Posting Plan: How to easily create a calendar for your social networks (BONUS: Template)

Creating a social media calendar is key to an efficient workflow that helps you plan and track your business’ online activity. Why is it important? All digital marketing efforts must be accounted for, planned and aligned to the business objectives. A social media calendar will help you plan and manage what is often the most […]

Creating a social media calendar is key to an efficient workflow that helps you plan and track your business’ online activity.

Why is it important?

All digital marketing efforts must be accounted for, planned and aligned to the business objectives. A social media calendar will help you plan and manage what is often the most chaotic task for the marketing team.

You’ll never wonder again:

• “What to post on Facebook today?”
• “Which social network should we post this content to?”
• “Why are we only posting on Facebook?”
• “Do we have other social media accounts?”
• “Is this approved?”
• “Who approved it?”
• “Why is a picture of a monkey eating a banana posted on LinkedIn?”

When is it done?

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

How is it done?

You need social media accounts and access to Google Sheets, where you can create the social calendar itself. Patience and diligence would also be very helpful.

For your convenience, you can use the already created social calendar template and make a copy of it for future use.

You will need to customize the template according to your needs, as most of the columns in the template are fairly easy to

• Post date: Date you want to post the specific update to social networks.
• Topic/Title: Add a general topic or specific title for the post.
• Content/Details: Details about the content and its purpose.
• Post Type: Important as it dictates what the post will look like. Sample options:
  • “Normal post” (text and photo)
  • “Link post” (text and link to article)
  • “Serial post” (for Twitter, for example)
  • “Carousel post” (when you want to showcase multiple products).
• Content type: options like:
  • “Image“
  • “Graphic“
  • “GIF“
  • “Video“
  • “Custom Content“
• Text: Write down your marketing message here.
• Vision: Copy and paste the vision you will share with the post (photo, etc.).
• Link: The link you will use in the post, if any.
• Shortened tracking link: If you use shortened tracking links, add them here.
• Approval 1 and Approval 2: If the post needs to be approved before being published, save these columns. If only one approval is needed, keep only one column.
• Link on the post itself: Add the link on each post to better organize.

Why is it done?

Using a social content scheduling calendar has numerous benefits that can greatly improve your marketing efforts.

Here are some of the benefits you can take advantage of:

• Organisation and planning – this ensures a consistent and structured approach to your social media strategy and prevents situations where content is missing or rushed posts are required.
• Consistency – regular posting is important for maintaining engagement and visibility of your brand on social media, as well as building a loyal audience.
• Alignment with goals – a well-structured content calendar ensures that all posts are aligned with broader marketing goals and campaigns. This helps maintain a consistent brand message across different platforms and initiatives.
• Coordination across teams – If multiple people or teams are involved in content creation and approval, the social calendar serves as a centralized coordination tool. It provides consistency and clarity on what needs to be done and when.
• Time management – By planning content in advance, you free up time for other strategic activities, such as engaging with audiences, analyzing performance, or generating new content ideas.

While scheduling is important, a social media calendar also allows for flexibility. You can add or change content depending on 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 tricky part is sticking to it and filling it in regularly, but the benefits of maintaining it will come to light soon enough.