Tag Archives: Social Media

The 2025 Social Media Planner

As a former professional social media manager, and someone who advises small businesses and creatives, I’m always looking for tools that make planning content faster and easier for folks who are already so busy.

I am a loud fan of breaking the work into blocks of time, focussing on one specific task, like either cadence planning of post types, or writing the posts for the week or month ahead. Batch processing like this makes the time you spend planning your content more efficient, and means you spend less time scratching your head looking for things to post.

This is where the Social Media Planner comes in.

Offering a yearly event overview and a month at a glance, this spreadsheet offers a simple way to batch process your social media content planning, while still giving you space to get down to the post level for use with either native posting or scheduling tools like Buffer.

So, if you’ve struggled with planning out your content, download it today and, if it works for you, might I suggest buying me a Ko-fi?

Download the Social Media Planner today!
Buy me a Kofi!

Australian Community Managers Survey 2015

Numbers make me happy. Numbers about groups of people make me especially happy. Numbers about groups of people that include me? Even better!

That’s why the results of the benchmark 2015 Australian Community Managers Survey was of particular interest to me.

I think some people underestimate the power that community management has over a brand's identity in this increasingly digital and social world.

The survey was commissioned by Dialogue Consulting, SWARM community management conference co-founder Venessa Paech and Quiip, Australia’s leading social media and online community management company, to investigate the state of the professional online community management sector and its practitioners who build, manage and support online communities. The results delivered in spades.

It has revealed a highly educated work force under pressure, with four in 10 earning less than the national average despite long working hours that sees half working more than a five day week. But, beyond that, it also highlighted a number of issues needing resolution:

  • Approximately 40% of  survey respondents earned less than the national average.

  • 43% of respondents are working more than five days a week,. Almost one in 10 (30 of 262 respondents) work seven days a week, with three in four (77%) work more than an eight-hour day.

  • Despite the 24/7 nature of social media and online communities, less than one in five respondents said their organisation provided around the clock monitoring. Eight in 10 (82%) said their organisation conducted moderation within business hours, with at least some out of hours.

  • While almost all organisations collected metrics around their communities, four in 10 respondents said only some of their communities had a defined purpose – and one-third of those that had a purpose had no formal strategy in place.

So, why does this matter to me? Why am I writing about it? Well, for starters, it shows that there is a lack of understanding in this field. Organisations are realising the need to hire community and social media professionals to help support their brands, but lack the knowledge to harness, utilise and support this highly educated and, to be perfectly frank, freaking awesome group of professionals. It’s just another case of something shiny and new being brought on board without a clear plan for optimising the workforce.

If you’d like to obtain a copy of the report for yourself, you can do so at the ACM website.