The most challenging content planning I ever did

Needless to start this blog post with some well known facts about the benefits of content planning. It is a salient part of every Social Media Strategy. Since I started working with social media I used different tools and techniques to plan the publications. However, what I would like to present you today is the most complicated content planning I ever did as a Social Media Team Leader for the World Fair Trade Organisation - Europe, and maintained throughout 1 year (2014-2015), remotely.

The organisation had internal guidelines on how to distribute different kinds of information on social media. As the European office was the central one for all sub-organisations, the content needed to be published in a specific time of the day so that it reaches the audience from a specific region at a particular time. The team was comprised of interns and volunteers, based either in Europe or the US. Each one of them had limited availability and it has to be divided into two main tasks: content creation and actual publishing. At the time the organisation didn’t use a scheduling tool. Each one of the team members was involved for a few weeks or up to 3 months in these activities. I was the main point of contact between the team and the Communication Officer. I received news piece or content material and the intended region and I had to quickly allocate it to another team member and make sure it would appear on time, taking into consideration the region’s publishing times and the availability of the team member. Below is one of the earliest Excel-based schedules I used to maintain in order to support the social media of WFTO.