Content plan creating

A social media calendar is an overview of your upcoming social media posts. It can be organized in the form of a spreadsheet, Google calendar or interactive dashboard (if you’re using a social media management app).

Each entry in a social media calendar usually includes some combination of these elements:

• The exact date and time the post is going live
• The social network and account where the post will be published
• The post’s copy and creative assets (i.e. photos or videos)
• Links and tags to be included in the post
• Any additional relevant information (e.g. is this an Instagram feed post or a Story?)

Depending on the scope of your social media strategy, your social media calendar can include one or many social networks.

Why use a social media content calendar?

1. Save time by being organized

Your social media marketing goals have a key point in common with many of the other goals in your day planner: they take effort and attention every single day. Not just when you’re feeling inspired (or at 11PM when everything else is taken care of). Maintaining a social media calendar lets you plan ahead, batch your work, avoid multitasking, and note down all your creative brainwaves for later. Basically it’s the best way to make sure you’ll never find yourself desperately scrolling through generic inspirational quotes hoping to find something to post ever again. And even though you’ll be posting every day, maybe multiple times a day, that doesn’t mean you need to be babysitting your feeds constantly. Certain social media calendar tools allow you to schedule social media posts ahead of time, and, just as important, manage audience engagement from one place.

2. Post consistently

Whether you’re trying to increase your Instagram likes, your YouTube subscribers, or you’ve implemented social media KPIs, the first tip from experts will always be “post consistently.” There’s just no shortcut around it. Consistently showing up in your audience’s feed is the key to engaging them on social. Impressive engagement increases your organic reach via the platform’s algorithm, so your posts get shown to new eyes, and new people start following your brand. And making genuine connections with a growing audience is the one true path to lifting your conversions. Populating your social media calendar with posts ahead of time allows you to post consistently whether it’s a slow news week, or your biggest promotion of the year.

3. Make fewer typos, and also reduce the risk of big mistakes

Planning your posts ahead of time means that you can build failsafes into your workflow. Copy-editing the text, fact-checking information, or even vetting it with organizational stakeholders like the legal team or C-suite, are all a lot easier when you’re working days or weeks in advance. A social media calendar—especially one with team member approvals built in—is the best way to prevent a low-key embarrassment like posting the same message across channels, or a high-key social media crisis.

4. Get more ambitious with your social strategies

The world’s biggest social media brands are often running multiple campaigns at once—long, medium and short-term, paid and organic. And that’s just the day-to-day posts. Once you have your schedule nailed down, your glorious brain is freed up to tackle even bigger questions. Should you run an Instagram contest? Start looking for influencer partners? Maybe it’s time to get your brand on LinkedIn, or introduce a social media employee advocacy program. Whether you’re managing a five-person content team or you’re posting your Story while mixing bleach for your 3pm client’s pastel ombre long-bob, getting your social game to the next level means getting organized.

5. Make higher-quality content

Social media production values have skyrocketed since the early days, and the notion of a lone-wolf Millennial tweeting memes from their beanbag chair has gone the way of the jegging. Today, it’s not that unusual for a single social media post to have a whole team of creatives behind it: copywriters, designers, video editors, photographers. And asking your team of hard-working artistes to drop everything for an emergency Instagram Story is not going to win hearts or minds. (And it’s not even guaranteed to earn engagement, if it feels slipshod or pushy.) A social media calendar helps you allocate your assets—both human and digital—effectively, so that your team has the breathing room to do their best work. And a long-term vision means you’re pushing a consistent brand voice and content that supports your marketing goals.

6. Track what works, and improve it

What gets scheduled gets done, and what gets measured gets improved. Your social media analytics have a lot of insights for you. A social media content calendar provides the opportunity to schedule your experiments towards improvement. Plan out your A/B tests until you find the right recipe for the type of content, format, post frequency, and best time of day to post for each social platform.

How to create a social media calendar

1. Audit your social networks and content

Developing a clear picture of your current social media efforts will let you identify areas for improvement and opportunities for new efforts. An audit is key to fine-tuning your content strategy and maximizing your ROI. Start with our social media audit template. This will result in precise, up-to-date data on:

• Impostor accounts and outdated profiles
• Account security and passwords
• Goals and KPIs for each branded account, by platform
• Your audience, their demographics and personas
• Who’s accountable for what work on your team
• Your most successful posts, campaigns and tactics
• Gaps, underwhelming results, and opportunities for improvement
• Key metrics for measuring future success on each platform

Budget some dedicated time to go through all of your social assets. Then rest assured that you’ll be tackling your refreshed social strategy with the best information. That is, the information that’s unique to your audience, accounts and brand.

2. Decide what data your social media content calendar needs to track

As you figure out what this beautiful beast is going to look like, you want to map out the information and functionality this tool is going to provide to you. Maybe you’re starting fresh for, say, your side-hustle doing social for local indie rappers. In which case a simple spreadsheet might do. But if you’re managing a seven-person team with a dozen different consumer-facing brands, you’re going to want something that can tell you who’s doing what, when it’s done, when it’s approved, and when it’s published—and then how successful it was.

