Creating a Social Media Content calendar, is like being Clea and Joanna on 'Get Organized with Home Edit'. It's all about creating a system, bringing order, make sure its functional and keep it fun with colors.
There are 2 tried and true tricks that work well to keeping order to the chaos of content, images and links. You can go for the spreadsheet style if you are on a budget, or you can splurge and use a dashboard that one of the many social media managing tools offer. You can make your calendar simple or complex no matter which managing tool you go with.
My style is the classic spreadsheet. I can manage it offline if for some reason my power goes out in a wind storm, and I can type on the road when my husband is driving and not worry about wifi or my hotspot working. I also go for the spreadsheet style because any one can use it and I don't have to explain how to use a dashboard like Hootsuite, Buffer or SproutSocial.
I will note that I am not anti Social Media managing tool. I use to use them all the time when I worked for corporate. But to build out the content I always started with a spreadsheet form to help keep me organized, and it also gave me the space to easily go back and review what I did in the past. Social Media managing tools are great for scheduling and looking at how the post are performing, as well as the page performance.
This calendar template includes an area for the four major platforms that are the most common to post for business content and it focuses on a weekly plan. Since it is in excel, I have made it to where it is 100% customizable, and you’re free to make it your own to your style and workflow.
I made it pretty simple to gain access to - just download, open the file and you are off. Make sure to create a new tab for each month, and plan out your editorial content week by week.
Over the last 12 years of managing hundreds of social media accounts, I have perfected the spreadsheet to work for all. With all of the many super helpful parts in this calendar, make sure not to glance over the tab for evergreen content. This is a "content bank" as I like to call it, for blog posts that trends to be strong performers on social, no matter the seasonality side of content. Your new spreadsheet includes:
Status
Type of content
Original publication date (keep track of this so you know when it’s time for an update)
Title
Topic
URL
Shortened URL
Social content
Performing image
Once you have the calendar built out, you have your schedule and you can begin publishing and setting post to go out on the time that makes sense for the post.
Happy posting!