Why do You Need a Social Media Calendar Template?

Contrary to popular belief the work life of social media managers is quite hectic.

It is exhausting to try and find new ideas for social media posts every day on multiple social networks.

This task requires serious strategic planning. Unfortunately, many brands fail to do this.

It’s time to stop posting random posts and create a solid plan using a social media calendar template.

Social media calendar templates will stop last-minute scrabble without any social goals.

To learn the basics of a template for social media, read our step-by–step guide. Download our free social media content template and transform your social media experience.

What is a Social Media Calendar Template (or Social Media Calendar)?

Take a look for yourself.

Are you looking for a precise definition? This is it.

This social media calendar template will help you plan, manage, and track your social media posts across multiple channels.

It’s similar to the one shown above and allows you to organize and brainstorm ideas for posting and to assign publishing dates to each post across all platforms.

A social media content calendar template typically includes the following elements.

• A calendar overview for stakeholders and team members
• Monthly goals
• Each social platform has its own tab
• Make copies of your creative assets and post them
• Date and time of publication
• URLs and hashtags to be included in the posts
• Each post’s campaign name or goal

We have the perfect tool for you if you don’t like organizing your calendars and need an automated way of managing your monthly social media posts.

SocialPilot: A Social Media Calendar that is Auto-Filled

SocialPilot is the best social media scheduling tool available. It has multiple features that can scale your social growth.

One of these is the easy-to-use, functional social media content calendar.

It’s a scheduling tool that allows you to schedule posts when you want them to be published.

You can then see a calendar for each month and what content is being scheduled for each account.

Agency that handles multiple clients can filter their view by dragging and dropping social posts.

For agencies with many clients, managing calendars to display clients’ posting times is not practical. SocialPilot is a great social media management tool.

What are you waiting?

Get it now! Get your trial today or schedule a demo phone call.

Why do you need a social media calendar template?

Social marketing success is more likely for brands that have a well-documented strategy than those without.

The social media calendar template is a great tool for organizing your social strategy.

Before we move on, let’s look at all the benefits.

Keeps you organized and on track with your goals

You can’t use your last night’s ideas on sticky notes, notepads or crumpled paper as a social media calendar template.

Perhaps some of the most talented ones were also lost because of such poor management.

Your ability to quickly create amazing social media content is impressive, and I have no doubt about that. Without proper documentation, it’s impossible to create content that is aligned with your goals.

Although you cannot plan all of your topical content ahead of time, a calendar can help you to schedule it better.

It is essential to create a social media calendar to organize, align and coordinate every post in a view of your overall marketing strategy.

Effective Brainstorming

Did you remember Lucy, an intern, who had a brilliant post idea in the brainstorming sessions. It wasn’t appropriate for July, but it would have been great for Christmas.

Lucy quit her job to study cinematography in Los Angeles. You didn’t even remember the post idea when December came around because you had no place to store it.

You will be overwhelmed by great ideas during the brainstorming session. You can save your post ideas for another day or month, and then return to them when you are ready.

Makes You Consistent

Social media marketing is all about consistency. Your followers won’t like you sharing multiple posts on Mondays and then being absent for a week is not a good idea.

You need to ensure consistency on social media by making sure your content pipeline is full of social posts every day. You don’t want to compromise quality for quantity.

A content calendar template provides a view of quality posts for every day of the month.

You can create more content by using trending hashtags for the entire month by anticipating important dates and events with a calendar.

Transparency between Teams

Stakeholders and nearly every marketing executive often ask social media managers, “So, what’s the deal with social media?”

You can provide them with more transparency and quick answers, and also help to allocate the responsibilities. Templates are a great way to keep all decision makers on the same page .

Copywriters and designers can see the monthly plans and plan their time for post descriptions and creatives.

This is a great tool for clients and stakeholders to assess how well social media efforts align with their overall goals.

How do I create a Social Media Content Calendar Template

Some people make the social media calendar templates right away, while others take the time to do a social media audit.

It’s okay if you have already done the audit. If not, we recommend that you do a social media audit in order to better understand your current performance. This will help you to identify the areas that are lacking in your social media strategies and create a new content calendar.

Step 1: Gather all your social profiles

You must now have completed your audit and a complete list of your social media accounts. If you’ve skipped the audit, it is time to collect all of your social media profiles.

