What do cross-country road trips, wedding speeches, and social media marketing have in common? Planning. I am unable to make it easier to together with your road trip or wedding speech, but I actually have an answer for planning your next social media marketing campaign — using a social media calendar!
Most marketers now recognize that social media is integral to an efficient inbound marketing strategy. With so many social networks available to us, it’s crucial to remain organized and plan for when and what you’ll share on these platforms.
Before we dive into our list of top tools to remain organized, here’s what you should find out about social media calendars and why they’re essential.
What’s a social media calendar?
A social media calendar is a rundown of your upcoming posts organized by date and time. A social media calendar could be a spreadsheet, digital calendar, or interactive dashboard.
To get probably the most value out of your social media calendar, it might include the next:
- The date and time a post will go live
- The social media account or network each post will go continue to exist
- Materials to incorporate, equivalent to copy, hashtags, links, and graphics
The best way to Create a Social Media Calendar
To create an efficient social media calendar, it is best to:
1. Conduct a social media audit.
A social media audit assesses your social media presence, accounts, and engagement. This enables you to see what’s working, what’s not, and where to make improvements.
But an audit is about greater than analyzing your social media performance. A social media audit can make it easier to higher understand the interests, habits, and expectations of your target market. It could possibly provide you with crucial clues about how they engage together with your content too.
And auditing your social media channels may also make it easier so that you can see how competitors’ social media presence might be affecting your performance. It’s an excellent option to understand what social media trends, tools, and features you should be paying attention to.
As you complete your audit, you should definitely:
Review and analyze your current social media content performance.
This includes metrics for:
- Engagement
- Conversion
- Clicks
It’s also essential to do some post-level evaluation. Take a better take a look at your top-performing posts and discover what made them successful. Ask yourself — does your audience love educational content or do they wish to be inspired or entertained?
Connect your social content technique to business goals.
Find the KPIs which are essential for your enterprise, then, be certain your social strategy supports those KPIs.
Run a competitive evaluation.
Review your competitors’ social media accounts with these competitive analysis templates and check:
- The sorts of content they’re sharing
- Posting frequency
- Audience engagement
Want more details? Click here to learn tips on how to conduct a social media audit step-by-step.
2. Select your social media channels and the content you will post.
Once you have accomplished your audit, it is time to use what you learned. Your audit should provide you with a way of what you are doing right, where it is best to experiment, and which channels are best on your audience.
For instance, say that Instagram has historically been your top social media channel for engagement, but you have been seeing a drop within the last six months. Your audit should show you what engagement on IG looks like on your competitors, plus what’s and is not working for your enterprise now.
Select your social media channels.
Target market demographics are need-to-know information for planning your content. So, you’ll wish to do some market research. This will can make it easier to find the most well-liked social media platforms on your audience too. As you undergo your research, do not forget to evaluate platform features and strengths.
Next, match your top content types and budget with the platform that is the most effective fit on your needs.
For instance, local coffee shop Café Grumpy focuses its social media presence on a single platform: Instagram. But cosmetics brand Glossier has a robust social media presence on many platforms, including Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and LinkedIn.
Health and sweetness brand Golde strikes a balance with a presence on multiple platforms. But it surely focuses on content publishing and engagement with Instagram Reels.
Have in mind that with each platform you add, you are multiplying the variety of posts you will need to create and manage. This makes a social media calendar much more useful.
Plan what content you wish to create for every channel.
Once you have chosen your platforms, it is time to plan your social media content. To start the planning process, review your team and budget. This will provide you with a sensible sense of how much high-quality content you’ll be able to produce.
You possibly can often produce more high-quality content for less money in the event you create in batches. This makes careful content planning essential.
Then, use your brand guide and social audit evaluation to create content that resonates together with your audience.
Create a sensible mixture of social content.
It is best to create quite a lot of content. Videos are popular, but images, text-based posts, infographics, testimonials, and live streams are potent too. Mix it up to maintain your feeds fresh and appealing. It’s also a handy option to not sleep on trends that profit from each platform.
For instance, Instagram is right for visual storytelling. With that in mind, Café Grumpy’s social posts feature drawings and art from customers, worker stories, and vendor highlights.
Glossier uses a singular content strategy for every social audience. For instance, its YouTube channel encompasses a “Get Ready with Me” playlist of videos of influencers, actresses, and CEOs using its products.
