first, creating and implementing a social crisis plan sounds like a lot of work, full of legal mumbo jumbo, and headmaster rules. But when the next tragedy hits, you and your employees can be comforted in knowing there is a plan of action to keep everyone on track — without being socially awkward or reprehensible — in speaking with the public.

Headline Photo Credit: Flickr CC/Sierra Tierra

On the surface, the text-heavy and fleeting nature of Twitter may seem like the antithesis of Pinterest. But as a marketer, you cannot overlook the critical mass and search functionality of Twitter. Use these tips to get tweeps chirping about your Pinterest contest.

Adding a photo to your contest tweet will make it stand out in the Twitter news feed.

Use a photo. You’ve most likely created a pin and other visual announcements for your Pinterest contest. Why not post one of those images to Twitter? Photos that are uploaded directly to Twitter look amazing in the tweet stream. Look at this contest tweet from The Vitamin Shoppe (on your right). It really stands out from a typical text-based tweet.

Be smart with your hashtags. Hashtags are a great way to be discovered on Twitter. However, if you use a hashtag such as #sweeps or #sweepstakes, you’ll get tons of traffic — but only from people who follow tweets that talk about sweepstakes.

Be seen in the streams of your target audience by using keywords relevant to your business. If you’re a vegan bakery that’s giving away a dozen donuts delivered for a year, consider such hashtags as #vegan, #dairyfree, or #donuts. People following streams on these hashtags will be tons more interested (and loyal) to your brand than sweepstakes searchers.

Join relevant conversations. Search for Twitter conversations on topics relevant to your company and prize. If you’re a cosmetics company, search for mentions of your brand, your competitors, and keywords such as “need new eyeliner.”

If you’re a cosmetics brand, these people might want to enter your Pinterest contest.

Following these conversations should be an important part of your overall Twitter strategy, regardless of whether or not you’re promoting a contest.

Consider promoted tweets. Twitter has rapidly expanded its advertising possibilities for businesses of all sizes. For a rather small investment in promoted tweets, your contest tweet will appear whenever a particular keyword (such as “vegan donuts” in the earlier example) is searched for on Twitter. What’s neat about using promoted tweets is that they’ll appear throughout the day (based on when people search for your targeted keywords), but they won’t bombard your current followers.

Bring the user to the contest. In your calls to action on Twitter, bring the user directly to your contest, whether it be hosted on a Pinterest pin, a Facebook tab, or your Website. This might seem obvious, but I can’t tell you how many companies include only a link to their general Pinterest page. A potential entrant doesn’t want to look at your pretty boards — they want to enter the contest you just tweeted about. So make it easy for your potential entrants.

In your call to action URL, be sure to use a trackable link shortener like bit.ly so that you can determine how many clicks you received through Twitter.

You can also use that trackable URL in all the other online and offline channels you’ll be using to promote your Pinterest contest — because you plan to use all possible avenues in making your Pinterest contest a success, right? (I take it you’re nodding right now.)

Headline Photo Credit: Flickr CC/Beau Giles

Probably not.

Whether or not you knew about the other restrictions, Facebook has now made it simpler. The one cover photo rule that Facebook has kept on its page guidelines concerns how much text you have on your image. A fan page cover photo must not have more than 20 percent of its real estate covered with text.

If you’re looking at the novella you have squeezed into your cover photo and are starting to wig out, let me help you lessen the amount of text you currently have on this image so that your image will comply with Facebook’s rules.

Places to Repost Your Old Cover Photo Text

1. About section. The “About” section appears under your cover photo and is a great place to put text that you might have had in your cover photo. The bonus of putting text here is that it is indexed by Google. (Google wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what to do with text on your cover photo JPG.)

Landing page URLs, contact info, or a tagline with helpful keywords fare well here. Just be sure to keep what you put here under 140 characters so your messaging doesn’t get truncated.

2. Contact tab. Another option is to create a contact tab to the right of the “About” section. You can set up the tab to be a form that a user fills out and gets sent to your email. Or you can simply list all the different ways (both online and offline) that users can contact you.

Note the smart use of keywords in the About section & the ability to keep fans on Facebook by using a Contact tab.

3. Your posts. Remember: once fans “LIKE” your page, they hear from you through their news feeds — not through your fan page. It’s a rare fan who goes to your fan page regularly to check out information on your cover photo — and that person is most likely a marketer or competitor.

So let your posts impart what you had hoped to show through your cover photo. If you had to remove text about how great your product or service is, share testimonials about how much people love your offering. If you had to purge location information, be sure to regularly post photos of your local area. Share links from neighboring businesses. The key here is to make sure you use your posts, and not your cover photo, as your daily branding tool.

Other Considerations

Once you’ve removed the text from your cover photo — take a good look at the image. Does it convey the feeling people get when they use your product/service? If the answer isn’t a clear YES, consider an alternative image that makes sure first-time page visitors can relate to what your business will do for them. And make sure the image gives you rights to use it for commercial purposes –Creative Commons or iStockphoto have tons of options that are clear for you to use.

If you’re a franchise owner or independent consultant for a national organization (e.g. Mary Kay or Stella & Dot), you might have little control over your Facebook cover photo. If your image is in violation, I encourage you to share Facebook’s page guidelines with your corporate office (tell them to look at Section III, Point B).  Not only will your organization make the necessary changes to be in universal compliance with Facebook’s guidelines, but you might get extra brownie points for being socially savvy!

Do you want to show off your compliant Facebook cover photo? Feel free to share your link in the comments section.

Headline Photo Credit: Flickr CC/U.S. Department of Labor