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MathisGuide · Digital marketing
Plan your social media: a calendar your team can keep up
A social media calendar lasts when it flows from a specific goal, targets one or two platforms your clients actually use and rests on three or four content pillars. Its frequency is calculated from the time really available, and each post has one person who writes it, one who approves it and one who publishes it. Here is the method, a table template and the Quebec rules to follow.
This guide goes deeper into Digital marketing in Quebec: the complete guide
This guide goes deeper into one of the projects presented in our method for choosing a business’s marketing priorities. The examples follow a fictional five-person renovation company.
Start from a goal and choose one or two platforms
Posting “just to be present” gives you no criterion for choosing a topic or judging a month of work. Choose one main goal per quarter and pair it with an observable signal: raising awareness of a new service (clicks to its page), receiving quote requests by message, filling a position or building client loyalty with maintenance tips. When everything is a priority, the calendar fills up with unrelated topics and no one can say whether the quarter was worthwhile.
Then choose your platforms based on your clientele and your production capacity. In Quebec, the NETendances 2025 survey (new tab) (in French) by the Académie de la transformation numérique (Université Laval) reports that 76% of adult internet users use Facebook, 38% Instagram, 25% TikTok and 12% LinkedIn. The age gaps are pronounced: 62% of 18 to 34 year olds are on Instagram, compared with 21% of people aged 55 and over. A firm that sells to other businesses may still find its decision makers on LinkedIn, even though that network reaches a minority of the population.
For a small team, one or two well-kept platforms are worth more than four half-abandoned accounts. Take the required format into account: vertical video requires shooting and editing, while a Facebook or LinkedIn page can run on photos, text and carousels. For each platform you are considering, ask three questions:
- Are your current clients active there? Ask them.
- Do you have the material it requires: photos, videos, expertise to explain?
- Who will answer comments and messages, and how quickly?
Define three or four pillars and a realistic frequency
A content pillar is a family of topics that serves your goal and that you can keep supplied without heroic effort. For the fictional renovation company, that might give: client questions (permits, the stages of a job), know-how (before and after, choice of materials), the offer and its availability, then the team and the neighbourhood (hiring, a local supplier). Each pillar needs an identified source, and the best one remains the questions your clients already ask: noted for a month, as calls and emails come in, they give you topics phrased in your audience’s own words.
Frequency is calculated; it isn’t copied from another account. Estimate the time a complete post takes: idea, writing, visual, approval, posting, then replies to comments. If a post takes about an hour and a half and the team has three hours a week, the sustainable pace is two posts, not five. Set it for a quarter, then adjust it. A modest pace kept up for six months is worth more than an ambitious start that runs out of steam in three weeks.
Also mark the moments that matter to your Quebec clientele: spring break, the Fête nationale on June 24, moving day around July 1, the construction holiday, back to school and the holiday season. Keep the ones that affect your business and leave open slots for company news.
Divide the roles: who writes, who approves, who publishes
In a small team, people wear several hats, but the roles must still be named. Three verbs are enough: write (the text and the visual), approve (the facts, the offer, the rights and the language) and publish (schedule or post, then check the result). Add a task that is often forgotten: monitoring comments and messages in the days that follow, with a backup during vacations.
Set a simple approval rule. For example: the version to approve is submitted three business days before the planned date and, if there is no answer, the post is postponed rather than published without approval. Specify what the approver checks, so that they confirm the facts instead of rewriting the style. A price, a promotion, an availability or a client’s project always requires explicit approval.
Use statuses that describe reality: idea, being written, to approve, approved, scheduled, published. An approved text is not yet scheduled, and a scheduled post is only confirmed once it is visible on the account, with the right link and the right visual.
Access follows the same logic. On a LinkedIn Page, for example, according to LinkedIn’s help on Page admin roles (new tab), “Super admin” gives every permission, “Content admin” lets you create and manage posts, and “Analyst” opens the analytics. Give each person the role they need, keep two trusted people with full access and avoid shared passwords: when an employee leaves, you’ll know which access to remove.
When the writing or the visual is handed to someone else, the guide to preparing a content request details the audience, message, sources and approval to pass on.
