How to create a social media content calendar

There are a few different ways you can create a social media content calendar so it’s important to find the right one that works for you.  

You can either:  

• Take the traditional route – if you prefer working with pen and paper, use a physical calendar or printed planner. 
  
• Build your calendar in Excel or Google Sheets – these are both easy to use and a great way to get started. 
  
• Download and use a social media scheduling tool. 

Creating a social media content calendar will allow you to plan and schedule all your posts, giving you an overview of what you’ll be publishing on each platform throughout the month.  

Some of the benefits of creating a social media calendar include: 

• Time – a calendar will help you effectively manage your time and resources  
• Variety – having an overview of your scheduled posts will allow you to ensure you’re posting a variety of content and not overloading your audience with the same repetitive posts.  
• Important dates – creating a social media calendar lets you highlight any dates that might be important to your business and your audience, so you don’t miss them. 
• Collaboration – A easily accessible social media calendar will encourage collaboration across your team. 

There are a lot of different tools to help you build and manage your social media content calendar. Here are a few that might be useful.  

Google Drive has several helpful features that make it easy for social media marketers to build an effective content calendar. 

Sprout Social’s social media calendar and publishing tool makes it easy for teams or individuals to plan and schedule all of their social posts across different platforms. 

Hootsuite offers a built-in planner tool to help you create campaigns, identify publishing gaps, and collaborate with your content creation team.  

You can find more useful tools here. 

The best way to improve your organic reach is by posting your content when your followers are online. Of course, this may differ depending on who exactly is following you, but according to Hootsuite, these are generally the best times to be posting on social media.  

Facebook: 8am to 12pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays  

Instagram: 11am on Wednesdays  

Twitter: 8am on Mondays and Thursdays  

LinkedIn: 9am Tuesdays and Wednesdays  

Overall: 8am to 12pm Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays  

To gain a better understanding of how your audience is engaging with your posts, you can check your social media insights at any time. Insights will allow you to gather data and identify trends to forward plan your future posts.  

Click for tips on boosting your social media engagement.

Your social media calendar should be part of your wider social media strategy. Within your social media strategy, you need to plan out how you are going to maximise engagement and interactions across social media, generate leads and improve brand awareness. 

For further information check out our video on Social Media Advertising.