But over on LinkedIn, Glossier uses its social feed to spotlight its tackle culture and events. And on Reddit, the content engages the community with prompts for conversation and critique.
These content creation templates can speed up the method in the event you’re creating unique content for multiple platforms.
3. Determine what your calendar should include.
You would possibly plan your social content by season, strategy, or campaign. To maintain things organized, you should resolve what content you would like in your calendar on your desired results.
To start out, your calendar should include the next:
- The platforms you are using
- The day and the time your posts might be published
- Links, graphics, videos, and replica
It is also helpful to have platform image sizes, campaign hashtags, and quick tips about hand as you construct out your social media calendar.
Color coding can also be great for at-a-glance decision-making every month. That is how we color-coded content in our monthly social content planner:
As you grow to be more proficient together with your calendar, it’s possible you’ll wish to expand it to incorporate the next:
- Platform-specific materials include Reels, TikTok LIVE, polls, shoppable posts, etc.
- Geo-targeting
- The associated or vertical campaigns, equivalent to product launches and contests
4. Get feedback.
Once your calendar is complete, share it together with your team and stakeholders to get their feedback and be certain it meets everyone’s needs.
Your social media calendar ought to be an easy-to-understand plan that aligns together with your social media strategy. If every part aligns, there should not be any big surprises or confusion when your colleagues review your plan.
The monthly template in our social media calendar is a great tool for sharing your plan with stakeholders who desire a sense of the large picture, but need not get into granular details.
The opposite sections of this tool are useful for social media managers who’re planning, creating, and posting to social media.
As you utilize the calendar, it’s possible you’ll find ways to enhance or expand upon it; you will must be open to ongoing feedback.
Social Media Content Calendar Tools to Plan Your Messaging
1. HubSpot’s Downloadable Template for Excel
Content Calendar
Price: Free
Marketers might already use Excel for several types of reports and data evaluation, but this multifaceted tool can also be perfect for social media content calendar organization. Excel might be customized in response to the priorities and metrics your team is concentrated on, so it’s an excellent option for planning.
The excellent news? We have already done the heavy lifting by making a free, downloadable social media content calendar template using Microsoft Excel. Marketers can easily use this template to plan individual social media posts— monthly or annually — while maintaining a tally of more significant picture events, holidays, publications, and partnerships.
- Use the Monthly Planning Calendar Tab above to get a bird’s-eye view of what is coming down the content pipeline in a given month.
- Within the Content Repository tab, you’ll be able to add the content you will be publishing on this tab to maintain track of which pieces have been promoted already and to recall older content that might be re-promoted easily.
- You possibly can draft and plan out social media posts prematurely on the Social Network Update tabs. These tabs are for organizational purposes. After planning out your social media posts, you will manually upload the content of the posts to a social media publisher.
For more on tips on how to use the templates, take a look at this in-depth guide from my colleague Basha Coleman.
This free resource can draft social media posts or bulk-upload them right into a publishing app to maximise efficiency. (HubSpot customers: You need to use this spreadsheet to arrange content and upload it directly into Social Inbox. For instructions on this, take a look at the template’s cover sheet here.)
HubSpot also offers social media software that enables you to create a custom publishing schedule. This straightforward tool enables you to publish on to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Your social interactions all link back to the HubSpot CRM for easy-to-measure ROI.
Why we like this social media tool:
Marketers with small teams and heavy workloads will love this intuitive template. It acts as a social media content planner, tracker, and archive, making it perfect for sharing your social plan with stakeholders and referring to it when you should repurpose old content.
2. Google Drive
Content Calendar and Asset Organization
Price: Free for private use. Google Workspace plans for businesses start at $6 monthly.
Google Drive has several helpful features that make it easy for social media marketers to construct an efficient content calendar.
Here’s an example of how a team might use Google Calendar to trace their editorial and social media calendars to be certain posts align with latest blog content. Multiple teams can easily share these calendars to avoid scheduling conflicts and align campaigns.
Marketers may also use shared Google Sheets to schedule posts on social media, track the status of various pieces of content, and assign tasks to team members without switching between platforms.
With the assistance of Google Docs, users can keep comments in a single place and collaborate on different projects without emailing forwards and backwards or scheduling a meeting. It is a handy feature when editing content for social media, which can must be drafted and approved quickly.
