A complete guide to creating a social media calendar (plus template)

Social media practitioners and managers know it’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of managing multiple social media accounts, especially with a constant flow of new content, news and ideas. That’s why creating a social media plan and maintaining a strategic, organized social media calendar is so essential.

In this article, we’ll cover the different types of social media content calendars and how to create a social media calendar. We’ll also explore the benefits of using a social media calendar like streamlining cross-team collaboration and effective planning for product launches and campaigns. And we’ll share social media calendar apps you can use, along with a template so you can get started optimizing.

What is a social media calendar?

A social media calendar is a strategic, hyper-detailed plan of upcoming posts for all your social channels organized by publish date and time. Along with the publish date and time for posts, your social media calendar can also include links, tags, @-mentions, copy and media, such as images and video.

You can use a digital calendar, spreadsheet or a social media management platform like Sprout that offers an interactive dashboard and the ability to schedule posts.

Benefits of using a social media calendar

A content calendar is the key to a successful social media plan because there are so many benefits to using one, from saving time to streamlining collaboration.

Here are a few:

1. Saves time and widens team bandwidth

A social media calendar saves time by staying organized, especially when managing multiple accounts. As a social media manager, planning out a social calendar months in advance saves you from scouring trending topics and news stories every day looking for ideas. It’ll give you more bandwidth to track and test different strategies to see what resonates most with your audience. Your team will also have more time to focus on creating high-quality content.

2. Maintain a consistent posting schedule

Of course, there’s no hard rule for how much you should post, but it’s important to post frequently to maintain an active presence. A social media content calendar allows teams to prioritize quality, not quantity. Plus, planning will also build greater consistency in terms of your brand voice and style, rather than posting in a reactive or unplanned way.

3. Quality assurance and brand safety

Proactive scheduling allows social teams to check their work and protect their brand’s reputation. It’s easier to catch a typo or prevent a potential public relations crisis when you aren’t rushing and a workflow approval process is in place. Using a social media calendar will help catch these mistakes sooner rather than later.

4. Streamline cross-functional collaboration

A well-crafted social media calendar improves visibility because it provides an overview of upcoming content. A content calendar streamlines communication and cross-functional collaboration because everyone can look at the calendar and know what lies ahead. It also promotes alignment for department or organizational-wide initiatives because it provides a set posting schedule.

Having a posting schedule is important because your social media should support your overall organizational marketing efforts. Social media calendars help with tracking deadlines and responsibilities, reducing the chances of last-minute rushes and missed opportunities. Overall, social media content calendars play a crucial role in synchronizing efforts in dynamic marketing environments.

5. Optimize approval workflows

Social media calendars are instrumental in streamlining approval workflows within organizations. By providing a visual overview of planned content, social media calendars establish clear communication between teams, ensuring everyone is aligned on objectives, timelines and expectations for execution. A centralized approach to content scheduling simplifies the approval process because it provides simultaneous visibility among contributors and stakeholders. This visibility ensures all participants understand the steps involved for reviews, iterations and approvals. Having everyone on the same page will support timely approvals, prevent bottlenecks‌ and maintain a consistent flow of quality content.

5. Effective planning for product launches, campaigns and events

Social content calendars streamline cross-functional collaboration and workflows. They help facilitate strategic planning for product launches, campaigns and events. For example, your team can ensure social posts sync up with larger campaigns. Stakeholders in the campaign can easily view what you’ve planned and provide feedback, if necessary.

Social media calendars support meticulous planning because they empower teams to align on timing, content types, key milestones and deadlines, so each phase of the launch or event is effectively highlighted and promoted. This strategic alignment also helps keep messaging consistent across all channels.

6. Repurposing your successful content

Calendars can also help with repurposing content for social media. By maintaining a record of past posts and their performance metrics, you can easily spot high-performing content that can be recycled or adapted for future use. Repurposing content saves time and resources while ensuring consistent delivery of content proven to engage your audience. This approach enhances content strategy and strengthens engagement over time.

7.  Better engagement and performance tracking

Social media content calendars enhance the effectiveness of social media reporting by providing a framework for tracking performance and engagement. If you use a social media management software like Sprout, you can maintain your content calendar and reporting in one place. For example, the Post Performance Report will show you top-performing content and when it was published. This can help you identify specific posts with spikes in engagement and you can fine-tune your social media content as needed.

