The Social Media Content Calendar Template Every Marketer Needs [Free Template]

"We have a 9 a.m. meeting? Hold on — let me scour the internet to find content for the morning tweet."

Sound acquainted?

Scrambling for social content material is nothing new. We have conferences. We miss deadlines. Things come up. And it is actually onerous to get any significant quantity of labor finished when you might have the subsequent social media replace looming over your head each 30, 60, or 90 minutes. Social media content material strikes so quick that you simply may sometimes really feel thrown for a loop, which is why a pre-scheduled social media content material calendar needs to be your new finest pal.

To make social media content material simpler for firms to plan and schedule throughout the accounts they handle, we created a social media content material calendar template. And as a result of this discipline strikes so shortly, we’re all the time updating this template with the newest social platform options that can assist you share your content material technique at a tactical degree.

Use the Above Template to Plan Out Your Social Media Holiday Posts

What's on this social media content material calendar template?

Every social media content material calendar is totally different and needs to be custom-made to suit your distinctive social media technique. In this one, you may discover a schedule tab, your month-to-month planning calendar, a repository for web site content material, and updates for every of the highest social media platforms:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Pinterest

The wonderful thing about this template is that as new social media platforms turn into in style and a part of your content material technique ( you Tik Tok and Clubhouse), you possibly can merely copy the spreadsheet and repurpose it for that new channel.

This weblog put up will stroll you thru precisely use a social media content material calendar template to remain on high of your social media content material planning for every channel.

Pro Tip: HubSpot prospects may also schedule content material via HubSpot's Social Media Management Software, or use this spreadsheet to arrange and add content material. Detailed directions for doing this may be discovered within the cowl sheet of the template.

How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar Template

When you open the social media content material calendar template, you may discover the underside of the Excel spreadsheet has a number of totally different tabs, most of that are devoted to a selected social community.

Since every social media community is a bit of totally different, you do not wish to craft a generic social media put up and use it throughout LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Instead, it is best apply to create a unique worksheet for every platform.

Why?

Just a few causes. Image sizes differ throughout all platforms, the kinds of content material that work effectively on Facebook may tank on Twitter, and exterior hyperlinks are nice for Twitter however almost not possible to make use of successfully on Instagram.

You can actually promote the identical piece of content material throughout these networks, however that does not imply you may craft your replace the identical manner for every of them. In truth, you might wish to add extra tabs for those who're energetic on different networks, like Quora or YouTube.

How to Use this Template

The following subsections will present you fill out every of the tabs you see on this template — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. But earlier than we get to that, let's begin with the Monthly Social Calendar.

Monthly Planning Calendar

The tab Monthly Planning Calendar offers an general snapshot of your month-to-month social media campaigns. It'll make it easier to coordinate with different stakeholders and hold all of the transferring elements so as. Here's what it seems like:

There are three sections to pay attention to whenever you edit this template. First, the color-coding key. Each shade represents a sort of content material or marketing campaign you may coordinate, like ebooks, webinars, weblog posts, product launches, and so forth. Though solely a few of these is perhaps related to you, they're only the start of what you might wish to embody right here — so make sure you add and take away classes that align with your personal kinds of content material.

The different two sections you may have to edit are the Month and Year on the high of the calendar, in addition to the cells beneath every day of the week. In these cells, it's best to enter the kind of content material you may be selling that day and color-code it to align with the marketing campaign it is supporting.

Instead of deleting all of the content material on this spreadsheet every month, I like to recommend copying this worksheet twelve instances over and making a separate sheet for every month. (If that will get to be too overwhelming, you possibly can all the time save these tabs as a separate workbook.)

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Twitter

Alright, now let's get to the social media content material a part of the calendar. This part would be the longest as a result of all subsequent sections will draw on the directions we undergo right here. If you solely learn one part on this entire put up, ensure it is this one.

Let's say you wish to add some tweets to your scheduling template. Scroll over to the Twitter Updates tab within the content material calendar spreadsheet, the place you may see this:

The first 4 columns, Day, Date, Time, and Date & Time are there in your comfort, and for those who select to make use of a third-party app for pre-scheduling your tweets (like HubSpot's Social Media Management Software), then these columns might be helpful. For now, simply fill within the date for whenever you’ll publish updates to Twitter, and the time at which you would like them to exit. The Date & Time column will mechanically change primarily based on what you kind within the earlier two columns.

Now, let’s transfer over to the Message column. Here, enter the copy you’d like to look in your tweet, taking into consideration it's best to cap it at 217 characters to permit sufficient room for a hyperlink. (Read this weblog put up for a full character depend information.) This spreadsheet will auto-calculate the variety of characters you’ve entered to maintain you on-point, turning yellow and finally purple as you strategy 240 characters.