Why we like this social media tool:
Google has several products that might be used together to create quick, seamless workflows. So you will find value within the Google Drive system in the event you publish dozens of each day posts across multiple platforms or ramp up one channel on your freelance business. The perfect part is that HubSpot customers can easily link their Google Drive accounts to the HubSpot portal to upload files from Drive into the HubSpot software.
3. Loomly
Content Planning, Creation, Publishing, and Calendar
Price: 15-day free trial. The Base plan is $26 monthly for 2 users and 10 accounts if you select the annual agreement.
In the event you want more mileage out of your content calendar, you’ll be able to turn to an all-in-one content planning and publishing platform equivalent to Loomly.
Loomly offers tools beyond content scheduling and management. This tool gives inspiration and direction to make it easier to create content. It also permits you to manage your content assets, schedule posts, view them as an inventory or a calendar, and analyze what posts are working versus which of them need work.
Loomly’s most robust feature set features a collaboration and approval environment so teams can submit mockups, add comments, see version logs, and flag for approval. This will make it easier to streamline processes for efficiency when there are “too many cooks within the kitchen” on a specific project.
Why we like this social media tool:
This tool can do each in case your team handles organic and paid social. And your team who desires to avoid using their personal account for social media duties can reply to comments and replies directly in Loomly — which means they will not have to log in to every native platform to have interaction with followers.
4. Trello
Task Management and Content Calendar
Price: Free for individual use. The Standard plan starts at $5 per user monthly, billed annually.
In the event you’re searching for an organizational tool that is highly effective for team collaboration — try Trello. This platform offers a full calendar view, making it easy to visualise what content goes out and when. More specifically, social media managers can use Trello’s flexible task “cards” and customizable “boards” and “lists” to map out to-do lists, manage a content calendar, plan a campaign, and store brainstorming ideas.
You are not limited to simply one structure, nevertheless. Users can customize boards in response to their needs. For instance, a team could create a board to arrange social media posts for a given week on a particular platform or post ideas around a subject, equivalent to a campaign or awareness day.
Why we like this social media tool:
Trello cards might be assigned to different team members, marked with due dates, and commented on. Users may even customize labels with various statuses of publication so all the team can see the progress of their social media posts and once they’re due on the calendar. The labels could also show different social networks where content is being published.
5. SproutSocial
Social Publishing and Content Calendar
Price: The Standard plan starts at $249 monthly for five social profiles, billed annually.
Sprout Social’s social media calendar and publishing tool make it easy for teams or individuals to plan and schedule their social posts. You possibly can schedule content to routinely post to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more.
You may also tag each social post and add notes to trace and report your posting strategy and campaigns. Moreover, their publishing suite includes Optimal Send Times, which analyzes your social media data and routinely publishes when your audience is most engaged.
Why we like this social media tool:
Coming up with social media content ideas can take effort and time. Sprout Social’s social listening tool lets marketers such as you uncover area of interest conversations that your audience is inquisitive about. From there, you’ll be able to join the conversation for brand awareness or start your discussion on the subject to grow your following.
6. Evernote
Content Calendar, Task Management, and Asset Organization
Price: The Basic plan is free. Create a custom template using the Personal program for $14.99 monthly.
Evernote is a note-taking app that marketers can use to maintain track of all of the moving parts of a social media campaign.
The tool also features yearly, monthly, weekly, and hourly logs, making it easy to trace if you’re publishing content on social media if you’re producing blog content and other team-wide priorities. (Evernote offers customizable templates for every of those that might be downloaded into the app.)
One other helpful feature is Evernote’s Web Clipper extension for Chrome. Marketers can use this tool to simply save links to their Evernote Notebook for sharing in a while.
Why we like this social media tool:
The Evernote mobile app also boasts interesting features to assist marketers keep their social content ideas straight. For instance, you’ll be able to easily snap a photograph and reserve it to your Evernote files for review later. This feature is of particular value for social content creators looking to take care of a backlog of photos to publish on Instagram.
7. Hootsuite
Social Publishing and Content Calendar
Price: The Skilled plan starts at $99 monthly and begins with a free 30-day trial.
Hootsuite offers a built-in Planner tool to make it easier to create campaigns, discover publishing gaps, and collaborate together with your content creation team. Its primary features are in social publishing so you can release content to your networks prematurely, nevertheless it also has wealthy features for collaboration and post approvals.