Fill in the template, reuse and measure
This table can live in a shared spreadsheet. Each row is a post, and the columns force the decisions people forget when they only note a date and a topic.
| Date | Platform and format | Pillar | Topic | Destination link | Writes, approves, publishes | Rights and consent | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1, Tuesday | Facebook, before and after photos | Know-how | Bathroom redo: three choices that make upkeep easier | Service page | Coordination, management, coordination | Homeowners’ written consent; photos taken by the team | Approved |
| Week 1, Thursday | Instagram, carousel | Client questions | Basement: what to ask your municipality about permits | Article on the site | Coordination, management, coordination | Illustrations made in-house | To approve |
| Week 2, Tuesday | Facebook, text and photo | Team and neighbourhood | We’re hiring a carpenter-joiner | Careers page | Management, management, coordination | Consent of the employees photographed | Being written |
| Week 2, Thursday | Instagram, short video | Offer | How the first visit before a quote works | Quote request form | Coordination, management, coordination | Original sound recorded by the team | Idea |
Plan for reuse from the planning stage. A detailed answer to a client question can become an article on your site, then a carousel, a short video and a question in a story. A seasonal tip can come back the following year with a new photo. Before reposting, check that the offer, the price and the links are accurate, and that the consent tied to the photo covers this new use.
Measure little, but in connection with the goal. Each month, note three families of indicators: how well the calendar is kept (posts planned, published and postponed, approval delays), the signal tied to the goal (clicks to the service page, messages, applications) and qualitative signals (questions in the comments, remarks heard on the phone). Likes and reach help compare formats, but they prove neither a request nor a sale. If a pillar produces no signal for a quarter, change the angle before increasing the frequency.
Check Quebec’s rules before you publish
A photo in which a client, an employee or a passerby can be recognized contains personal information: for the Commission d’accès à l’information (new tab) (in French), it is information that allows a person to be identified, directly or indirectly. To publish this image, obtain consent that meets the Commission’s criteria (new tab) (in French): clear, free, informed, specific, granular, understandable, temporary and, if it is requested in writing, separate from any other information. So ask for consent separately from the contract and note who gave it, for which image and for what use. For a child under 14, this consent comes from the parent or the person with parental authority.
On copyright, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office’s guide (new tab) states that a work is protected as soon as it is created and fixed, without registration, and photographs are among the protected works. An image found through a search engine is therefore not free to use. Use your own photos, stock images whose licence you have read or visuals covered by a written agreement. Reposting a photo that a client put on their own account also requires their permission.
On language, the Office québécois de la langue française’s guide on social media (new tab) (in French) states that a business established in Quebec that promotes its goods or services on social media must do so in French, job offers included. A text that can only be understood by reading its English version is not considered to be in French, and a machine translation must be reviewed. Answer a comment written in French in French. This guide dates from 2016, before the 2022 reform of the Charter. The checklist the Office has published since that reform (new tab) (in French) confirms that commercial documents must be written at least in French on any medium, social media included. Another language, in a separate or bilingual account, is allowed only if French appears in at least an equivalent way and remains accessible on terms at least as favourable.
Finally, a promotion you publish is an advertisement. The Office de la protection du consommateur’s rules on advertising (new tab) (in French) cover all types of advertising, including on the web, and prohibit, for example, advertising a significant discount without mentioning the condition for getting it. Also have the rules of any contest checked.
Before you move a post to “scheduled”, check these points:
- The facts, the price and the conditions of an offer are approved by the right person.
- Every recognizable person has consented to this use, and that consent is recorded.
- The rights to the photos, music and illustrations are known.
- The French text is polished, and no other version says more.
- The link leads to a page that confirms what the post announces.
- Someone is assigned to answer comments.
At Serafex, the Social space is in development: its preview is reserved for administrators and the demo account, and the SMO add-on plans are on hold, with no opening date announced. Serafex therefore does not currently offer to schedule or publish your social media content. You can, however, prepare the context with us: goals, accounts, pillars and the sources of your topics, as explained on the page about social media at Serafex. Producing visuals or text falls under content creation, in an agreed format and with no posting included.
