Hello! My identify is Trish Riswick, I’m a Crew Lead on our Social workforce right here at Hootsuite, and I’m right here to let you know precisely the right way to construct a social media calendar that may help your objectives and maintain you organized.
Our social media calendar is the spine behind all of the content material advertising you see on Hootsuite’s channels. I hate to interrupt the spell of real-time spontaneity, however each put up is meticulously deliberate in our social media content material calendar earlier than it’s even created.
I’d be mendacity if I mentioned planning a content material calendar for our viewers of over 9 million (!!!) individuals throughout eight social media platforms is simple. But it surely’s necessary, and may even be enjoyable.
I’ll take you thru how we plan our content material calendar at Hootsuite and share some ideas for achievement. Our course of isn’t the one strategy to make a social calendar, however I hope seeing it evokes you to create one which works for you.
PS: If you happen to’re simply right here for the free template, you’ll be able to seize it right here. No electronic mail required!
Key Takeaways
A social media calendar is your roadmap for planning and organizing all upcoming content material, together with put up dates, occasions, hashtags, photographs, and hyperlinks. It may well take any format that works on your advertising workforce: a doc, an Excel spreadsheet, or dashboard in your mission administration instrument.
A calendar brings construction to your content material technique, helps you keep aligned with bigger advertising objectives, and may draw your consideration to content material gaps. No extra last-minute scrambles for content material or speeding the design workforce for graphics—you’re ready!
When constructing a social media calendar, begin with a stable technique, then plan your posting schedule (we suggest a weekly planning cadence). Use social media scheduling instruments like Hootsuite, Wrike, and Miro for brainstorming, creating, and scheduling content material.
A social media calendar is a strategic plan of all upcoming content material, together with the date and time posts will exit and supporting data, comparable to hyperlinks, hashtags, photographs or movies, mentions, Reels audio, or different platform-specific options.
A social media calendar could be a doc, a spreadsheet (now we have a free social media calendar template for you right here!), or a part of your mission administration app—no matter works on your workforce.
Organizes your work
A social media calendar permits you to streamline the visible construction of your content material. At a look, you get a chook’s eye view to make sure you’re sticking to a constant publishing schedule.
Aligns content material with strategic objectives
With out a social media calendar to consult with, you danger creating content material final minute that won’t align together with your model or your advertising technique objectives.
At Hootsuite, we’re not making content material for the sake of creating content material. We’re making content material that aligns with our technique and is stable but in addition has fluidity with completely different codecs. We’re continually leveling as much as what the corporate is needing from our social media channels.
Identifies gaps
Having all of your social media posts deliberate in a single area lets you simply spot the place you’re both lacking a put up totally, or simply sure sorts of posts.
This additionally applies to every piece of content material. Do scheduled posts have all of the belongings they want? Are we lacking any graphics or captions for product launches? Having a social media calendar means you aren’t working round on the final second begging the design workforce for an pressing graphic (or bribing them with iced espresso…).
I’ll go into extra element on how we establish content material gaps within the steps beneath.
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That is our social media calendar course of right here at Hootsuite. Be happy to repeat it or adapt components of it as wanted to go well with to your personal social media presence.
1. Begin with a social media technique
The most important lesson I’ve realized as a workforce lead at Hootsuite is realizing there’s plenty of technique that goes into constructing a very good content material calendar. Earlier than you may make a calendar, you want a robust social media technique that withstands the modifications of algorithms and tendencies.
Your social media technique is why you’re on social and your social media calendar is what and while you’re posting.
To create that technique, it’s important to do the much less thrilling issues first—pulling analytics utilizing social media analytics instruments, determining content material pillars, and analyzing put up efficiency—earlier than you are able to do the enjoyable issues: put up concepts, content material creation and testing.
Your social media technique ought to embrace:
The North Star for lots of social media managers is crossposting (sharing the identical content material throughout a number of platforms). Nonetheless, we’ve realized over the previous couple of years it’s not a great technique.
Every social community is so completely different in the best way it prioritizes content material and folks use these networks otherwise. We realized loads about this in our client tendencies report. How we present up on every community must be completely different to match the viewers’s expectations.