So we advise you to start with basic details:

• Platform
• Date
• Time (and time zone)
• Copy
• Visuals (e.g., photo, video, illustration, infographic, gif, etc.)
• Link to assets
• Link to published post

Also, add more advanced details that you might potentially find helpful. (You can always nix them later if they’re redundant.) Details like:

• Platform-specific format (eg., feed post, IGTV, Story, poll, live stream, ads, shoppable posts, etc.)
• The vertical or campaign it’s affiliated with (eg., product launch, event, contests, annual giving, general brand awareness, customer service, etc.)
• Geo-targeting (i.e., is it global, North American, etc.)
• Value (i.e., Is it a short-lived topical post or a big-budget evergreen showpiece that could be recycled or cannibalized for parts down the line?)
• Paid or organic? (If paid, then additional budget details might be helpful)
• Has it been approved?
• Has it been posted? (If so, do you want to include the link with its UTM?)
• Analytics and results (Generally at this level of complexity you probably rely on your analytics reports to contain and explain this information.)

3. Make a content library for your assets

Some people like to call these content repositories or media resource databases or digital asset banks. Regardless of what you call it, your supply of visual content should not be living on your iPhone, or in a bunch of desktop folders marked “misc social.” You can use Dropbox, Google Drive, your company’s internal network, or made-to-purpose database software. A social media content library has a few key features:

• It’s spacious enough for large files;
• It’s accessible from your phone as well as your computer (trust me on this one);
• It’s easily shareable with team members, but you can trust its privacy features;
• It provides links to individual files so that you can plunk them into your calendar (or perhaps it interfaces with your calendar natively).

The way you set up your content library is almost as important as your social media calendar. The less searching around for assets that you have to do, the better.

4. Establish a workflow

You’ll want to think about:

• How often you want to post to each channel;
• The best time to post to each channel (based on your analytics; or else check out our full breakdown here);
• What your content ratio will look like (an easy starting point is the rule of thirds, which is #8 on our list of social media best practices);
• Who needs to approve posts (e.g., your copy-editor, your legal team, your CEO) and how communication will work there;
• What the process is for brainstorming new content, not to mention assigning and creating it.

5. Research Content Topics

Once you’ve decided which social networks to focus on, it’s time to plan your content. The content you create needs to be specific, relevant, and unique, and not all about “you” as a business. If your goal is to create content that’s either the next big thing or a viral sensation, that’s not realistic and the wrong approach to content creation. Instead, focus your efforts on creating content that will engage your target audience. When creating a questionnaire, decide what you want to achieve and choose your questions accordingly. To encourage more responses, consider offering a reward for completing the questionnaire.

Another way to get the creative juices flowing is to talk to friends, colleagues, and family. Even if they aren’t invested in your business, a conversation may spark content ideas you haven’t already thought of. If your friends or family happen to be your typical target customer, that’s even better. Don’t be afraid to ask for their input. Also look at your competitors. Follow your competitors online and see what works for them, and maybe it will work for you too. Don’t copy their ideas or content, but do find inspiration for your own content. Create a Twitter list to segment the content they’re sharing so you can easily find it.

6. Plan Your Content Calendar

After you’ve done your research, you’re ready to create content for your blog. First, decide which target customer the content is designed for and then choose a topic. Get specific with topics in your industry. Next, choose a blog article title. Look at three types of keywords: transactional, informational, and navigational. A transactional keyword attracts people who are looking for the best or cheapest. An informational keyword touches on the “what” and “how,” while establishing you as an expert. A navigational keyword helps people find what they’re looking for and usually includes a brand name. 

Break down your blog content into four sections:

• Introduction: pose an interesting fact/statistic.
• Body: divide the information into bite-sized chunks.
• Conclusion: summarize the topic.
• Call to action: download a free guide or join a webinar, for example.

Once you know what content you want to create, you need to create a content plan similar to the one pictured below. Columns might include Month, Publish Date, Title/Description, Due Date, Type of Content (blog post, video, infographic, etc.), Target Audience, Distribution Channels (Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, company blog, etc.), and Keywords.

7. Build Trust Through Consistent Engagement

Social media is about more than just publishing content. To establish yourself as a thought leader and trusted resource in your industry, you need to engage in two-way conversations. The more open you are and the more you use social media for customer service, the more likely your audience will feel safe. This puts them one step closer to purchasing from your business. On average, it takes eight “touches” before a potential customer will buy from your business. With this in mind, think about ways you can use social media to shorten the process and turn a potential customer into a paying customer that much quicker. For example, suppose you meet a potential prospect at a tradeshow. You then follow him on both LinkedIn and Twitter. To engage with your prospect, you comment on one of his LinkedIn posts or retweet one of his posts on Twitter. The prospect then sends you a direct message through LinkedIn. You ask for his email address and arrange for a 30-minute discovery call. The call goes well, so you set up an in-person meeting. After your meeting, you send a follow-up email and agree to start working with the prospect.

8. Measure Progress and Adjust Course

Measuring your success is the final step in your social media plan. You need to know if your efforts are delivering results for your business. Let’s break this down into three areas: conversion, reach, and engagement.

Conversions. Conversions help you determine whether you’re driving sales from social media. If you’re not, you’ll need to change things up. To help you analyze conversions easily and efficiently, you can download a social media dashboard that integrates with your Google Analytics. This will then give you all of the social data you need to measure conversions.

Reach. Reach is the number of people you have had an effect on with your content. This metric helps you gauge how well your social media content is resonating with your target audience. Here are some ways you can assess reach:

• Connections on LinkedIn
• Followers on Twitter
• Followers on Instagram
• Likes on your Facebook page
• Views and subscribers on your YouTube channel
• Website visitors

Engagement. Finally, look at engagement metrics to see how many people are interacting with you online. Here are some metrics to measure:

• Clicks on social media posts
• Retweets and mentions
• Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn shares (including LinkedIn Pulse comments and likes)
• Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn comments