You possibly can even curate content from other sources without logging into your account. Once your content is created, you’ll be able to preview it with the Composer tool, which displays it in response to each social network’s unique format.
Why we like this social media tool:
Cross-collaboration is a giant deal on any marketing team, and Hootsuite has a way of constructing this much more accessible. The social publishing platform has a built-in content library serving as the one truth point on your entire organization. Does your sales team need a product feature cheat sheet? Customer support searching for details on the newest product feature? All that and more might be present in your team’s Hootsuite content library.
8. Agorapulse
Social Publishing and Content Calendar
Price: The person plan is free, or you should use the Standard plan starting at $49 per user monthly.
Like Hootsuite, Agorapulse offers social publishing tools and a content calendar to administer your social media accounts easily. This includes scheduling (or rescheduling), queuing, and bulk uploading posts, which is incredibly helpful for teams who use quarterly or monthly content plans.
Why we like this social media tool:
What makes Agorapulse different is its social inbox, which permits you to manage all of the interactions from various platforms in a single place. In spite of everything, content is not only a one-and-done activity; it’s about constructing awareness and engagement together with your readers.
9. StoryChief
Content Planning and Distribution
Price: Team pricing starts at $280 monthly, billed annually.
In the event you want more out of your content calendar than knowing when posts go live, StoryChief is your option. With StoryChief’s smart calendar, you’ll be able to higher strategize and plan your content strategy across channels.
It displays far more than your timetable — it also permits you to assign collaborators to tasks and filter them by the campaign. StoryChief self-describes its tool as a “content distribution platform” that unifies analytics and publishing across multiple channels for a more simplified approach to content creation. Better of all, it syncs with HubSpot and your favorite calendar apps.
Why we like this social media tool:
Consider it or not, there are quite a number of similarities between social media marketing and search engine marketing marketing — StoryChief bridges this gap with its SEO Copywriting tool. By highlighting the areas you’ll be able to improve your copy for the reader (and subsequently the serps), you’ll be able to write more precise, more engaging content that works on social media and your website or blog.
10. ClearVoice
Content Creation and Management
Price: Request a custom quote.
So what about content planning and creation? ClearVoice offers content creation tools to suit into your workflow. Their big claim to fame is their Talent Network Search which permits you to find and hook up with content creators to work in your projects. Yet, ClearVoice also has features for task management for internal and external collaborators.
You possibly can create, edit, and approve projects in an interface that makes editorial management easy. It also features a dashboard and dynamic editorial calendar with loads of interactive functionality and integrations with other popular software.
Why we like this social media tool:
Not every social team is working for a giant agency or client. For freelance content teams who wish to stay organized and on time with their social media publishing, ClearVoice offers a number of the same great features at a price customized to your team.
11. Zerys
Content Creation and Management
Price: Use Zerys’ pricing calculator for an estimate.
Zerys is one other platform that matches you together with your ideal content creation freelancers. Nevertheless, it markets itself as a platform dedicated to content success, offering content planning, production, publishing, promotion, conversion, and analytics features.
Why we like this social media tool:
You possibly can manage unlimited content projects, plan keywords and titles for blog content, hire writers, and examine deadlines on an integrated calendar. With the project management features that Zerys offers, in-house writers can use the platform to supply quality work on time each time. It also integrates with HubSpot, so publishing is a breeze.
Social Media Templates
HubSpot’s Social Media Calendar Template
In the event you’re latest to establishing social media calendars, HubSpot offers a free, pre-made downloadable template you can use to schedule out full weeks of posts.
HubSpot’s Social Media Content Calendar Template for Startups
This template may be very much like the one seen above, nevertheless it includes tabs that work as a repository for content ideas. The template also includes helpful suggestions for posting on specific social media networks.
In the event you’re aiming to get all of your ideas all the way down to develop a big-picture plan on your social assets, we recommend starting with this template.
Advantages of Using a Social Media Content Calendar & Content Planner
We’re all busy, and inevitably, tasks slip through the cracks. Social media content isn’t any exception.
A successful social media strategy requires regular publishing and fascinating with followers to see positive results — whether you are searching for sales, brand recognition, lead generation, or all three.
