How to Create a Social Media Calendar (with Free Template & Examples)
Here's to create a social media calendar from A to Z.
Lucy Kariuki
Contributing Writer @ Quorage
To create a social media calendar, start by defining your brand image and message that will remain consistent throughout your posts. Then determine your social platforms and posting frequency. You can then establish each platform’s topics, post formats, and hashtags. Finally, choose your scheduling app to upload and execute the calendar.
Social media marketing is no small feat. You may often find yourself rushing to create content last minute. And if anything is rushed, it’s often not as good as if it was planned.
The solution?
Create a social media calendar to schedule your posts.
A social media content calendar simplifies your content creation strategy. You can plan a month’s or year’s worth of content and auto-publish it across several social media platforms.
So, if you are wondering, “How do I create a social media content plan,” read on.
This guide covers how to create a social media content calendar from zero. We also have a free social media content calendar template with examples and a checklist.
Let’s get started!
How to create a social media content calendar
To create a social media content calendar, you’ll need a template. It can be a spreadsheet, a dashboard, or a digital calendar.
Download our free social media calendar template and fill it in with each step below.
1. Start with defining the brand image
A brand image is how people see and feel about a company. It includes the logo, fonts, and colors.
Defining your client’s brand image helps you maintain consistency when posting social media posts.
It builds credibility, allowing your target audience to recognize and trust the brand.
So how do you define your client’s brand image?
Go through the brand guidelines
Most companies have a set of guidelines that define their brand image. For instance, SproutSocial’s brand assets like typography, logo system, colors, and borders tell its story.
If your client hasn’t established brand guidelines, work closely with them to define the brand image from scratch.
If your client is a real estate company, they can have a home-themed logo with distinct colors. Plus, they can choose specific fonts for all their content formats.
For example, LM Realtors have a simplistic logo featuring their initials. You can also tell their theme colors (blank & yellow), and font.
To do: Go to the social media content calendar template and fill in these elements:
- brand logo
- theme colors
- fonts to use
Apply these design elements consistently in all social media posts to maintain a strong brand image.
2. Define the brand message
A brand message communicates what a brand does and its unique value proposition. The message will remain consistent throughout the social media posts.
To define the brand message:
Identify the social media target audience
Who will you target with the content? What are their needs, pain points, goals, and buying behaviors?
Knowing the target audience enables you to craft content that satisfies their needs.
To understand the target audience, refer to your client’s buyer persona. If there’s none, use a buyer persona generator to create one.
Or, check your client’s social media pages. Analyze post interactions like comments, DMs, and mentions. Track top-performing posts to see the type of content the audience loves.
If you can’t get much information from your client’s socials, study competitor pages to define your target audience. Check their content formats, how their audience responds, and what platforms they frequent.
Understand the brand identity
A brand’s identity represents its personality, values, and voice.
Most brands reveal their brand identities in their visual elements (like logos and colors), products, and taglines.
To understand your client’s brand identity, answer the following questions:
- What is the brand’s unique voice?
- What are the brand’s values?
- What does the brand stand for (personality)?
- What sets them apart from their competitors?
- How does the brand identity relate to the target audience?
For example, a real estate company can have a professional, informative voice. Their values could be honesty, authenticity, and integrity. Also, they could have unique customer service.
The brand message guides you on the type of content to share and on what platforms. It should be consistent, such that your audience can easily identify the brand message by going through your social media posts.
For instance, you can tell that The Roaming Realtor shares house walkthroughs by studying their IG feeds.
To do: Fill in the brand message column of your social media content calendar template.
Note: Once you’ve filled in the brand message column, feed in the social media strategy goals in the next column.
If you don’t have the social media strategy and goals ready, you can them using our social media strategy guide.
3. Choose your social media platforms
Choosing where to post your content helps you publish posts that your target audience will actually see.
Here are some questions to help you choose the best social media platforms:
- What are the target audience’s favorite social media platforms?
- What social channels is your client active in?
- On what social channels does the client get the highest engagement rates?
A market research or social media audit will help you identify what platforms the target audience frequents.
For instance, if a brand’s ideal customers are millennials, their favorite social platforms could be Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
For example, LM Realtors uses Instagram to market their products.
To do: From the data gathered, choose your social media platforms and feed them into the spreadsheet.
4. Establish the posting frequency
How many times per week or day will you be publishing your social media posts? When is the best time to post on a specific platform?
A good posting frequency increases the chances for your target audience to see and interact with your posts.
To establish the posting frequency:
- Identify the peak engagement times per platform. Use insights from the platform’s analytics.
- Track your posting history. Check your top-performing posts and what times of the day or week you posted them.
- Determine your target audience’s location. What is their time zone and when are they active?
- Study your competitors. What is their posting frequency per platform? How is their engagement at those times?
