How to Create a Social Media Calendar
10 Minute Read
By now, every business owner should recognize the importance of social media—but do they understand the necessity of having a social media content calendar? They best. It is a must-have if you want your social presence to reign supreme.
Social media management is an essential piece of the services offered by any marketing agency. In fact, some agencies dedicate themselves exclusively to optimizing and managing their clients’ social media presence.
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Given that social media plays such a huge role in the marketing success of your business, there’s no excuse for being oblivious to what makes an effective strategy. Posting irregularly with little thought for audience engagement or results will get you nowhere.
Badass social media marketing starts with a solid foundation. Whether you manage your own social media activity or partner with an agency, creating a social media calendar is fundamental for creating consistency, growing your audience, and driving new and repeat business.
Did we mention that we handle all this social media stuff, and we do it exceedingly well? Now you know. If you need help with your social media content calendar and then some, Twelve Three Media has just the team to assist you in market domination.
What Is the Purpose of a Social Media Content Calendar?
When you see a funny, memorable, or moving post on your social feeds, it didn’t just magically appear. There is a lot happening behind the scenes. Hours and hours of work are put in before an effective social media post is even conceptualized, let alone published for the world to see.
The purpose of a social media content calendar is to be your strategic blueprint to get your posts from ideas to reality. With it, you know your posts are planned, organized, and aligned with your brand’s goals.
A content calendar answers some of the questions both in-house social media marketers and agencies should be constantly asking themselves:
- What content goes out and when?
- What media assets will be used?
- How does this tie back to your brand and messaging strategy?
A social media calendar keeps you consistent, organized, and cohesive, whether you operate on a team of one or have a whole crew of social media management mavens.
What Are the Benefits of Doing a Social Media Content Calendar?
What are you even asking right now? There are nothing but benefits!
A social media calendar takes your high-level content strategy and turns it into a reality. Laying it all out in this manner ensures that every part of your plan is executed and everything you need to talk about finds its time and place.
You’re managing tons of posts each month. A calendar allows you to organize your content on a monthly basis so you remain consistent, and you’re never scrambling or second-guessing what’s next.
A calendar is an indispensable tool for time management. It gives you a clear view of what needs to be sourced, created, scheduled, and posted—keeping you ahead of the game at every turn.
Planning in advance lets you create the right mix of evergreen and topical content, giving you the flexibility to shift things around to include timely trends and up-to-the-moment topics.
Plus, it gives you a clear, visual roadmap for evaluating whether your content aligns with brand goals. At a glance, you can see that every piece has a place and a purpose, making your process smooth, efficient, and fortifying.
In short, a social media content calendar isn’t just for organization—it keeps your eye on the prize.
What Is the Difference Between a Content Plan & a Calendar?
A content plan and a content calendar work hand in hand, but they serve different purposes within your social media strategy. Think of the content plan as the big-picture framework that guides your work. It outlines your brand’s themes, messaging, and objectives on social media. The content plan defines how you want your brand to be seen and the goals you aim to achieve.
The content calendar is the practical execution of that plan. It’s the detailed, day-to-day schedule that specifies exactly what will be posted, where, and when. It organizes each post and breaks it down into specific tasks.
The content plan is the vision. The content calendar brings that vision to life with tangible, actionable steps. Together they are…well, relationship goals: keeping you focused, organized, and aligned.
How Do I Develop a Social Media Content Calendar?
Brainstorming is the gold standard for getting the ball rolling on creating content for social media. Members of your team and/or outside partners (such as social media strategists at your marketing agency) should meet regularly to come up with content ideas that tie back to your goals and objectives.
The brainstorming process should be fun, inclusive, and positive. Everyone should feel free to share any and all ideas—in these early stages, there is no such thing as a “bad idea.” Every bitten tongue could be a missed opportunity, and we don’t do that, do we?
Brainstorming meetings are also a good time to make sure everyone is clear on your goals and develop solutions for reaching them. Whenever you can, involve multiple people with different perspectives (e.g., invite your company president to one meeting, team members at your marketing agency to another, etc.). This can provide more context to create effective and inspired social messaging.
When creating the social media content calendar, you’ll want to reference a standard calendar to generate ideas for content and determine when they should be delivered. Topical calendars with upcoming events, holidays, and awareness campaigns can keep you on task while getting the creativity flowing.
After the brainstorming meeting, content production can get underway in earnest. As your team comes up with ideas, it’s important to keep your social media calendar updated.
Each business and social media marketing team will have their own way of organizing their calendar. Below, we have included several components that could be useful to you. Pick and choose the elements that will make your calendar comprehensive and constructive. Helpful information could include:
- Content Topic/Title
- Rationale (i.e., how the individual post fulfills an aspect of your overarching plan)
- Network (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Media Type (e.g., static post, video, etc.)
- Source (i.e., is your asset coming from your business, marketing agency, influencer, Shutterstock, etc.)