So, in the event you’re not already using a social media content planner, listed here are a number of benefits to pique your interest:
Easily pivot when plans change.
With a social media content calendar, marketers can plan out posts for entire weeks or months prematurely. This frees up working hours to strategize for the longer term.
The perfect part is you can all the time leave space for breaking news or current events in your industry. Otherwise, you will spend invaluable time searching the web each day for content to share, a known productivity killer.
Curate content just on your audience.
Social media marketers should take the time to craft custom messages for every network since the audience expects to see something different on every one.
For instance, your Instagram followers wish to see Reels and Videos, while your Twitter followers like quick sound bites and shareable quotes. Planning this content using a social media content planner will prevent time throughout the week. It can also make it easier to draft thoughtful and intentional content for every site.
A social media content planner can make it easier to post more consistently on each social channel. This consistency creates a routine on your followers and helps you construct trust.
Improved collaboration.
A shared calendar can improve collaboration — each with internal teams and external stakeholders. It’s because it gives everyone access to what’s on the calendar and offers you a reason to reconnect.
Skip waiting or sending last-minute emails for links, project status, or partnerships. Your social content planner gives you an easy option to let everyone know what you will need well before you would like it.
Simplified performance tracking.
And not using a calendar, social media marketers are publishing content into the void. They can’t track big-picture and past performance.
With a calendar, marketers can look back and analyze which content performed best so that they can adjust their strategy accordingly. If a specific style of post received a major amount of views, you’ll be able to recreate it for a unique topic and potentially see the identical success.
Content planning with a calendar may also make it easier to track impact and ROI for social media efforts.
Reach latest audiences.
With the assistance of a content planner, you’ll be able to plan for holidays, events, and observance days, equivalent to National Cat Day or Eat More Fruits and Vegetables Day. This makes it easy so that you can tailor your content and have interaction with a broader audience.
Social Media Calendar Examples
1. Jotform Social Media Calendar
Jotform’s social media calendar is not only visually appealing and functional. The tabs at the highest reveal your social plan for each channel you execute your strategy on, including in-person or virtual events.
In the event you’re modeling your social calendar after this one, remember to incorporate a tab for content details and who in your team might be accountable for creating the content. You may additionally have a separate tab for every month to maintain things organized.
2. Firefly Marketing Social Media Content Calendar
Going a more traditional route together with your social media calendar? Try a Google Sheets template just like the one created by Firefly Marketing. Each tab is devoted to a unique month, while the worksheet includes every channel you would possibly need across the highest.
The rows are separated by every week, so you’ll be able to quickly discover the date and time a post is scheduled for publishing. Our favourite a part of this template is the pre-populated social media holiday column with fun dates that your audience will love.
How To Create a Social Media Posting Schedule for Your Business
Scheduling your enterprise’s social posts can keep you organized and make it easier to consistently deliver content to your followers without worrying about looming deadlines. Content posting strategies can differ depending on the social media platform, and it is best to consider not only what you are posting but in addition when and the way often.
By making a social posting schedule and adjusting the schedule to suit each platform, you’ll be able to increase the possibilities that your posts will reach your audience.
Facebook’s Meta Business Suite makes scheduling posts and stories for your enterprise easy.
Scheduling a Facebook Post on Desktop
Step 1: To schedule a post using the Meta Business Suite in your desktop, start by choosing your enterprise’s Facebook Page from the dropdown menu in the highest left of your sidebar.
Step 2: Next, click Posts & Stories or Calendar, then click Create Post.
Step 3: Click Facebook News Feed to schedule the post to your news feed.
Step 4: Enter the main points of your post, including text, media, and a link or location. In the event you add a photograph to your post, you won’t give you the chance so as to add a link preview. Click Call to Motion or Feeling/Activity so as to add an optional call to motion or feeling/activity to your post. You possibly can’t add each a call to motion and a sense/activity.
Step 5: A preview will appear on the appropriate as you construct your post. You possibly can change the preview to see how your post will look on each desktop and mobile through the use of the dropdown menu at the highest of the window.
Step 6: After constructing your post, click the arrow next to Publish and click on Schedule Post. Select the date and time you would like your post to be published, and click on Schedule to schedule your post.
Scheduling a Facebook Post on Mobile
Step 1: You may also schedule Facebook posts on mobile with the Meta Business Suite mobile app. Start by tapping Post to create a latest post.