- Use a monitoring tool. Tools like Hootsuite and SocialBee will monitor your social media performance and suggest the best times to post your content.
- Test and adjust. Try posting your social media posts on different days (and times) for your chosen platforms and study their outcome. Adjust accordingly to establish the best posting schedule.
To do: Fill in your posting frequency per week (days and times) for each platform.
After determining the posting frequency, the next step is to choose your topics, their formats, and hashtags for each topic.
5. Choose the topics, formats, and hashtags for each platform
Here’s what to consider when choosing topics for each platform:
- Relevance – what topics resonate with the target audience
- Diversity – mix informational, entertaining, promotional, and interactive posts
- Seasonality – what kind of topics are relevant to key holidays?
- Platform’s unique strengths – for example, Instagram is perfect for visual content
Once you’ve considered the above factors, brainstorm topics to include in your social media content calendar.
Have a list of topics for each month.
Then, break them down into weekly subtopics.
Common real estate topics include:
- House listings
- Video walkthroughs for new properties
- Homebuying tips
- Market updates and trends
- Open house announcements
- Service promotions
- Expert opinion
- Client testimonials
- Community work and events
After choosing your topics (and subtopics), decide what formats they’ll have, depending on the platform.
You can have:
- Posts, reels, and stories for Facebook
- Images, reels, carousels, and videos for Instagram
For example, Private Real Estate Collection share video walkthroughs, house listings, event announcements, informative posts, and expert opinions on their IG.
Once you’ve decided on the formats, add appropriate hashtags for each topic.
To do: Fill in the monthly topics, weekly subtopics, formats, and hashtags for each platform.
A social media content calendar helps you plan for bulk content creation.
You can have a month’s or year’s worth of content so that you don’t have to think about what to post daily.
You can use the calender to create posts in advance. Then upload the content in a social media scheduler to auto-publish.
6. Choose your scheduling platform
A scheduling tool allows you to plan and publish your social media posts at specific times. We recommend SocialBee, a simplistic scheduling tool with handy features like content recycling and best-time-to-post suggestions.
Popular scheduling platforms include:
- SocialPilot
- Hootsuite
- Buffer
- eClincher
- SocialBee
Consider these factors when choosing a scheduling platform:
- Your needs
- Your budget
- Your social media strategy goals
- User-friendliness and customer support
- Supported social media platforms
- Unique features like content recycling and social listening
To do:
- Pick one scheduling platform that fits your needs, budget, and goals.
- Upload your content calendar to have your scheduled posts auto-published.
Interesting read: A round up of the best social media scheduling apps.
Consistency is a best practice in social media marketing and scheduling tools simplify the process. However, while using a scheduling tool, you also need to engage with your audience as they interact with your posts. You can’t just auto-publish and ghost for a year.
Free social media calendar template
Our free social media calendar template allows you to plan and organize your content weekly, monthly, or annually.
It is an editable spreadsheet with sections to add all the information we’ve mentioned in the steps for creating a social media calender above.
The first sheet has sections to add your:
- brand image
- brand message
- social media strategy goals
- social media topics/themes
- social media platforms
The monthly sheets have columns for social media platforms, weekly and daily sub-topics, content formats, and hashtags.
To recap, you’ll need to follow the steps below to create your annual or monthly social media calendar:
- Develop a social media strategy and define your goals
- Define your brand image and message
- Have a list of yearly, monthly, weekly, and daily topics/themes
- Choose your social media platforms
- Determine your posting frequency
To do: Once you’ve noted down these details:
- Download our social media content calendar template.
- Edit and fill in the first sheet with your brand image, brand message, social media strategy goals, social media topics/themes, social media platforms, and posting frequency.
- Go to the first monthly sheet.
- Edit and replace the examples with your preferred topics (weekly and daily), content formats, hashtags, times, and goals for each platform.
In the next section, we’ll cover social media calendar tools to use.
Social media calendar tools make it easy to create and schedule content in bulk.
Which social media calendar tools do you use?
We’ve rounded up some of the best social media calendar tools for social media marketers:
- Notion lets you plan all your social media posts in one database. It has an editable template where you feed in your posts, scheduling dates, and platforms. But you can’t use this calendar to auto-publish on social media platforms.
- SocialPilot is a social media management tool with an intuitive content calendar. It lets you create, schedule, and auto-post social media posts across channels. You can also manage several accounts from one dashboard.
- Later is one of the best calendar tools for Instagram. But you can also use this calendar tool to schedule and autopublish social media posts for other platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, Pinterest, and TikTok.
- CanvaPro isn’t exclusively for design. You can use its content planner (only available on the pro plan) to create and schedule posts. It also highlights holidays, events, and holidays, allowing you to customize relevant posts for such days.
- Loomly has a social media editorial calendar that lets you plan, schedule, and publish organic and paid campaigns. The visual content calendar allows you to drag and drop posts as desired. Plus, you can create a different content calendar for each new client without leaving the platform.
