Hi! My name is Trish Riswick, I\u2019m a Team Lead on our Social team here at Hootsuite, and I\u2019m here to tell you exactly<\/em> how to build a social media calendar that will support your goals and keep you organized.<\/p>\n Our social media calendar is the backbone behind all the content you see on Hootsuite\u2019s channels. I hate to break the spell of real-time spontaneity, but every post is meticulously planned in our social media content calendar before it\u2019s even created.<\/p>\n I\u2019d be lying if I said planning a content calendar for our audience of over nine million (!!!) people across eight social media platforms<\/strong> is easy. But it\u2019s important, and can even be fun.<\/p>\n I\u2019ll take you through how we plan our content calendar at Hootsuite and share some tips for success. Our process isn\u2019t the only way to make a social calendar, but I hope seeing it inspires you to create one that works for you.<\/p>\n A social media calendar is a strategic plan of all upcoming content, including the date and time posts will go out and supporting information, such as links, hashtags, images or videos, mentions, Reels audio, or other platform-specific features.<\/p>\n A social media calendar can be a document, a spreadsheet (we have a free social media calendar template<\/a> for you here!), or part of your project management app\u2014whatever works for your team.<\/p>\n A social media calendar lets you streamline the visual structure of your content. At a glance, you get a bird\u2019s eye view to ensure you\u2019re sticking to a consistent publishing schedule.<\/p>\n Without a social media calendar to refer to, you risk creating content last minute that may not align with your brand or your marketing strategy<\/a> goals.<\/p>\n At Hootsuite, we\u2019re not making content for the sake of making content. We\u2019re making content that aligns with our strategy and is solid but also has fluidity with different formats. We\u2019re constantly leveling up to what the company is needing from our social media channels.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Having all your social media posts planned in one space allows you to easily spot where you\u2019re either missing a post entirely, or just certain types of posts.<\/p>\n This also applies to each piece of content. Do scheduled posts have all the assets they need? Are we missing any graphics or captions for product launches? Having a social media calendar means you aren\u2019t running around at the last second begging the design team for an urgent graphic (or bribing them with iced coffee\u2026).<\/p>\n I\u2019ll go into more detail on how we identify content gaps in the steps below.<\/p>\n This is our social media calendar process here at Hootsuite. Feel free to copy it or adapt parts of it as needed to suit to your own social media presence.<\/p>\n The biggest lesson I\u2019ve learned as a team lead at Hootsuite is knowing there\u2019s a lot of strategy that goes into building a really good content calendar. Before you can make a calendar, you need a strong social media strategy that withstands the changes of algorithms and trends.<\/p>\n Your social media strategy is why<\/strong> you\u2019re on social and your social media calendar is what and when<\/strong> you\u2019re posting.<\/p>\n To create that strategy, you have to do the less exciting things first\u2014pulling analytics, figuring out content pillars, and analyzing post performance\u2014before you can do the fun things: content creation and testing.<\/p>\n Your social media strategy should include:<\/p>\n The North Star for a lot of social media managers is crossposting (sharing the same content across multiple platforms). However, we\u2019ve learned over the last few years it\u2019s not a good strategy.<\/p>\n Each social network is so different in the way it prioritizes content and people use those networks differently. We learned a lot about this in our consumer trends report<\/a>. How we show up on each network needs to be different to match the audience\u2019s expectations.<\/p>\n Take the time to create or review your social strategy before jumping into creating a social content calendar. Get started or revamp your current one with our free social media strategy template<\/a>.<\/p>\n At Hootsuite, we do content planning weekly. You may decide monthly or biweekly works best for your team, but we like weekly because we can plan out larger social media campaigns while still being able to quickly jump on trends before their popularity runs out.<\/p>\n We post several times a day across multiple platforms, but you may have a more or less frequent posting schedule depending on your marketing goals.<\/p>\n Our team plans our social calendar in Wrike, but you can use what works for your team, whether that\u2019s a project management app, Hootsuite\u2019s built-in calendar, or (you guessed it!) our free content calendar template<\/a>.<\/p>\n We create each post as a task, including details such as the caption, visuals, hashtags, the sound to use for Reels or TikTok, publish date, and any other information. Creating it in Wrike allows us to assign the task to the relevant team member at each stage of creating the post, from writing the caption to graphic design.<\/p>\n Some posts are scheduled months in advance if they\u2019re part of a large campaign, such as our annual Social Trends<\/a> report releases or promotional webinar content. But most of our regular content is planned week to week.<\/p>\n Planning weekly gives us flexibility to act quickly. For example, when Instagram launches a new feature, we can create a carousel post or video to educate our target audience.<\/p>\n Source: <\/em>Hootsuite on Instagram<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Once we\u2019ve figured out how many posts we need for the week ahead and what content pillar they\u2019ll tie into, we brainstorm ideas.<\/p>\n We use Miro to store all our social content ideas and collaborate together remotely. Again, use whichever tool works best for your team. It can be as simple as a shared spreadsheet, document, or a note on your phone.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a peek at our Miro board, where we brainstorm and also keep valuable feedback we gather from social listening<\/a>:<\/p>\n Social listening is a huge part of our brainstorming process. It\u2019s so helpful to see how people are talking about us, how they use Hootsuite, or how Hootsuite has educated them in some way.