- Visual Asset
- Post Copy
- Hashtags
- Due Date
- Status
- Creator (i.e., who on your team is individually responsible for this post)
- Date & Time Post Goes Live
Having a structured approach to planning and executing social media marketing helps you avoid going from brainstorming straight to publishing (which is often inefficient, ineffective, and erratic). Instead, a social media calendar acts as a “How-To” for your content, helping you think systematically and complete each step in creating effective, kickass content:
- Brainstorming
- Calendaring
- Asset Creation & Copywriting
- Scheduling
- Posting
- Moderation
Sample Social Media Content Calendar
Sample Social Media Content Calendar Template for Twelve Three Media
Remember that your content calendar needs to work for your business. It can include any of the suggested fields and then some. We find that this calendar works best for our team and process:
Social Media Calendar Tools
Having the right tools when creating your social media calendar can make a helluva difference. However, each business has unique needs. Decide what works best for your team, goals, and workflow. That said, here’s what works for us:
- Spreadsheet: A simple Google Sheets spreadsheet can work wonders for tracking content and keeping things neat and tidy.
- Management: Platforms like Sprout Social, Sendible, or Sprinklr are indispensable tools for planning, managing, and analyzing your social content.
- Scheduling: Tools like Later or Loomly let you schedule posts in advance, so your posts are always ready and live at the right time.
No shade here. Find what fits and make it work for you.
How Far in Advance Should I Plan a Social Media Calendar?
Scheduling social media content in advance is crucial for consistently delivering high-quality, engaging posts. However, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to how much time you should allow for creating content.
Megan Thielen, Lead Social Media Strategist at Twelve Three Media, explained the process our team uses in a recent article on Databox:
“We generally break our timeline down into weekly chunks, building 1–1.5 months before anything goes live. One week is dedicated to a team brainstorm & topical calendar buildout. Two weeks are dedicated to content creation and internal reviews (this is where we take our topical calendar roadmap and make/secure assets, write copy, and execute internal reviews/revisions).”
Social media content should be a mix of evergreen, topical, and trending posts. Depending on your business, your industry, and the customers you serve, it may behoove your brand to prioritize what’s new and create content at the speed of culture. In other cases, more content can be planned out in advance while still leaving some room for relevant, time-sensitive opportunities.
Creating a social media content calendar that outlines upcoming content—whether you do it a month, a quarter, or even more in advance—actually improves your ability to be spontaneous when something noteworthy happens in real-time. With evergreen content already planned out, it is easier to jump on creating a timely post without disrupting your workflow.
Should Social Media Calendars Be Developed with Certain Platforms in Mind?
Your business, budget, objectives, and goals will ultimately drive how granular you can get in planning content for different social media platforms. Large brands may have teams dedicated to a particular platform (one group working on content for TikTok, another working on Facebook, etc.). But if you’re a small business, you may not have the money, time, and resources to invest in that level of specificity.
Not every company is Wendy’s, which spends millions of dollars cultivating unique personalities and messaging for each of its social media pages. But if you can’t afford this fancy footwork, there is no need to be a wallflower.
The best way to maximize your reach across multiple social media channels is to prioritize the platforms where your audience hangs out and will get you the highest return on investment. The ROI on social media marketing can be calculated in multiple ways, from brand awareness to engagement with followers to actual sales. Analyze the metrics that matter the most to you. Then, allot more of your time to developing content that speaks to that audience and those specific platforms.
A well-crafted social media content calendar will help you stay on top of developing content for your social media profiles and make it easier to adapt your content across platforms. These days, many brands take a Tik-Tok first approach, creating content for TikTok and then adapting it for Instagram, Facebook, and others.
Read More: How to Launch a TikTok Strategy
While some content can live on other platforms, not everything will fit everywhere (e.g., TikTok videos may not fly on LinkedIn). Balance platform-specific content with adaptable content. Understanding the audience and best practices of each platform lets you identify where overlap is possible. This helps you work efficiently while keeping content relevant and effective.
How Do You Know If a Social Media Content Calendar Is Working?
The kickassness of a social media calendar rests on your answers to two distinct questions:
- Is the calendar working?
- Is the content working?
Your social media calendar should help you run more efficiently. It should also help with communication, planning, and execution. If you still find it difficult to get all of these factors in place and stick to a schedule, you should reevaluate your process.
It can be more difficult to determine if your content is working. You need to know what you want your content to accomplish and the challenges you face. You also need to understand how you will measure what makes a post successful based on your goals and objectives.
If you want to nurture audience loyalty, you may focus on metrics that measure engagement. If you want to grow your audience, you may focus on metrics that measure acquisition. You also need to understand platform algorithms, best practices, and what content resonates with your audience.
Don’t fool yourself. Not every post is going to be a hit. Rather than getting stressed about it, look for insights from your posts to understand your audience better. Then, use that knowledge to craft content that will reach them.
If your content is underperforming, make sure you are abiding by each platform’s best practices, delivering content that the algorithm is likely to reward, and fine-tuning your message to appeal better to your audience.
And don’t forget, social media is a pay-to-play space. To start seeing crazy good results on your organic social media activity, you will likely need to develop paid media strategies, too.
What Have We Learned, Social People?
Social media is a “must-have” for any business. Duh. You knew that.
Although no one knows your business better than you, it is hard to be an expert in all things, and it’s not uncommon to face difficulties with consistent posting, effective messaging, trendjacking, and more.
Creating a social media calendar is—hands down—the best way to stay organized and productive. With a single go-to resource, your whole team stays on task and helps build a strategy that boosts your social visibility and drives real results.
Struggling to stay on top of your social media calendar? Not hitting those goals the way you want to? Twelve Three Media can help.
Our team of pros uses tried-and-true strategies to create a customized social media content calendar, craft high-quality content and assets, post when the time is right, monitor engagement, and report the results that actually matter.