- Google Sheets are free, easy-to-use calendar tools. You only need a Google account to use the spreadsheets to schedule content. But they’re only organizational tools, so you can integrate them with social media platforms.
- Sendible is a social media scheduling tool with a user-friendly interface and intuitive features. You can create, customize, schedule, and auto-post different content types for all social media platforms. Sendible also allows you to organize posts into campaigns for easy scheduling.
In the next section, find out the must-have items in your social media content calendar.
Social media content calendar checklist
- Date and time – when your posts will go live
- Topic/Theme/Message – is the message to schedule
- Post format – is the content type e.g. reels, videos, images, stories, etc.
- Goal of the post – is what you intend to achieve, e.g. increasing leads or sales
- Social media platform –the channel to publish your posts
- Media – are attachments to a post, like images, infographics, GIFs, etc.
- Hashtags or Mentions – to customize posts for each platform
- KPIs (Key performance indicators) – to analyze and track your social media performance
As we wrap up, below are some tips to make the most of your social media editorial calendar.
Tips for making the most of your social media editorial calendar
- Create content that aligns with your brand image and message.
- Keep your target audience in mind – craft content that resonates with them.
- Test different content types (videos, images, text) to know your audience’s preferences.
- Customize posts for each social media platform – consider best practices like image dimensions, character limit, and audience preferences.
- Use high-quality visuals for all your posts.
- Interact with your audience by replying to their comments and direct messages.
- Track and review your social media posts to know what is working and what’s not.
- Be consistent with the posting frequency and hashtag usage.
- Adjust your content calendar to accommodate changing social media trends.
Create your social media posting calendar with our free template
A social media posting calendar eases content creation and scheduling. An ideal social media content calendar should have columns for date/time, topic/theme, social media platform, post format, and goals. When creating a content calendar consider your brand message and image, target audience, and posting frequency.
Download our free social media calendar template to create your custom content calendar without a hassle.
FAQs
What is a social media calendar?
A social media calendar is a tool that helps you plan and organize social media posts to publish later.
A social media calendar saves time by simplifying your content creation process. You can create social media posts in bulk and schedule them for later posting on your preferred platforms.
What should a social media content calendar include?
An ideal social media content calendar should have the following components:
- Date and time
- Topic/Message/Theme
- Post format
- The goal of the post
- Social media platform(s)
You can also add other elements to customize your social media content calendar like
- Hashtags
- Key
- Dropdown menus
- Links
- Media
- Post status
- UTM parameters (to track your posts)
What are the benefits of a social media content calendar?
A social media content calendar is a beneficial tool because it:
- Helps you maintain a consistent posting schedule, increasing engagement with your audience
- Saves time and effort – you can bulk-create and schedule posts in advance
- Improves content quality- you can review and improve scheduled posts before publishing
- Improves collaboration – you can share the content calendar with your team or clients for feedback and approval
- Allows you to track and analyze your social media performance
- Helps you gather and plan visual elements to include in your posts
- Allows scalability in content creation – you can adjust your publishing pace depending on your budget
What is the best social media calendar tool?
The best social media calendar software will depend on factors like your needs, goals, and budget.
Some of the best social media calendar tools include:
- SocialPilot
- Hootsuite
- Notion
- Later
- Loomly
- Sendible
- SproutSocial
- Google Sheets
How do I schedule social media content?
The best way to schedule social media content is by feeding it into a content calendar tool.
A social media content calendar can be a spreadsheet, digital calendar, or dashboard. You can create the social media content calendar from zero or customize an editable template.
Once you’ve selected your ideal content media calendar, define your:
- Brand image and message
- Goals
- Target audience
Then, choose the following:
- The social media platforms to post
- The posting frequency
- Themes/topics
- The content type
Once you’ve noted down these details, feed them into your content calendar tool. Some content calendar platforms have an auto-publish feature where your posts will automatically go live on the scheduled day and time.
But if your content calendar is only for content planning, upload it on a scheduling platform to auto-publish your social media posts.
How do I plan a social media calendar each month?
To plan a social media calendar each month:
- Conduct a social media audit – what was your best-performing content, and the best time to post it?
- Understand your target audience – their preferences in content, social media platforms, and peak hours.
- Create a social media strategy for that month – define your goals and KPIs (key performance indicators).
- Define the social media content to create – e.g. informational, entertaining, or interactive content.
- Choose the monthly, weekly, and daily topics to post.
- Choose the content formats – e.g. images, videos, reels, carousel posts, stories, etc.
- Choose the social media platforms to post – e.g. Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.
- Choose your posting frequency for each social media platform.
- Take note of key holidays or events to recognize during that month.
- Schedule your topics on the content calendar depending on the posting frequency.
- Track and analyze the performance of your posts.