How do you plan your team's social over a calendar year?

Last month, I spoke about creating content buckets and focusing on what works to create better, more efficient content that helps you win.

In that post, I talked about how you’ve got roughly three months to practice-practice-practice doing social better until your athletes leave campus. Since then, I’ve received two questions from coaches:

1. How do you plan your social over a calendar year?

2. How do we get to the point where we have strategy in advance?

Today, we’ll focus on question one. My goal for today is no frills, no fluff. Just actionable information.

Ready? Let’s go.

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How do you plan your social over a calendar year?

First, we need to divide the months of the year for better planning. The easiest way to do it is to follow the school year model:

• Segment 1 is the fall semester (Sept-Oct-Nov-Dec).

• Segment 2 is the spring semester (Jan-Feb-Mar-Apr).

• Segment 3 is the summer (May-Jun-Jul-Aug).

This is going to allow us the greatest alignment with everything that’s going on with our teams, especially if we have a fall or spring sport. Then you can become in-season/off-season/recruiting season or however you see fit.

This makes sense from a timing perspective, too. Consider these truths:

• In-season you’ll have the least time, the most access to athletes, and the most content.

• In the offseason you’ll have more time, less access to athletes, and less content.

• In the summer/recruiting season you’ll have the most time, the least access to athletes, and the least content.

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Winter Sports

If you’re a winter sport, this could work, but you might want to do something that slightly better aligns with your needs. Even though you might kick up in October (or earlier) and play into March (or later), we want to keep the time domain even across all thirds.

• Segment 1 is the preseason (Jul-Aug-Sept-Oct).

• Segment 2 is the season (Nov-Dec-Jan-Feb).

• Segment 3 is the postseason (Mar-Apr-May-Jun).

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Alternative Models

You don’t have to stick to thirds. We can go to a three-month/quarters model.

• July-Aug-Sept

• Oct-Nov-Dec

• Jan-Feb-Mar

• Apr-May-Jun

This works for a fall/spring sport, but it might especially work for a winter sport like hockey. Oct-Nov-Dec is the first half of a long season, while Jan-Feb-Mar has postseason implications. The other two quarters are shoulder seasons that have some form summer and a month of the school year where things aren’t full-go.

If you’re really looking to dial into your specific focuses on a greater than quarterly cadence, the other option is bi-monthly – or every two months. What we’ve found though, is that teams that choose this route often end up grouping their two-month segments into larger segments to create thirds anyway.

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How to utilize your framework.

Once you have a set framework, you can fill in what’s most important. Follow along as I pretend to be a head lacrosse coach again.

If it were me, I would do “normal content” through the summer and into August 2024. The same way I’ve always done it. You should do the same.

My goal as a planner is to build out time in advance to have a better strategy for the future. In this case, September and onward.

Segment 1: Fall Semester (September through December)

• There are almost 18 weeks in my non-championship segment. Goals are:

  • Documenting freshman first experiences.

  • Capturing excitement of fall practice.

  • Telling our recruiting story in the lead-up to a big November recruiting season.

  • Priming recruits to commit in late fall.

  • Using late fall to highlight academics.

Segment 2: Spring Semester (January through April)

• There are almost 17 weeks in my championship segment. Goals are:

  • Capturing everything that goes on in-season, from practice to games and travel. All-access.

  • Utilizing my heavy player access to showcase my athletes.

  • Facilities are a secondary focus.

Segment 3: Summer (May through August)

• There are 17 weeks in the summer. Goals are:

  • Keeping a reduced, yet consistent publishing cadence.

  • Showcasing on-campus facilities and pushing recruits to visit.

  • Focusing on what my team is up to away from campus.

  • Talking about the recruiting process as recruits head into their junior year.

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We’ll break down the segment into weeks and then those weeks into sprints. Take the fall segment, for example.

From mid-October to mid-November, the content shifts from practice oriented to recruiting-specific. That’s four weeks of current players informally sharing why they committed via Instagram Reels, recruiting trail event information, recruiting timeline reminders, and reposts of best-of-best clips.

We want to maximize content within our strategy. In this case, it’s to do one thing: get recruits to commit to our program at the time when they normally do.

There’s so much more to say on the topic, so I’ll continue next week with our other question, “How do we get to the point where we have strategy in advance?”