Here's the process for creating a Hootsuite social media calendar. Feel free to copy or adapt it to your activity on the networks you use.
1. Start by developing a social media strategy
The biggest lesson I've learned as a team lead at Hootsuite is that building a good content calendar requires a healthy dose of strategy. Before you build your calendar, you'll need a solid social media strategy that can withstand changing algorithms and trends.
If your social media strategy explains why you're on social media, your social media calendar should outline what you'll post and when you'll post.
To develop this strategy, you need to start with the less exciting stuff—like getting australia phone number data analytics data using social media analytics tools , defining your content pillars, and analyzing your posts' performance—before getting into more fun activities, like actual content creation and testing.
Your social media strategy should include:
SMART goals .
Specific indicators you will use to measure progress towards these goals.
Audience insights and personas .
A competitive analysis .
The social media platforms you will use and your goals for each one.
Your content pillars, meaning the formats and topics you'll post about. For example: "entertaining/educational video content," "promotions," and "company culture."
The frequency of publication for each platform.
Approval flows ( e.g., people who need to approve before posts are published).
Analysis reports and a strategy update schedule.
Social media managers tend to favor cross-posting (sharing the same content across multiple platforms). However, over the past few years, we've realized that this isn't a good strategy.
Social media platforms differ greatly in how they prioritize content, and people use them differently. Our Consumer Trends Report taught us a lot about this. The way a brand publishes must be adapted to each platform to meet audience expectations.
Take the time to create or review your social media strategy before you start creating a content calendar. Create your own strategy or modify your existing one with our free social media strategy template .
You can also get inspired by our free social media marketing ebook . No email required!
Excerpts from Hootsuite's free ebook on social media marketing
2. Plan your content
At Hootsuite, we schedule our content weekly. This allows us to plan larger social media campaigns and quickly capitalize on trends before they fade. Choose your frequency (monthly, biweekly, etc.) based on what works best for your team.
We post multiple times a day across multiple platforms, but you can set up a more or less spaced posting schedule depending on your marketing goals.
We plan our social media calendar in Wrike, but feel free to use whatever works for your team, whether it's a project management app, Hootsuite's built-in calendar, or (you guessed it!) our free content calendar template .
Hootsuite's Free Social Media Calendar Template
Each post is created as a task, which includes details such as the caption, visuals, hashtags, audio to use for Reels or TikTok, publication date, and other information. Using Wrike allows us to assign the task to the appropriate team member at every stage of post creation, from writing the caption to graphic design.
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