Build an Effective Social Media Calendar in 5 Proven Steps

Being organized is vital to social media marketing success.

A social media calendar is a planning tool essential to the success of your inbound marketing strategy. It gives a bird’s eye view of all your upcoming posts, whether through an intuitive digital calendar or a simple spreadsheet, and outlines the type, content, and publication of every post.

The calendar’s primary function is to ensure your social media strategy aligns with the overall marketing goals. It helps you plan social media content more systematically and organize posting schedules strategically to enhance brand visibility, audience engagement, and the success of your marketing efforts.

How to Create a Social Media Calendar

With a critical role in achieving long-term success for your social media game, mastering the skill of preparing and maintaining a social media calendar is crucial. We’ve rounded up integral steps to help you create a well-organized and impactful social media calendar for your brand or business.

Perform a Social Media Audit

A social media audit provides a clear overview of your social media performance. It tells you the strengths and weaknesses of your social media strategy and what you can do to improve your social media engagement, presence, and accounts.

An audit also helps you determine outdated or irrelevant content. This step is critical in ensuring your posts and channels have a cohesive brand image and messaging.

When performing an audit, analyze key metrics such as engagement, conversions, reach, and follower demographics. Run a competitive analysis and assess whether or not your current social media strategy aligns with your business goals.

Pro Tip: Check your top-performing posts and note the platform, date, and time you posted them.

Choose Your Social Media Channels

You can use as many platforms as your team and budget can handle, so long as you select those that work best for your goals and target audience demographics.

For instance, if you cater to audiences aged 65 and above, Facebook is the ideal channel to work with. Instagram, on the other hand, is perfect for reaching the millennial audience, while TikTok is the place to generate results from the Gen Z demographic.

Plan Your Social Media Content

Short-form videos on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube are king of generating engagement. However, never disregard other types of content, such as photos, infographics, articles, and text-only posts.

People love variety, so prepare a mix of content for your chosen social media channels. Posting Instagram Reels, joining TikTok challenges, or creating relatable memes can widen your audience reach and help you monitor trends or changes with your audience’s preferences.

Determine What Goes to Your Calendar

A social media calendar aims to have all the essential content in one location. However, the challenge is to keep them organized.

Whether you choose to create a calendar from scratch or use a paid digital calendar, ensure that you have the following:

Day and time of posting
Status
Platforms posting on
Graphics or videos
Asset content and captions
Landing pages and tracking links

You can improve it by categorizing each post according to campaigns or platform-specific materials and color-coding them to get a quick preview of all the posts across all channels.

Establish a Posting Schedule

Monitor your audience’s activity patterns to determine the optimal times to post on every platform you use. However, finding the ideal times may take a while and require a trial-or-error process.

You can also use analytics tools to track engagement and utilize the data you collect to adjust your posting schedule over time. Consistency is vital in social media marketing, and having a well-maintained calendar will help you ensure a steady flow of engaging posts.

Want a Free Social Media Calendar Template?

Streamline your content planning process and boost your online presence by downloading our complimentary social media calendar template through the form below.

NOTE: We recommend importing the template to Google Sheets for better user-experience.

Need help elevating your social media presence? Our marketing experts are ready to craft winning strategies that ensure your success in the dynamic digital landscape. Contact us today.