Step 2: Enter the main points of your post, including text, media, links, a background color, and a sense/activity. Then select your enterprise’s Facebook page to publish to Facebook.
Step 3: Tap Schedule for later and choose the date and time you would like your post to be published. Then tap Schedule to schedule your post.
Like Facebook, Instagram also uses the Meta Business Suite to schedule posts.
Scheduling an Instagram Post on Desktop
Step 1: To schedule a post to Instagram using the Meta Business Suite in your desktop, start by connecting your Instagram account to the Meta Business Suite.
Step 2: Once your Instagram account is connected, click the dropdown menu in the highest left of your sidebar and choose your Instagram account.
Step 3: Click Posts & Stories or Calendar, then click Create Post. Click Instagram Feed to schedule the post to your Instagram feed.
Step 4: Enter the main points of your post, including text, media, and an optional link or location. In the event you select so as to add a link to your Instagram post, it’ll not show a photograph preview.
Step 5: A preview will appear on the appropriate as you construct your post. You possibly can change the preview to see how your post will look on each desktop and mobile through the use of the dropdown menu at the highest of the window.
Step 6: After constructing your post, click the arrow next to Publish and click on Schedule Post. Select the date and time you would like your post to be published, and click on Schedule to schedule your post.
Scheduling an Instagram Post on Mobile
Step 1: Like Facebook, you’ll be able to schedule Instagram posts on mobile using the Meta Business Suite mobile app. Start by tapping Post to create a latest post.
Step 2: Enter the main points of your post, including text, media, and links. Then select your enterprise’s Instagram page to publish to Instagram.
Step 3: Tap Schedule for later and choose the date and time you would like your post to be published. Then tap Schedule to schedule your post.
Only a super or content admin can schedule posts on LinkedIn. Still, through the use of third-party software equivalent to Hubspot’s social media management tools which are included with HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Skilled accounts, you’ll be able to easily create and schedule LinkedIn posts.
Step 1: To schedule LinkedIn posts using HubSpot’s social media management tools, start by logging into your Marketing Hub Skilled account.
Step 2: Next, navigate to Marketing > Social and click on Create Social Post.
Step 3: In the appropriate panel, click LinkedIn. Create your post within the text box, including emojis, hashtags, mentions, tags, and a content link. When using HubSpot’s social media management tools, you’ll be able to only mention or tag LinkedIn company pages, not LinkedIn users.
A post preview will appear in the event you add a content link to your post. You possibly can add as much as 4 images to your post by clicking the image icon or add a video to your post by clicking the video icon.
Step 4: Click Review, then Preview to see how your post will appear on LinkedIn.
Step 5: Then click Schedule post to schedule or publish your post.
Step 1: You possibly can schedule Tweets for your enterprise by logging into your Twitter Ads account and navigating to the Creatives > Tweets tab. To access the Creatives tab in your Twitter Ads account, your account must have a credit card on file.
Step 2: Click on Recent Tweet in the highest right corner and create your Tweet. In the event you would really like your Tweet to only be seen by users you’ve targeted in a Promoted Ads campaign, click the Promoted Only checkbox. Leave this unchecked in the event you would really like the tweet to be seen organically by your followers.
Step 3: Once you have written your tweet, click the down arrow next to Tweet, click Schedule, and choose the date and time you prefer to the tweet to be posted.
Scheduling a Pinterest Post on Desktop
Pinterest permits you to schedule up to 100 Pins. You possibly can schedule one Pin at a time, as much as two weeks prematurely on desktop.
Step 1: To schedule Pins for your enterprise, log into your Pinterest Business account. Next, click Create on the left corner of your screen, then click Create Pin.
Step 2: Select a picture or video, and add a title, description, and link.
Step 3: Click Publish later and select the day and time you’d prefer to publish your Pin.
Step 4: Select a board from the drop-down menu, or create a latest board by clicking Create board.
Step 5: Click Publish.
Scheduling a Pinterest Post on iOS
You may also schedule Pins using the Pinterest app on iOS.
Step 1: To start out, log in to your Pinterest Business account.
Step 2: Tap the plus icon, then tap Pin.
Step 3: Take a photograph on your Pin, select a picture or video out of your device, and tap Next.
Step 4: Add a title, description, and the destination website to your Pin.