<\/p>\n Social listening also inspires topic ideas. For example, our Reel about the \u201c80\/20 rule\u201d in content strategy: 80% of your content should be educational\/entertaining and 20% self-promotional. It\u2019s not a new concept but social listening told us some of our audience wasn\u2019t sure what it was. That showed us the opportunity to create more educational content around that.<\/p>\n Source: <\/em>Hootsuite on Instagram<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n When we\u2019re going to move forward with an idea, I\u2019ll figure out if we need our design team to create assets and if so, write the brief. Then we\u2019ll expand the idea and write the script or caption in a separate document.<\/p>\n If we can make the post ourselves, one of our team members will do that. For example, Paige\u2019s \u201cday in the life of a social media manager\u201d Reel began as an idea in our Miro board and then she filmed the video.<\/p>\n Source: <\/em>Hootsuite on Instagram<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n Personally, I love brainstorming because there\u2019s no such thing as a bad idea. What to you may be a silly idea can spitball into one of your best ideas with input from others.<\/p>\n Part of brainstorming is also getting inspired. Inspiration sources can be your competitors or even brands you admire in different industries. I personally find TSA\u2019s humor on Instagram<\/a> very inspiring.<\/p>\n Now the fun part! Our team mainly uses CapCut and Canva to create high-quality content, but again, use whichever tools work for your team and the types of content you\u2019re creating.<\/p>\n There was a myth circulating that Instagram Reels created with \u201coutside\u201d tools like CapCut get less reach vs. if you create them in-app with Instagram\u2019s native tools. Not to worry\u2014we experimented and found Instagram does not penalize Reels made with CapCut<\/strong><\/a> (or other apps)<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Sometimes we create and post content within the same day to take advantage of a social media trend<\/a>. Other times, we create months in advance for large campaigns or special initiatives, like our free educational webinars<\/a>.<\/p>\n Eileen Kwok, who handles our TikTok strategy among other things, says she prefers to batch her video filming to optimize time. She can film ten videos within a few hours, which represents two to three weeks of content.<\/p>\n When creating, it helps to remember which pillar the piece of content you\u2019re making belongs to. This ensures that everything from the first draft to the final post aligns with the goals of that pillar.<\/p>\n For example, here\u2019s what our content pillars looked like over the last year:<\/p>\n Every Friday, our social media team meets to go through the content calendar for the week ahead and schedule everything. We may reorganize previously planned content if a new trend pops off. Social changes fast so you have to be ready to jump on opportunities.<\/p>\n A big part of scheduling content is making sure we not only have enough posts for the week, but enough of the right types of posts. In other words, enough of each of our pillars: awareness, consideration, and retention\/conversion.<\/p>\n When we plan our social media content calendar in Wrike, we color code the post one of three colors to align with those three pillars. That way, we can easily see at a glance if we have a good mix of content types for the upcoming week.<\/p>\n Additionally, looking at all our posts for the week ahead can identify gaps or opportunities to diversify our content. For example, we might notice we only have a few videos planned and choose to create more, or add a PDF download or something educational if we\u2019re lacking in the consideration pillar.<\/p>\n Once we figure out what we need, our team either brainstorms together or works independently to finish up any last details before we schedule each post in (obviously) Hootsuite!<\/p>\n With Hootsuite, you can schedule content across all your social platforms in one place, and\u2026<\/p>\n Save over 130 hours per year<\/a> (and your sanity as a social media manager) with Hootsuite. Grab a free trial<\/a> and try it for yourself.<\/p>\n Want to see everything Hootsuite can do super quick? See it in action in under 2 minutes:<\/p>\nKey Takeaways<\/h3>\n
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What is a social media calendar?<\/span><\/h2>\n
![\"preview](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/social_media_content_calendar-3_720-620x349.png.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/a><\/figure>\nWhy do you need a social media calendar?<\/span><\/h2>\n
Organizes your work<\/h3>\n
![\"Hootsuite](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Hootsuite-visual-planner-2-620x481.png.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/figure>\nAligns content with strategic goals<\/h3>\n
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Identifies gaps<\/h3>\n
How to create a perfectly streamlined social media calendar<\/span><\/h2>\n
1. Start with a social media strategy<\/h3>\n
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2. Plan your content schedule<\/h3>\n
![\"Hootsuite's](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Social-media-calendar-template-620x259.png.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/a><\/figure>\n![\"Hootsuite](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/social-media-calendar-wrike-1_anonymized-620x262.png?resize=620%2C262&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n![\"Hootsuite](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/social-media-calendar-2-620x340.jpg.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/figure>\n3. Research and brainstorm content<\/h3>\n
![\"Miro](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/social-media-calendar-4-miro-620x266.jpg.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/figure>\n![\"Reel](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/social-media-calendar-5-620x597.jpg.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/figure>\n![\"Reel](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/social-media-calendar-3-620x550.jpg.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/figure>\n4. Make the content<\/h3>\n
![\"Hootsuite](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/social-media-calendar-6-pillars-620x345.jpg.webp)
\n<\/picture>\n<\/noscript><\/figure>\n5. Schedule content<\/h3>\n
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![\"Hootsuite](\"https:\/\/blog.hootsuite.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Hootsuite-dashboard-620x506.png.webp)
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