Social teams often focus their resources on just one or two networks, while overlooking others.

You can organize all your social media profiles in one place and allocate the attention needed to tap the missing engagement or audience.

Gather all your social media channels and create a social calendar.

We have included a tab for each social media channel in our template so that you can focus your efforts on each channel.

You must create a tab in your calendar so that you don’t have the same post on each platform.

If I refer to a similar post, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you cannot promote the same content across all platforms. Every network has its own nuances and content requirements, which you should follow when creating posts.

It is easier to have different tabs to make it easy to note down content and when to post to social media.

Step 2: Decide what to include

Next, decide what you want to include in your social media calendar.

Your social media calendar template should contain all information that you, your team and clients need to fully understand each social channel’s game plan.

If you prefer to keep things simple however, add the most commonly used attributes to your social media content template.

Let’s dive deep.

Day, Date, and Time

It’s a calendar so dates, days and times are crucial.

Your team will be able to manage their tasks more effectively if they know what will go live when. A time and day structure can help you determine the best time to post on each social media channel.

Type and format of post content

You will need to describe the content that you create and how it will be presented to the world.

You might decide to promote a blog post. However, there are many ways to do this. You can either share the link to the blog post, or create a carousel of images or a single image.

Combining both columns makes it easier to see the content you have created for every post that is sent to stakeholders. Both of these columns can be found in our social media calendar template.

Post Description and Creative

Next, write the description for your post. This section allows calendar viewers to understand the context of your social media posts.

Your description should be written the same way as when publishing, using special characters and emojis. You can also add a URL to your creative to make it more clear.

URL

Links will be included in more than half the posts that you publish. Include the link in your social content calendar template. This will allow people to further examine the purpose of your social media posts .

To make your calendar more useful, you can add additional information. These are just a few of the many options available to you:

• Parameters of the UTM
• Hashtags
• Name of the campaign
• KPIs for social media goals
• Location targeting
• Approval checkbox
• Location targeting
• Paid or organic
• Analytics and the results
  

Step 3: Create a Weekly/Daily Calendar View

Half of the task when creating a social media calendar template is to decide what to include. The other half is organizing everything correctly.

These are the most important attributes that you have identified. It’s now time to organize these attributes so that you can effectively plan your calendar.

A weekly calendar is the best way to organize your posts. It will include time, date and any other information that you may need.

Check out the weekly view of our template calendar.

Step 4: Create a monthly calendar view

Let’s move a bit beyond the weekly view to create a monthly calendar view for your social media content calendar.

Why?

The monthly calendar view gives you an overview of everything on your social media calendar and also lets you know about upcoming events.

Sometimes stakeholders are reluctant to get into the details of your social plans. A monthly view can be a great way to inform stakeholders about the most important happenings for each month.

The monthly view of the social media calendar does exactly the same.

How do you use the tab in this template?

First, identify all key events, campaigns or other important happenings that you will be focusing on during a specific month across all your channels. This could be ebook, webinar or new blog posts.

For your convenience, we have provided a list of categories. Keep them if they are relevant or delete them all and begin to put the ones that correspond with your content.

Next color code every key so it’s easy for people to distinguish.

Finally, organize the important events in the calendar according to the dates they will appear.

Step 5: Invite your team members to give feedback

Is your social media calendar complete?

It’s a good idea to share the calendar with your colleagues, who will use it daily. Invite them to ask questions and if there is anything missing.

It is possible that they will not grasp it immediately. Tell them to use it, and then have a meeting with you to get feedback.

Your goal is to design an intuitive calendar that anyone can use, even new members .

Are you ready for consistent posting?

A well-constructed social media calendar will help you to create a consistent, organized and goal-aligned social media marketing strategy.

You will have enough time to communicate with your audience, and take advantage of social trends.

It can be difficult to create a social media calendar. We have listed every step to help you create a social media calendar for your clients/brand.

Or, you can opt for a simpler route and let our professionally-crafted social media calendar template handle the heavy lifting.

Once you have created a calendar, you will need to add it to your workflow and make updates as needed.

SocialPilot allows you to create a month-long social media calendar with multiple posts. You can then use the power of SocialPilot for scheduling them all at once.

SocialPilot’s first post, Why do You Need a Social Media Calendar Template (plus a Free Template), appeared on SocialPilot.