Take the time to create or overview your social technique earlier than leaping into making a social content material calendar. Get began or revamp your present one with our free social media technique template.
It’s also possible to get a primer from our free book on social media advertising fundamentals — seize it beneath. No electronic mail required!
2. Plan your content material schedule
At Hootsuite, we do content material planning weekly. Chances are you’ll determine month-to-month or biweekly works finest on your workforce, however we like weekly as a result of we will plan out bigger social media campaigns whereas nonetheless having the ability to shortly leap on tendencies earlier than their reputation runs out.
We put up a number of occasions a day throughout a number of platforms, however you might have a kind of frequent posting schedule relying in your advertising objectives.
We plan every little thing in Wrike after which transfer into social media scheduling instruments like Hootsuite. This makes workforce collaboration easy and retains everybody on the identical web page, from designers to copywriters.
We create every put up as a job, together with particulars such because the caption, visuals, hashtags, the sound to make use of for Reels or TikTok, the publish date, and every other data. Creating it in Wrike permits us to assign the duty to the related workforce member at every stage of making the put up, from writing the caption to graphic design.
Some posts are scheduled months prematurely in the event that they’re half of a giant marketing campaign, comparable to our annual Social Tendencies report releases or promotional webinar content material. However most of our common content material is deliberate week to week.
Planning weekly offers us flexibility to behave shortly. For instance, when Instagram launches a brand new characteristic, we will create a carousel put up or video to coach our audience.
Supply: Hootsuite on Instagram
3. Analysis and brainstorm content material
As soon as we’ve discovered what number of posts we’d like for the week forward and what content material pillar they’ll tie into, we brainstorm concepts.
We use Miro to retailer all our social content material concepts and collaborate collectively remotely. Once more, use whichever instrument works finest on your workforce. It may be so simple as a shared spreadsheet, doc, or a notice in your cellphone.
Right here’s a peek at our Miro board, the place we brainstorm and in addition maintain precious suggestions we collect from social listening:
Social listening is a large a part of our brainstorming course of. It’s so useful to see how individuals are speaking about us, how they use Hootsuite, or how Hootsuite has educated them not directly.
Social listening additionally evokes subject concepts. For instance, our Reel in regards to the “80/20 rule” in content material technique: 80% of your content material needs to be instructional/entertaining and 20% self-promotional. It’s not a brand new idea however social listening instructed us a few of our viewers wasn’t certain what it was. That confirmed us the chance to create extra instructional content material round that.
After we’re going to maneuver ahead with an concept, I’ll work out if we’d like our design workforce to create belongings and if that’s the case, write the transient. Then we’ll develop the thought and write the script or caption in a separate doc.
If we will make the put up ourselves, one among our workforce members will do this. For instance, Paige’s “day within the lifetime of a social media supervisor” Reel started as an concept in our Miro board after which she filmed the video.
Personally, I like brainstorming as a result of there’s no such factor as a nasty concept. What to chances are you’ll be a foolish concept can spitball into one among your finest concepts with enter from others.
A part of brainstorming is considering how we will repurpose content material throughout completely different channels, which helps us maximize attain with out all the time reinventing the wheel.
4. Make the content material
Now the enjoyable half! Our workforce primarily makes use of CapCut and Canva to create high-quality content material, however once more, use whichever instruments work on your workforce and the sorts of content material you’re creating.
There was a fantasy circulating that Instagram Reels created with “outdoors” instruments like CapCut get much less attain vs. if you happen to create them in-app with Instagram’s native instruments. To not fear—we experimented and located Instagram doesn’t penalize Reels made with CapCut (or different apps).
Generally we create and put up content material throughout the similar day to reap the benefits of a social media development. Different occasions, we create months prematurely for big campaigns or particular initiatives, like our free instructional webinars.
Eileen Kwok, who handles our TikTok technique amongst different issues, says she prefers to batch her video filming to optimize time. She will be able to movie ten movies inside just a few hours, which represents two to 3 weeks of content material.
When creating, it helps to recollect which pillar the piece of content material you’re making belongs to. This ensures that every little thing from the primary draft to the ultimate put up aligns with the objectives of that pillar.
