How To Create a Social Media Calendar To Organize Content

It’s time you learn how to create a social media calendar. If you plan to grow on this platform, you need organization. Don’t think for a second that social media is casual. 

If you take content creation seriously, you could excel. But you need to have a plan in place. Let’s talk about the importance of having a calendar. Read on for all the information you need about this great tool.

What Is a Social Media Calendar?

A social media calendar is a comprehensive plan for all future posts on a social media platform. It outlines what a creator plans to share with followers on particular days.

Content creators make this calendar with a view of their existing and potential followers. A good content calendar is not rigid, however. They have the option to edit content as circumstances change.

They aren’t an excuse to leave your page on autopilot. Instead, they help keep the content creator consistent on social media.

Read This if You Need an Example of a Social Media Calendar

You can always put your plans in the calendar on your phone or laptop. These are effective tools to create a content plan. However, there are tools online that do so much more. Just wait till you see an example of a social media calendar. You won’t want to just create reminders on your cell phone.

Asana

Do you work on a social media team? It’s so easy when you have everything in one place. This tool makes things even easier. Let’s talk about some of the great features that Asana offers. You can:

• Reschedule content easily as you adjust to social trends.
• Share your contact plan with partners to gain their feedback and accountability.
• Use the repository to store your social media posts in advance.
• Assign and review work in one place.

Buffer

You won’t need the excuse that your content is buffering with this tool. Buffer is a social media calendar tool that offers some great features. With these features, this tool promises that you can do the following:

• Schedule social media posts in advance.
• Share content with your followers on a more consistent basis.
• Collaborate with other members of your brand’s marketing team.

After you get over the learning curve, there should be smooth sailing.

The Importance of Planning a Social Media Calendar

Planning a social media calendar sounds like a lot of work. You already do so much for your Instagram profile. 

You create content and Instagram captions to go with them. Then, you have to monitor engagement on your page. But trust us when it comes to this. Creating a calendar calendar will be a good idea. We have three reasons to explain why.

1. You Avoid Huge Gaps in Content

Sometimes, you experience bursts of creativity. Sometimes, you have a lot of content to choose from. You may have gone on vacation or are trying out a new look. Other days are just mundane. That is just the reality of life. Still, that doesn’t mean you can slack on your content.

People followed you to see your beautiful photos and Instagram Reels. You can’t just dodge them. A calendar will help with your posting frequency. Planning well ahead will help when you can’t think of anything. Those days might happen more often than you think.

2. Curate Your Feed

When someone visits your IG page, they take in your creative Instagram feed design. They pay attention to how posts relate to each other. Before they look at individual pictures, they must like your feed. With a content plan, you can ensure you have an attractive Instagram feed.

You can choose a color scheme to focus on. You don’t have to stick to it forever. However, ensuring everything meshes well in a transition would be a good idea. People pay attention to these little details. If you plan, you can achieve it.

You may want to alternate photos with text. Put that in your content calendar. That way, you can post with your cover photo in mind. Instagram feeds like this don’t just happen. Someone behind the scenes knows how to create a social media content calendar.

3. Plan for Major Holidays

Holidays are a great time to create relevant content. There are so many hashtags that people will use to find photos and videos. You don’t want to miss out on the potential reach that they can give you.

Without a calendar, these holidays can sneak up on you. Stay ahead of the curve by putting these events on your calendar.

How To Create a Social Media Calendar in 4 Steps

If you’re reading this, you may not be the most organized person. You are a creative at heart. That means you know how to create beautiful content for your followers to see. 

Unfortunately, that content will not land very well without a solid plan. It’s time you expand your skill set. Organizational skills will help you gain the fame and notoriety you want online. 

It’s time to create a social media calendar. If you have no clue how to do this, we can help. Check out these four steps to creating a social media calendar. 

1. Audit Your Followers

Do you know who is following you? You see the number on your page but don’t know who’s behind it. Where are they from? What is their gender? How old are they? 

Of course, you can’t say everyone’s specifications. This fact is especially true if you have a large following. You need a general idea of the type of following you attract.

You can’t plan your content without knowing who follows you. It’s a good thing Instagram breaks this down for you. Take a stroll to your Instagram Insights. This feature is available if you have a professional Instagram account.

Look at the details about your followers. Get all the general information about where they live, their age, and their gender. You can also note the content that does the best on your platform.