Types of social media content calendars [+ template]

There are various social media content calendars you can use to address your different needs. Let’s review some of the calendars–we’ll also share a social media calendar template you can use.

Sprout Social social media calendar

Marketers plan content on different levels: daily, weekly and monthly. Sprout’s Publishing calendar helps you streamline your content planning and execution.

Instead of using separate calendars for each cadence and social network, Sprout’s calendar has weekly and monthly views where you can plan and schedule content across multiple networks. This makes it easy to see your content schedule at a glance, enabling you to make changes as needed. This cross-network visibility will help you maintain a cohesive social media strategy with an optimized publishing cadence and messaging tailored for each network.

Best time to post social media calendar

Social media planning isn’t just about publishing content consistently—time is another major factor because it can impact your reach and engagement. The best times to post on social media varies by network and also depends on when your audience is active. To help nail down timing, you can use a weekly social media calendar outlining ideal publishing times.

Social media calendar templates

Instead of creating new calendars from scratch each week or month, use social media calendar templates to save time and effort. We created a downloadable social media calendar template designed to support organization, visibility and alignment to specific key performance indicators.

Download template

How to create a social media content calendar

1. Conduct a social media audit

Before creating your social media content calendar, you need to conduct a social media audit of past content to evaluate your current online presence.

Consider the following during your audit:

• Important metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) for each account by network to define success
• Your brand’s goals for each account by network
• Your target audience
• Highest and lowest performing posts and campaigns
• Opportunities for improvement or experimenting
• Publishing frequency

Pull native analytics from sources like Meta Business Suite or Instagram Analytics. If you’re using Sprout Social, you’ll find metrics across multiple social networks in one place: Sprout’s Report Builder.

Pay attention to your brand’s analytics to pin down what could be contributing to your highest and lowest performing posts. If you want more ideas for your calendar, consider doing a competitive analysis during your audit. Auditing a competitor in your industry can help you identify gaps in your (or their) strategy.

Completing an audit will help you identify how to curate posts for your social media calendar template and what content you should create for your audience. The goal is to give you a strategy to fill each day of your content calendar. If you’re able to identify what’s going well and opportunities for improvement, you’ll be better positioned to meet your brand’s goals.

2. Use a social media calendar template

Create a social media content calendar template to stay organized, streamline workflows, improve collaboration and track metrics. Your social media calendar template should include the following:

• Social media networks and accounts
• Date and time
• Social copy, including hashtags and links
• Media (GIFs, images, video, etc.)
• Approval steps
• Space for collaboration and feedback notes
• KPIs
• Key (a color-coordinated key with labels to organize your content)

Level up your social media content calendar template with these advanced additions:

• Published post links
• UTM tracking links
• Geo-tag
• Network-specific format (Story, feed post, short-form video like Reels or TikTok, etc.)
• Associated campaigns, like a new product launch
• Approval status
• Paid or organic post (include budget details for paid posts)

These additions provide more context, especially if you want to dig deeper into tracking performance. For example, UTM tracking links enable you to measure traffic from a post, traffic type (referral, paid or organic) and the specific campaign that brought the traffic in. Use a digital calendar or spreadsheet for your template, or automate it with tools like Sprout’s social media calendar to lower your lift.

3. Select your social media channels and content types

Now that you’ve completed an audit and created a social media content calendar template, you’re ready to choose the channels and type of content you want to post.

Which channels does your audience engage with the most? And what types of content resonate with them? Lean on your analytics while brainstorming your social media post ideas, identifying themes and/or categories to determine the type of content you’ll schedule in the content calendar.

Once you have a few basic topics in mind, go deeper with a research tool like social listening to learn more about what your audience wants to see. By using listening for competitive research, you’ll see a comprehensive view of the hashtags, keywords, brands and topics that engage with your audience across different social channels. Use this information to plan posts that are highly relevant to your audience and expand your reach to others who may be interested in your content.

Overall, make sure that the majority of the content you work into your social media calendar is intended to help your audience. While the exact mix will vary depending on your brand, niche and what resonates with your audience, a good rule of thumb is to make two-thirds of the content informational and one-third or less promotional.

Promotional content tends to be sales-focused, so a constant stream can alienate followers. Prioritize engagement over selling in your social media calendar.

4. Define a social media calendar posting schedule

Once you have an idea of the content you’re going to post, you’ll need to create a posting schedule to help keep track of ideal times for publishing. You should aim for a sweet spot based on your audience’s preferences, because social moves fast—posting too much, too little or too late can cause dropped engagement. Posting frequently is important, but don’t emphasize quantity over quality. Be wary of sharing content that’s irrelevant or redundant for the sake of meeting a posting quota.