For instance, right here’s what our content material pillars appeared like during the last yr:
5. Schedule content material
Each Friday, our social media workforce meets to undergo the content material calendar for the week forward and schedule every little thing. We might reorganize beforehand deliberate content material if a brand new development pops off. Social modifications quick so it’s important to be prepared to leap on alternatives.
One perk of doing this weekly? If a sizzling development pops up, we will shift issues shortly and keep away from any delays in posting resulting from approval or misalignment with ongoing advertising campaigns.
An enormous a part of scheduling content material is ensuring we not solely have sufficient posts for the week, however sufficient of the fitting sorts of posts. In different phrases, sufficient of every of our pillars: consciousness, consideration, and retention/conversion.
After we plan our social media content material calendar in Wrike, we shade code the put up one among three colours to align with these three pillars. That approach, we will simply see at a look if now we have a great mixture of content material sorts for the upcoming week.
Moreover, taking a look at all our posts for the week forward can establish gaps or alternatives to diversify our content material. For instance, we’d discover we solely have just a few movies deliberate and select to create extra, or add a PDF obtain or one thing instructional if we’re missing within the consideration pillar.
As soon as we work out what we’d like, our workforce both brainstorms collectively or works independently to complete up any final particulars earlier than we schedule every put up in (clearly) Hootsuite!
With Hootsuite, you’ll be able to schedule content material throughout all of your social platforms in a single place, and…
Robotically put up at the most effective occasions on your viewers to see your content material.
Save time with AI put up creation and automations.
Reply to messages and feedback in a single inbox for all social media profiles.
Observe your social media ROI with easy-to-understand insights.
Know what your viewers needs with built-in social listening.
Handle paid advert campaigns alongside natural content material.
Plus worker advocacy applications, opinions, influencer administration, approval workflows, and extra.
Save over 130 hours per yr (and your sanity as a social media supervisor) with Hootsuite. Seize a free trial and check out it for your self.
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6. Analyze efficiency
Monitoring your efficiency is greater than charting views, followers, or engagement charges for vainness causes. Analytics let you know what sorts of content material your viewers needs so you are able to do extra of that, and fewer of what isn’t working. (And it lets you replace your supervisor and different stakeholders on what’s working.)
For instance, we not too long ago experimented with movies on LinkedIn—a rising development. We realized our LinkedIn viewers loves instructional movies, however most of our “TikTok-style” meme movies didn’t carry out properly on LinkedIn.
The other was true on TikTok: humorous, relatable movies utilizing trending sounds have been the most well-liked, whereas our instructional or product movies have been the least in style. Analytics additionally instructed us each sorts of movies carried out properly on Instagram.
With out analytics reviews, we might have guessed this data, however we wouldn’t have identified for certain or been in a position to measure the distinction attempting new methods made.
My favourite characteristic in Hootsuite Analytics is the flexibility to tag every put up with a customized label. We tag our posts in keeping with which of our three pillars they belong to, then pull analytics reviews for every of these tags. That enables us to trace efficiency by pillar and aim, in addition to all the general, built-in reviews in Hootsuite Analytics.
I maintain observe of our metrics in a spreadsheet so your entire workforce can simply see how new methods are impacting outcomes.
Need this spreadsheet? Obtain our free social media audit template.
If you happen to’re not seeing measurable outcomes from social media planning but, don’t fear. As my colleague Eileen Kwok factors out:
Social media’s principal goal is as an consciousness channel. Sure, we use it to herald conversions however our bigger aim is all the time ensuring we’re spreading consciousness of the corporate. We do this by being a neighborhood for social media managers first, and presenting our instrument as an answer second.
Don’t be discouraged in case your social media isn’t bringing in leads immediately. That comes from doubtlessly years of nurturing your viewers.
Eileen Kwok
Social and Influencer Advertising Strategist at Hootsuite
7. Commonly replace your content material technique
Whereas this will likely sound like extra of the “boring” stuff I discussed earlier, setting an everyday schedule for auditing your social media accounts is so essential.
With out these insights, you gained’t know what to check subsequent, or what may very well be your subsequent “go viral” second.
Final yr, we accomplished an in depth, per-post overview which was properly definitely worth the time spent. We realized what works and what doesn’t by sorting posts into low, mid, and excessive performing classes. From there we have been in a position to decide that for us animated infographics have been a high performer, whereas animated product movies weren’t, amongst different insights.
