How to make the perfect social media calendar
Research shows brands that publish more than 16 social media posts a month generate 3.5 times more traffic than those that publish fewer than four.
Posting often and consistently is a great way to engage with your audience, gain new subscribers, show off your brand personality, drive conversions, and get your content in front of more people.
But planning and creating content can be time-consuming — and creating content on the fly can be challenging. That’s why making a social media calendar is important to support your social media strategy and goals.
This article covers everything you need to know about creating a social media calendar. We’ll walk you through the steps of social media planning and provide tips on keeping your content fresh and interesting.
Summary/Overview
What is a social media calendar?
A social media calendar is a plan for creating and publishing content on social media platforms. It includes the dates, times, and types of content you’ll post and the specific social media channels you’ll use to share.
The purpose of a social media calendar is to help businesses, organizations, and individuals stay organized and consistent in their social media efforts. Sounds good, right?
It might surprise you that 63% of businesses don’t have a documented strategy. Instead, they opt for the “wing it” approach.
The problem with coming up with ideas for social media posts on the fly is that it’s easy to get stuck in a content creation rut.
You can waste a lot of time racking your brain for content ideas or scrolling through other people’s posts without coming up with anything you can use. You might even default to low-quality posts just to get something out there.
Being strategic about your social media content calendar allows you to avoid these issues by planning for the types of content you want to share and when.
This way, you can schedule your posts, giving you more time to focus on creating high-quality content relevant to your target audience.
Benefits of using a social media calendar
Using a social media editorial calendar can benefit your business in the following ways:
1. Organized social media efforts
A social media content calendar allows you to plan your content and schedule posts, so you can manage multiple social media accounts without getting overwhelmed.
2. Clear deadlines
A calendar with clear deadlines and plans can keep you and your team on track, making it easier to stay on top of your social media outreach.
3. Increased productivity
Content planning frees time to focus on other important tasks for your business.
4. Improved performance
With a social media calendar, you can track the performance of your posts and make necessary adjustments to improve your results. This can help you reach your target audience more effectively and make the most of your social media efforts.
How to create a social media calendar
Ready to streamline your team’s workflows for your social media management?
Here are the steps to develop your content strategy, curate your content, and plan your calendar.
From showcasing office pets to hosting engaging quizzes, these ideas will infuse your Stories with endearing content that keeps your audience coming back for more.
1. Set your content scheduling goals
If you’re making new content without goals, you’re skipping a key step and missing a big opportunity.
Aligning your social posts with marketing campaigns and initiatives can help you meet objectives and be more intentional with your content.
Identify specific objectives for your business’s social media efforts. Depending on your team’s overall goals, you may want to increase engagement, drive website traffic, or generate leads.
Once you know what to accomplish, determine how to make it happen.
If you’re hoping to increase your engagement, for example, you’ll need to post more often, engage with others, and maintain a consistent presence.
If you’re focused on conversions, you can develop promotional integrations in your social posts that work with your social media marketing strategy, new product launches, and special pricing.
This way, when your ideal customer sees your ad, they’ll head to your social profile and see similar content or more information to help them make a purchase decision.
What good are goals if you can’t measure your progress? Set key performance indicators (KPIs) for each objective in your social strategy.
For example, you may want to aim for a certain number of likes, comments, or shares per post — or a certain number of website visits from social media.
If you’re just getting started, a simple goal, like posting content four times a week, is a great place to start. Track the performance metrics of your social posts and make necessary adjustments to improve your results.
2. Research and plan your content
Before you log into your social networks and start posting, have a plan for what you’re going to post and when. Choosing what to post has much to do with who will see it.
Research your target audience and understand their typical engagement preferences.
This can help you determine which social networks they use the most, whether they prefer short-form content like TikTok videos or X posts, longer videos on YouTube, or funny GIFs and memes.
Consider collaborating with bloggers or influencers to expand your reach and create engaging content. The goal is to create quality content that speaks to your ideal customer’s pain points and adds value to their life.
Your marketing team may have valuable insights into your target audience. If you own a small business or a solo operation, you can conduct interviews, look into market research for your industry, or analyze competitors.
Industry trends and your competitors’ social media accounts can also provide valuable insight into what content your customers are looking for.
Brainstorm content ideas that align with your goals and target audience. Create a social media posting schedule that considers the best times to post for your audience and any industry events or holidays that may impact your posting schedule.
You can use or create a customizable social media content calendar template to organize your ideas. Many social media calendar tools exist, but we recommend downloading a free template online.
Whatever tool you use, have an organized calendar view to make project management easier for your social media team.
3. Make and schedule your content
You’ve identified your audience. You’ve brainstormed ideas. You’ve aligned your calendar with marketing efforts, business goals, holidays, and promotions.
Now, it’s time to create quality content tailored to your target audience’s preferences and engagement styles based on your content calendar.
Remember to optimize your content for different platforms. Not only are the demographics different on each social media network, but the content approach is too. The type of content that works well on Instagram may not be as effective on LinkedIn. You can use social media management tools to schedule posts in advance.
Adobe Express allows you to make graphics, write posts, and schedule posts ahead of time, from one easy-to-use app. Remember to post at times when your audience is most active to help increase engagement.
4. Track and measure the performance of your scheduling strategy
It’s important to track the performance of your posts and measure how effective your content is at engaging with your audience.
You can look at metrics like shares, likes, comments, and clicks to understand how people engage with your posts.
You can also track the performance of social media campaigns, such as website visits, conversions, and sales. By tracking your content's performance, you can adjust to improve the results.
Tracking social media metrics can help you identify insights and patterns to make more informed scheduling decisions.
When you understand how people interact with your content and which types of posts perform better, you can refine your content strategy and optimize your efforts.
Bring your social media strategy to life using a social media scheduler
Social media marketing is an effective way to promote your business and reach new audiences — but it requires a well-thought-out plan. That’s where Adobe Express’s free social media scheduler can help. It lets you view all of your scheduled posts at a glance, drag and drop posts to rearrange them, and use filters to view your posts by platform or date.
Here’s how to use it:
- Sign into Adobe Express or create an account.
- Click on the "Schedule" tab.
- If you haven't already, connect your social media accounts to Adobe Express (up to five).
- Click on the "+New post" button to start creating a new post.
- Add your text, images, and/or videos (preview your post before scheduling).
- Schedule your post to publish at a later date and time.
- Click on the "Schedule" button to schedule your post.
Get started today and see how much time you’ll save by planning and scheduling your social media content in advance with Adobe Express social media content calendar.