How To Use A Social Media Content Calendar: Tricks And Free Template

A social media calendar sounds like a big commitment, but in reality it’s just a handy tool to help you in your social endeavours from planning to scheduling. 

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What is a social media calendar? 

A social media calendar is designed to help give you an overview of social posts, whilst helping you plan your content around key dates and business events (e.g. a special offer).

What can you find on a social media calendar? 

• Dates and time post is going live. 
• The social network the post is going to be published to. 
• Posts creative assets and copy (so, text). 
• Links, tags and hashtags. 
• A key to indicate whether the post is related to a supported social campaign, a new product launch, or related to a holiday.

Why use a social media calendar? 

1.) Save time and get consistent at posting 

Social media can take out a large chunk of your day, and being a small business every moment of your time is precious. So it's a no-brainer to put aside a little extra time to get your social media content calendar in place, plan for a week ahead even a month ahead so you can bulk schedule across different channels. 

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2.) Strengthen your social media strategy

Random posting on your channels can almost feel like fire-fighting, you’re not actually building any consistency or any sort of strategy. With a calendar you can plan both short and long term social campaigns all at once. Do you want to run an Instagram giveaway campaign? Do you want to launch a new video to generate engagement? Creating your strategy with a content calendar can help you plan this all in advance and gives you time in advance to think of the small details. 

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3.) Not missing out on important milestones and dates 

You’re missing great content opportunities without even realising it! Social media is an ever growing digital space where trends and global moments are presented that are relevant to your brand’s audience. 

Like #StarWarsDay (May 4th)

Or..

#InternationalWomensDay

That way, when you’ve scheduled all of this content, you’ll be able to focus on other important milestones that happen suddenly on social media. 

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4.) Better for tracking! Measure and improve your content

Your metrics are the most important part of your social media planning, take a look back at your last month of content across your businesses channels, what worked well? What didn’t? How did engagement change between posting a video and posting an image? Use all of your data to plan future content, this will help you develop your overall social media strategy and help you better understand your audience and what appeals to them. 

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How to get started creating your own calendar 

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Creating your own social media/content calendar is easy, simply print or save a calendar template and customise it with important dates in the diary, these can be: 

• New product launches 
• Social campaigns 
• Important national holidays 
• Hashtag holidays (like we mentioned above)

An entry will look like follows:

• The date and time the post is due to go live. 
• The channel/social network where the post will be published. 
• The post copy and creative assets
• Relevant links, hashtags and tags to be included

Before getting started:

1. Create an audit of your existing social networks and the content you post
2. Decide what you need to track on your calendar
3. Make a library or folder full of creative assets e.g. videos and images 
4. Establish a consistent workflow 
5. Start crafting your posts and scheduling!

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