This deep dive helped us check out what we have been doing final yr and tweak our technique for the yr forward.
To make this simpler, I like to recommend monitoring key posts weekly or month-to-month slightly than having to tug analytics for a complete yr’s value of content material without delay.
The weather to overview to replace your social media technique embrace:
Analyzing low, mid, and high performing content material for patterns and tendencies.
Analytics reviews per platform and total.
Outcomes of content material assessments.
Social listening information, together with what individuals are saying about you, model sentiment over time, and what your rivals are doing.
Feedback and direct suggestions on posts out of your viewers.
It’s all a cycle: put up content material, see the way it performs, take a look at new concepts, analyze some extra, tweak, and repeat.
Get your social calendar began right this moment with our free template.
Bonus: Right here’s how typically it is best to put up to every social community for finest outcomes:
Instagram: Publish 2 occasions per week.
Instagram Tales: Publish 2 occasions per day.
Fb: Publish 2 occasions per week.
X (Twitter): Publish 2 occasions per week
LinkedIn: Publish 2 occasions per week.
Threads: Publish between 2 to three occasions per day.
TikTok: Publish 14 occasions per week.
Pinterest: Publish no less than 1 time per week.
1. You must put up no less than twice per week
You don’t have to put up day-after-day. Whereas engagement vs. frequency varies by trade, organizations who put up twice weekly had the best total engagement price (2.08%) on Fb:
Our Instagram analysis had comparable findings, with an engagement spike at two posts per week.
LinkedIn and X additionally confirmed the best engagement with two posts per week. The outlier is TikTok the place for the best engagement price, it is best to put up 14 occasions per week.
2. One of the best time to put up on Fb is 9 am
Our analysis reveals that the optimum time to put up on Fb is 9 am Monday by Saturday.
3. One of the best time to put up on Instagram is 4 pm
For non-video posts, our analysis reveals the most effective time to put up on Instagram is 4 pm Tuesday by Saturday.
4. One of the best time to put up on LinkedIn is 4-6 am
Our analysis reveals the most effective time to put up on LinkedIn is between 4-6 am on Tuesdays and 5-6 am on Fridays.
5. One of the best time to put up on TikTok is 8 am
Our analysis has discovered the most effective time to put up on TikTok is 8 am on Thursdays. Saturdays between 9 am-12 pm is the subsequent most suitable choice.
6. One of the best time to put up on X (Twitter) is 9 am
Our analysis discovered X posts get essentially the most engagement throughout enterprise hours, with a peak between 9-11am on weekdays.
Social media calendar instruments for 2025
You don’t want as many social media administration instruments as you assume. Copy our stack beneath, or take a look at different social media calendar instruments we suggest.
Hootsuite
Yep, in fact the Hootsuite workforce makes use of Hootsuite for social media administration. I lined how we use it and what it could actually do for you above, however mainly, you are able to do every little thing you want to do for social media advertising for all of your platforms, together with:
Planning, creating, and scheduling social media content material, with a straightforward calendar view that features all of your channels.
Answering DMs and feedback from one unified inbox for all of your profiles.
Detailed analytics that present your precise social ROI, together with for paid and natural content material collectively.
The world’s finest social listening instruments built-in to all plans.
AI automations to avoid wasting time with put up drafting, inspiration, and extra.
100+ integrations with all of your different favourite instruments.
Google Sheets
We use Google Sheets to audit and observe our efficiency. Bonus: lots of our free social media templates are arrange for you in Google Sheets!
Wrike
We plan our social media content material calendar in Wrike earlier than scheduling posts in Hootsuite. Utilizing a devoted mission administration instrument for that is useful if you happen to already use one to handle different work in your group.
Miro
I like Miro’s open canvases for brainstorming and having the ability to join with my workforce from wherever.
CapCut
In my view, CapCut is among the finest video enhancing apps. We use it for TikTok enhancing and all our different social video content material.
When you’re able to implement your social calendar, use Hootsuite for social media scheduling, viewers engagement, best-in-class social listening, and significant analytics. Get your free trial right this moment.