After you have composed your tweet, paste the URL you would like to incorporate in your tweet within the Link column. Be certain to incorporate UTM parameters so you may know whether or not these tweets are driving visitors, leads, and prospects. This is a crucial step to recollect if you would like to show ROI from social media. You may also use the Campaign column so as to add an related marketing campaign which helps with extra detailed monitoring and reporting.

Finally, within the Image column, connect the tweet's picture (when you have one). For Twitter, we suggest pictures which can be 1200 x 670 pixels.

(Click right here for a full cheat sheet of social media picture sizes.)

If you are having bother attaching your picture to the spreadsheet, comply with these steps:

Step 1: Click on the cell the place you would like to put your picture.

Step 2: Click Insert within the high row, then click on the Image button, and eventually, click on Image in cell to decide on your picture.

Step 3: In the Insert picture window, select the choice your picture will come from. In this instance, we uploaded a picture from our pc.

Step 4: You'll now see the picture seem within the cell.

Pro Tip: This course of is only for organizational functions. If you resolve to add the spreadsheet to your social media publishing software program, it is not going to connect — you may have to try this manually. If you are a HubSpot buyer, particulars for bulk add your Twitter content material to the HubSpot Social PublishingTool might be discovered inside the downloaded template.

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Facebook

Now, let's discuss plan your Facebook advertising and marketing content material with this template. First, navigate to the tab in your template labeled Facebook Updates.

The first three columns, Day, Date, and Time are there in your comfort. Scroll over to the column labeled Message and enter the copy you would like to look in your standing replace, equivalent to the times and instances you would like these updates to run. Then, transfer to the Link column and enter the hyperlink that'll be included within the replace. (Don't neglect that UTM parameter.) If you'd just like the replace to be tagged to a sure marketing campaign, embody this within the Campaigns column. Finally, connect a picture identical to you probably did together with your Twitter updates — for those who're utilizing one. (These pictures ought to match the size of 1200 x 628 pixels.)

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for LinkedIn

LinkedIn Groups allow you to begin conversations together with your Group members and share firm updates in your Company Page.

To start, fill out the primary column, Message, for each put up you create, together with these for a Company Page or a Group. Simply enter your copy into this column, after which navigate to the subsequent two columns, Link and Campaign. Here, you’ll add your URL with a UTM parameter that you're going to use to trace exercise. Then add the marketing campaign within the Campaign column, for those who're utilizing one. If you would like to make use of a picture for an replace, connect one utilizing the directions we shared earlier. We suggest importing the picture within the dimensions of 1200 x 1200 pixels for a transparent, professional-looking put up.

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Instagram

Now, let's transfer on to organising your Instagram pictures and movies. Scroll to the tab in your template labeled Instagram Updates.

The first three columns, Day, Date, and Time are there in your comfort. Head on over to the column labeled Message, and enter the copy you would like to look in your put up's caption, equivalent to the times and instances you would like these updates to run. Keep in thoughts that though Instagram captions might be as much as 2,200 characters lengthy, they lower off in customers' feeds after three strains of textual content. The actual size of those three strains relies on the size of your Instagram deal with. (Read this weblog put up for a full character depend information.)

Next, transfer to the Link for Bio column and enter whichever hyperlink you intend to place within the bio whenever you publish the accompanying Instagram put up. Oh, and remember the UTM parameter.

If you'd just like the replace to be tagged to a sure marketing campaign, embody this within the Campaigns column. Finally, connect a picture identical to you probably did together with your different social media updates — we recommend you edit it to be 1080 x 1080 pixels. (Here's the cheat sheet of social media picture sizes.)

Pro Tip: Even although you possibly can't schedule Instagram tales mechanically, you possibly can nonetheless add them to your social media content material calendar. Stories additionally help hyperlinks as soon as your account has over 10,000 followers, so you possibly can embody particular hyperlinks for some of these posts in your content material calendar. The dimensions for Instagram Story posts are 1080 x 1920 pixels.

Planning Your Social Media Content Calendar for Pinterest

Next, let's go over arrange your Pinterest Pins upfront with this template. Navigate over to the tab in your template labeled Pinterest Updates.

For your comfort, we’ve added Day, Date, and Time columns, however you possibly can skip them for those who don’t want them.

Next, go to the column labeled Message, and enter the knowledge for the pin's description. Then, scroll to the Link column and add the hyperlink you may be together with within the replace. (And significantly, remember the URL Parameter.)

If you'd just like the replace to be tagged to a sure marketing campaign, embody this within the Campaigns column. Finally, connect a picture the identical manner you probably did together with your different social media updates — we recommend you edit it to suit the size of 1000 x1500 pixels. This is the usual measurement, however Pinterest Pins might be for much longer in case your viewers responds to longer content material. Just ensure your Pin suits the side ratio of two:3.