Do you like who your followers are? Maybe you attracted more men than you wanted to. Before you create a content plan, consider what you must do to maintain the following. If you want to change your target audience, adjust your content accordingly.

2. Set Goals for Your Following

To know if your content plan is successful, you must set goals. How else will you measure your success? Create goals that align with your brand. You have a goal to increase your following. Perhaps you are after a higher engagement rate. Or, you want to make impressions on a new target audience.

You should consider a combination of all of these things. Just make sure you attach numbers to these goals. They have to be measurable to make sense. Write them down somewhere that you can access. 

Give yourself a definite time frame to achieve these goals. Feel free to include deadlines in between. That way, you can pace yourself and make adjustments as needed. You don’t need to announce these goals to anyone, but you may benefit from the extra accountability.

3. Choose the Frequency at Which You Want to Post

Being frequent on social media is good. Pumping out content is one way to keep you on people’s minds. Remember that so many other creators are also trying to earn followers. 

More pieces of content give you a higher chance of visibility in your audience. It gives people more material to engage with. You never know what post or video will go viral. Still, regularly posting is very taxing. It’s hard to commit to posting three times daily when you don’t generate that much content. 

Regurgitating photos and videos is normal on social media. But you don’t want to lean on that. Choose a frequency that you can maintain comfortably. You may want to post every few days. Then, you can increase the number of posts per week. 

Your followers will expect a post on a certain date if you promise to give one on that day. You don’t want to fumble by overextending yourself. You will lose the confidence of your following.

4. Schedule the Posts

You can create a calendar months in advance, but you don’t have to stick to it. Always allow for flexibility. The internet has a way of accommodating trends, so you may need to switch out a planned post for something spontaneous. 

Hopping on a trend could mean the growth you’ve been looking for. That said, you will appreciate having a plan for every day you want to post content. You might be experiencing a mental block one day. What saves you is the plan you made months prior.

You can pay attention to the holidays. We don’t just mean the major ones. There are random ones like Girlfriends Day or Siblings Day. Plan something for those days. Chances are, there will be viral hashtags for you to incorporate.

Schedule Content on Instagram

What should you do after you create the best possible calendar? You could schedule when your content goes live. The Instagram app has made doing this very easy.

From experience, you may know that the last Friday of the month is a good time to show off your product launches. You can fully film your content beforehand. Come up with our caption and insert your hashtags. Then, you can schedule posts to go live on that specific day. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re not using your cell phone at that time. Instagram will know when to post your content. This tool is a perfect supplement to your Instagram content calendar. It helps you save time and stay consistent.

It’s great that you don’t have to leave the platform to do this. Downloading a third-party app to sync with your Instagram app is unnecessary. You simply edit as normal and make the change at the end. Mastering this tool is the best step after learning how to create a social media content calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions About Creating a Content Calendar

Other content creators have questions about creating this calendar. We gathered some of the popular questions online. Check out our answers below:

FAQ: How do I make a good social media calendar?

You make a good social media calendar by planning well in advance while staying flexible to changes in trends. Doing this avoids posting content that someone could see as tone-deaf.

Using the Instagram scheduling tool, you can also schedule posts to go live at a specific time. A good social media calendar pays attention to the social climate at play.

FAQ: What is a social media calendar? 

A social media calendar is a detailed plan for sharing content on social media. It typically states what a creator intends to share on a specific day and time, but it can extend to months in the future. 

FAQ: How do I create a social media calendar in sheets?

You can create a constant calendar using a Google spreadsheet. You simply have to label the cells by month and day of the month. You can color-code each cell to specify the type of content to go live on a specific day.

What To Do After You Learn How To Create a Social Media Calendar

Are you having fun testing different content types? With your calendar, you can play around with different content ideas. See what followers respond to the most. This careful planning will lead to growth.

This isn’t one of those blog posts that tell you that this tool will work on all your social network platforms. You will still need help to grow your page. You can experiment with growth tactics all you want. Nothing beats the help of a solid expert growth provider.

Try Plixi if you’re in the market for a stronger online following. We don’t just gather random followers. Forget bot followers with questionable profiles. We bring real targeted followers intending to engage with your content to your page.

A social media marketer should know what to do with that evergreen content. So, by all means, learn how to create a social media calendar. But don’t just stop there. Ask Plixi for help. 

Start growing your Instagram following with Plixi today!