Posting plan: how to easily create a social media calendar (BONUS: template)

A social media calendar is key to an efficient workflow: it helps you plan and keep track of your business’s activity online. Why does it matter? All digital marketing efforts should be tracked, planned and organised around the goals of the business. A social media calendar will help you plan and manage what is often […]

A social media calendar is key to an efficient workflow: it helps you plan and keep track of your business’s activity online.

Why does it matter?

All digital marketing efforts should be tracked, planned and organised around the goals of the business. A social media calendar will help you plan and manage what is often the most chaotic task for a marketing team.

You will never again have to ask yourself:

• “What should we post on Facebook today?”
• “Which social network should this content go on?”
• “Why are we only posting on Facebook?”
• “Do we have any other social media accounts?”
• “Has this been approved?”
• “Who approved it?”
• “Why is there a photo of a monkey eating a banana on LinkedIn?”

When do you need one?

When you decide to manage your social media marketing and plan when, where and what content you will publish for your brand. You only need to create the calendar once, but our advice is to make a new copy every week (otherwise it will probably get too cluttered, especially if you post daily on more than one social network).

How do you create one?

You need your social media accounts and, most commonly, access to Google Sheets, where you will build the calendar itself. Patience and diligence will also come in very handy.

To make things easier, you can use our ready-made social media calendar template and make a copy of it for future use.

You will need to set the template up to suit your needs. Most of its columns are quite easy to fill in, but for the purposes of this guide we will go through each one:

• Publication date: The date on which you want to publish the specific social media update.
• Topic/Title: Add a general topic or a specific title for the post.
• Content/Details: Details of the content and its purpose.
• Post type: This matters, because it dictates what the post will look like. Example options:
  • “Standard post” (text and image)
  • “Link post” (text and a link to an article)
  • “Thread” (for Twitter, for example)
  • “Carousel post” (when you want to show several products).
• Content type: Options such as:
  • “Photo”
  • “Graphic”
  • “GIF”
  • “Video”
  • “User-generated content”
• Copy: Write your marketing message here.
• Visual: Copy and paste the visual you will share with the post (a photo, etc.).
• Link: The link you will use in the post, if there is one.
• Shortened tracking link: If you use shortened tracking links, add them here.
• Approval 1 and Approval 2: If the post has to be approved before it goes live, keep these columns. If only one approval is needed, keep just one column.
• Link to the live post: Add the link to each published post to keep yourself better organised.

Why do it?

Using a calendar to plan your social media content has many benefits that can significantly improve your marketing efforts.

Here are some of the benefits you can gain:

• Organisation and planning – it gives you a consistent, structured approach to your social media strategy and prevents situations where you run out of content or have to post in a rush.
• Consistency – regular posting is important for keeping your brand engaging and visible on social media, and for building a loyal audience.
• Alignment with your goals: A well-structured content calendar ensures that every post is in line with your wider marketing goals and campaigns. This helps you keep a consistent brand message across different platforms and initiatives.
• Coordination between teams: If several people or teams are involved in creating and approving content, the social media calendar acts as a central coordination tool. It ensures everyone is aligned and clear about what needs to be done and when.
• Time management: By planning your content in advance, you free up time for other strategic work, such as engaging with your audience, analysing performance or coming up with new content ideas.

Although planning is important, a social media calendar also leaves room for flexibility. You can add or change content in response to current events, trends or unexpected opportunities without disrupting your overall strategy.

That’s it! Creating a social media calendar isn’t difficult at all. The harder part is sticking to it and filling it in regularly, but the benefits of keeping it up will become clear very soon.