Content Repository (Or, Where to Source Social Media Content)

This template additionally offers you with a tab referred to as Content Repository, which ought to make it easier to hold observe of all of your content material and keep a wholesome backlog of fodder to make sourcing social media content material simpler.

As you create extra property, you may possible wish to resurface and re-promote these items down the road, too. To guarantee you do not lose observe of all of that content material, document it on this tab so that you're by no means at a loss for what to publish on social media. If the content material you are selling is not evergreen, make sure you embody an expiration date within the column marked Expiration so you do not put it up for sale after it is old-fashioned.

This tab will even make it easier to keep a wholesome stability of content material. Here you possibly can embody a mixture of unique content material, curated content material, numerous codecs and kinds, and lead era content material vs. MQL-generating content material.

Perfecting your social media content material calendar doesn’t must be a chore. With these important parts, you’ll have a basis to arrange your social media technique at a tactical degree.

Key

As you seen in earlier sections, your stakeholders will admire having an easy-to-read key that they'll use to grasp the knowledge within the calendar. We’ve color-coded our instance right here, however you don’t must go that additional step when you have fewer channels and kinds of content material to distinguish between. As lengthy as your key's clear, nearly anybody in your group can view your social media content material calendar and perceive precisely what’s occurring on all platforms.

URLs and UTM Parameters

We've harped on these UTM parameters all through this put up for good purpose. They're important to monitoring the success of your marketing campaign. Without them, you will not know what's working and what is not.

URLs and UTM parameters are related, however they’re not one and the identical. URLs are the hyperlinks you’ll wish to share out of your web site (and even one other web site for those who’re curating content material) in your social media platforms.

On the opposite hand, a UTM parameter is an extension of your URL. It’s a string of monitoring code that’s appended to the tip of the URL and it helps social media entrepreneurs observe how effectively their posts are driving visitors to their web site. By monitoring and analyzing UTM parameters, you’ll be capable to see what content material is assembly your conversion objectives and what content material is healthier for engagement on social media platforms.

Date and Time

If you might have stakeholders or different groups that depend on your social media content material, you’ll shortly see the advantage of together with dates and instances in your social media calendar. When teammates can view the calendar and establish precisely when a put up was or might be scheduled, they’ll be capable to shortly proceed with their workflow which is helpful for you, too. That means you received’t be interrupted to provide standing updates about each Tweet on the docket for the day.

Message

Transparency and context are invaluable in terms of social media content material calendars. Giving a quick synopsis of the message and even sharing the caption for a put up can go a great distance in serving to others inside and outdoors your workforce perceive what the intent of the put up might be.

Pro tip: If you’re including a video to your social media content material calendar that isn’t completed, think about including a brief Loom video that offers an summary of what the video might be about.

Campaign

When it involves monitoring, it’s too late to start out when the marketing campaign is over. Start monitoring your social media campaigns in your content material calendar. You could make this prescriptive by having a dropdown checklist of predetermined marketing campaign names, or in case your campaigns are few and much between, merely copy and paste the names subsequent to the corresponding content material.

Pro tip: Align your marketing campaign title with the marketing campaign part of your UTM parameter for seamless monitoring.

Image

Your social media content material calendar will turn into simply one other spreadsheet with out some imagery. Since a lot of your social media content material will in all probability be visible, add a thumbnail-sized model of the picture that might be included within the printed put up. Coupled with the message, stakeholders who view the calendar pictures can have a reasonably good concept of what is going to be shared and when. To make modifying your pictures for every platform simpler, try this cheat sheet for supreme picture dimensions on every platform.

Don't Forget to Interact With Your Followers

Whether you utilize this spreadsheet to plan your content material or add it to a third-party app, you may nonetheless have to complement these updates with on-the-fly content material. Breaking information hits? Whip up a fast replace to share it together with your community. Did somebody in your community tweet one thing fascinating? Give it a retweet with some commentary. Got an enchanting touch upon one among your updates? Respond with a "thank you" for his or her interplay.

Coming up with and scheduling your social media content material upfront is a big time-saver, however it ought to go with out saying that you simply nonetheless want to observe and add to your social presence all through the day.

Finally, we encourage you to experiment together with your social media publishing. This template offers publishing dates and instances for every social community, however you might discover these are manner too many updates so that you can fill, or maybe too rare in your booming social presence. If that is the case, it's best to modify your social media publishing frequency as wanted.

Now that you simply’ve bought the ins and outs of a social media content material calendar, obtain the one beneath totally free and begin planning your content material.

Editor's observe: This put up was initially printed in January 2020 and has been up to date for comprehensiveness.