How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar *Free Template*
Batch-creating your social media content streamlines content creation, making it more efficient and improving the quality of your work.
Just think, what would it be like if you didn’t have to constantly come up with new ideas and interrupt other tasks to get a post out? You’d save time while also creating a more consistent social media presence that aligns with your strategy!
If this sounds good to you, a content calendar will be your friend!
Benefits of a Content Calendar
A content calendar is a great place to organize your thoughts, be sure you’re incorporating all of your content pillars, and customize your content for each platform.
We like to batch create content one month at a time so that we can efficiently work task-by-task: making graphics, editing videos, organizing them on the calendar, writing captions, and then going through edits and approvals all at once.
Once you have a whole month of content scheduled (our favorite tool for that is Metricool), it feels so great to know that you can focus on other tasks! It also frees up time to engage with your audience and review your analytics in the meantime.
If creating a whole month’s worth of content at a time sounds daunting, start small with just a week or two.
When creating a month worth of content at a time, break it down to more digestible chunks. Just think, if you just post 3 times per week, that’s only 12 posts for one month. If you have 4 content pillars, you only need 3 posts per content pillar!
Setting Up Your Calendar
We use Google Sheets to create content calendars that are user-friendly and easy to collaborate on, and since Google Drive is a free resource, it’s great for nonprofits!
Use our content calendar template here
Content Calendar Breakdown
We like to create a new content calendar each month, putting each week on its own sheet.
Key: Our content calendar template includes a key so that you can assign a color to each social media platform your organization posts on. Feel free to add or remove any platforms as needed.
Date: The date you want that post to be published.
Channel: Where the post will be published, like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
Pillar: These are whatever you define as your content pillars. Need help defining your content pillars? Check out this blog post!
*Tip: Consider assigning a content pillar to each day to ensure your content is varied.
Caption: This is where you will write your post copy.
*Tip: In Google Sheets you are not able to create paragraph breaks easily. We like to write our captions in a Google Doc, formatting it correctly, and then copy and paste it into the content calendar.
Media Type: These will be define the photo, video, or graphic content you will use in the post, or lack thereof (like a Facebook Status).
Media: This is where you can insert the graphic or image being used in the post. If posting a carousel or a video, we like to add the assets to Google Drive and post a link so whoever may need to review the content can easily access it.
*Tip: If we are planning content, but don’t have the media yet, like a reels trend, we will leave space for this in the content calendar and write a description of the plan for the media as a placeholder.
*Optional: You may consider adding a “hashtags” column if that is something other individuals on your team would like to review and give input on.
*Tip: Make a Google Doc with hashtags that you frequently use for quick access.
Content Review & Approval
The next 3 columns will be used by anyone in your organization that needs to approve content or help with editing.
Approved: Checking the box that would mean that everything within the post is approved and ready to be posted.
Edits/Feedback: This is where the reviewer can leave comments on what edits they’d like you to make. We tend to prefer this over using the “comment” feature in Google Sheets, as it keeps everything uniform.
Responses to Feedback: Here, you can let your reviewer know that edits have been made or provide justification for not making them, if you decide to leave the post as-is.
*Optional: You may consider adding another checkbox column titled “Scheduled,” if you find that useful.
Caption Tips by Platform
Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter: In your copy you are able to add a link to your website, blog, etc. For this reason, you can have “No Media” posts in which the post will just show a preview of the link. If selecting this option, be sure the link will populate a compelling image to encourage clicks.
Instagram: Since you can’t include a clickable link in your caption, you will want to put a call to action such as “click the link in bio to visit our website” instead. This also means that every post must have some form of media.
Twitter: Keep in mind the 280 character limit.
Instagram Story: If there will be any on-screen text or stickers added, include this information in the “Content” column.
We love using Google Sheets for content calendars because they make it easy to plan social media content and collaborate on reviews!
The best part is that with Google Sheets, you can customize it to your needs. Feel free to switch things up to make your calendar work for you!