Step 5: Below Schedule Date, tap the edit icon and choose the date and time you prefer to to publish your Pin.
Step 6: Tap Done.
Step 7: Tap Next.
Step 8: Select an existing board to avoid wasting your Pin to or tap Create board to create a latest board.
How To Create a Content Calendar
- Download HubSpot’s content calendar template.
- Draft your content goals.
- Determine what sorts of content you wish to publish.
- You possibly can select which platforms you’ll post on.
- Plan probably the most efficient posting schedule on your content.
Step 1: Download HubSpot’s content calendar template.
Consistently posting content is essential to benefiting from your enterprise’s social media accounts. HubSpot’s content calendar template makes it easy to establish a monthly posting schedule for your enterprise’s social media accounts. The template might be opened in Excel or uploaded to Google Sheets, so you’ll be able to easily plan content together with your team from anywhere.
HubSpot’s content calendar template features a monthly planning calendar, a content repository, and posting schedules for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest. With HubSpot’s content calendar template, your team can view and manage your enterprise’s social media posting schedules and deadlines at a look.
Step 2: Select your content goals.
Americans spend an average of 147 minutes (over two hours) on social media every day, making it an excellent option to connect with your enterprise’s current and potential customers. It isn’t enough to know what you wish to post; you need to also understand why your enterprise posts content.
Posting content to social media can assist your enterprise achieve many goals, including raising brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, introducing latest services to your customers, and even launching rebranding campaigns, to call a number of.
When selecting your enterprise’s content goals, consider what your brand most needs to perform. Are you seeking to connect with a latest demographic and generate leads? Do you wish to increase your customers’ engagement with your enterprise? Knowing your content goals can assist to substantiate that your enterprise’s content reaches the appropriate audience with the appropriate message.
Step 3: Determine what sorts of content you wish to publish.
Once you understand your enterprise’s goals, resolve what sorts of content your enterprise will post. Each style of social media content has benefits and drawbacks. For instance, blog posts and articles can assist your enterprise construct credibility, but they might be time-consuming to create.
Meanwhile, Tweets can help your business gain consumer insight and hone its brand voice, but Twitter’s limit of 280 characters per Tweet means your enterprise can have to make use of long threads of multiple Tweets to get your message across. Rigorously selecting the sorts of content your enterprise will post can assist be certain that your content offers value to your audience.
Step 4: Determine what platforms you’ll post on.
Once you understand your enterprise’s content goals and the sorts of content you’ll publish, it is time to select where your enterprise will post.
Your enterprise’s social media presence ought to be informed by its content, goals, and target market demographics. For instance, while posting on Instagram may help your enterprise reach a young audience and market goods, the photo and video sharing platform could also be a poor alternative if you wish to increase blog traffic amongst professionals in your industry. Likewise, a LinkedIn post may help drive traffic to your enterprise’s blog but may not make it easier to drive traffic to your online store.
Considering each social media platform’s strengths and weaknesses can make it easier to accomplish your enterprise’s content goals without wasting money and time marketing to users who’re outside of your target market.
Step 5: Determine probably the most efficient posting schedule on your content.
After deciding on your enterprise’s goals, the sorts of content you’ll publish, and where you’ll post the content, you should create the posting schedule that your enterprise will use. Each social media platform has peak engagement times — certain days and times of day when users are most probably to view and have interaction with posts.
So, knowing the most effective times to post on each social media platform will make it easier to maximize the reach of your enterprise’s posts. As an illustration, user engagement on Facebook peaks between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Wednesdays. User engagement on Facebook is lowest on Sundays, before 7 a.m. every day, and after 5 p.m. every day.
When creating your enterprise’s content calendar, account for the engagement patterns for every of your social media accounts to demystify the scheduling process, save time, and get your posts in front of your audience once they are most probably to see them.
What’s the most effective social media calendar?
Now that we have reviewed a number of helpful tools to kick your social media strategy into high gear, it is time so that you can experiment with them. The perfect social media calendar saves you time, streamlines processes, and helps you’re employed smarter, not harder.
Several of the platforms we have suggested are free to make use of or offer a free trial. Have one person in your team test one out and report their findings. You would possibly find the tool that helps you reach your next social media KPI. Remember, every social media team is different. Combining these tools could make it easier to execute your strategy efficiently to drive ROI.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