Consider the patterns that arose from your audit and competitive analysis. Take a look at publish dates and times for each network and make a note of any specific themes. This information will help you organize and plan your posts to get the most visibility.

There’s a lot of competing information on publishing cadences. Some professionals recommend posting as regularly as possible to stay top of mind. Others suggest only posting if you have high quality and valuable information to add to the conversation.

There are also best practices around the best times to post on each network, broken down by specific industries and niches. Check out our guide on how often to post on social media per channel to learn more. Sprout’s data science team looked at how often over 30,000 Sprout Social customers posted to find out what the average is for some of the most popular social media networks.

Sprout also takes the guesswork out of posting cadences by analyzing the best times for you. Using a tool like Sprout’s ViralPost® feature helps you target posting times based on your individual audience data. ViralPost reviews this data and suggests Optimal Send Times for each network you use.

5. Track and analyze your social media content calendar

Your social media calendar isn’t just a planning tool. It’s also a way to track and measure metrics across every network you use. Analyze the information you collect from your social media campaigns and continue to optimize your social media calendar.

If you tag posts to specific campaigns, you can track content that may need to be optimized or repurposed. When content performs well, save it or make a note to reintroduce it again in the future when it’s time to brainstorm new posts.

For example, Sprout’s Asset Library lets you store videos, text and images in an easy-to-access library so you can re-incorporate high-performers into your social media strategy. Storing everything in a pre-approved library also ensures that all creative assets are on point in terms of quality and brand style guidelines.

Also account for specific campaigns across different social networks. Different social media networks serve different purposes, so you should plan strategically when looking to increase the reach of a given post on other networks. It’s important to remember that just because a post is popular on one network, doesn’t mean it’ll perform well on others.

6. Improve your social media calendar by sharing across teams

You probably work frequently with other teams within your organization since social is a key pillar for many brands’ marketing strategies. Social media collaboration can strengthen your content and help your brand reach organizational goals. Seek feedback from your team and marketing stakeholders to improve your social media calendar. The goal here is to iterate your social media calendar as your marketing strategy and business evolves.

Including teams outside marketing will give you fresh ideas for things to post, while also supporting priorities across the organization. The product team can let you know when new features, services or products will be launching. Human resources and public relations can remind you of important dates and company milestones worth posting about.

You need an easy and reliable way to make sure that everyone involved can access the right tools, accounts and organize their deliverables. When your calendar is integrated into a social media management platform like Sprout Social, you increase the visibility of what needs to be created and approved across contributors.

Sprout’s content calendar includes tools like approval workflows that emphasize collaboration so you can grant different teams access to relevant parts of the social media calendar.

Social media calendar apps

There are many social media management tools and social media scheduling tools to choose from. Here’s a quick overview of our top three favorite tools:

Sprout Social

Okay, so yes, we’re definitely tooting our own horn here, but Sprout’s tools will truly help your social media team. Our interactive content calendar, publishing and scheduling tools are designed to increase visibility, improve team efficiency and boost customer loyalty, so social teams have more bandwidth for creative efforts. For instance, you can follow up on your scheduled posts by establishing a process for responding and engaging with your audience in the Smart Inbox. With Sprout, you can also take the guesswork out of posting at the right time using Optimal Send Times™, which will tell you the best time to post your content. Essentially, Sprout’s interactive content calendar enables you to manage the social experience, end to end.

Google Calendar/Sheets

Google Calendar and Sheets are free and fairly intuitive to use. There are a bounty of social media calendar templates you can use from Google Sheets and Calendar. Both apps can be used to allow users to easily view upcoming posts and add comments for feedback and other collaboration.

Notion

Notion is a powerful note-taking app, but it’s also a tool for marketers. The app has a database feature that can be used to create templates, including social media calendars. Notion is highly customizable and collaborative, so users can easily view the status of content and give feedback via comments all within one platform.

Ground your planning with a social media calendar

Your time is too valuable to spend deciding what to post every single day. A well-planned social media content calendar empowers you to use your time to plan for the future and focus on other aspects of your marketing strategy. You can create a social media calendar from scratch, but using a template and personalizing it to your brand’s needs will save you time while ensuring you have all the essential components. Take your content planning to the next level with Sprout’s social media calendar template.