In this article, we’re going to share everything you need to know about social media scheduling templates—what they are, why you need them, and how to create your own.
7 Steps to a Powerful Social Media Scheduling Template:
What Is a Social Media Scheduling Template?
A social media scheduling template is an editorial calendar specifically for social media that you can use to plan out and schedule your posts in advance, as well as note deadlines, the content to be shared, manage campaigns, and more. There are essentially three ways to create a social media scheduling template: paper, spreadsheets, or social media scheduling tools.
No matter what method you choose to plan and schedule your social media content, there are certain things you’ll want to include:
Goals Target audience Social platforms Content types Social media benchmarks
Benefits of Scheduling Social Media Content
Scheduling your content using a social media scheduling template has several benefits. In addition to saving you time and having a mechanism by which to hold your team accountable, let’s take a look at some of the reasons you should be using a scheduling template.
Get Organized Social media scheduling templates help you get and stay organized so you can avoid spending too much time each day figuring out what to post to each of your social media platforms. By creating and filling out your template, you can strategize to build a cohesive social media message that meets your goals. Plus, this frees up time each day to talk about any industry news as it occurs. Share the Best Content for Each Platform A plan will help you create and publish content that works for each social media platform instead of just posting the exact same content with the exact same message to every single platform you use. Remember, different segments of your audience are likely to be active on different social media platforms. When you create customized content for each platform, the ones who use multiple platforms are more likely to pay attention to your content. Further, the segments of your target audience that uses only one platform likely do so because they like the type of content that’s generally posted on that platform. To get the biggest return, you’ll need to be sharing the type of content they enjoy. Build a Consistent Posting Schedule A social media scheduling template also makes it a lot easier to create and maintain a consistent posting schedule, which is vitally important to keep your audience engaged. And, when your content is built out in this way, you’ll be able to see at a glance if there are gaps in your posting or if you’re including too much similar content. Prevent Mistakes Planning out your content ahead of time minimizes mistakes because you’ll actually have time to check it for spelling and grammar errors, make sure your links are working, ensure that your images look good, and, finally, that you’re including the right information. Track Performance When you create and publish content haphazardly, it’s difficult to track the performance of your content and trends over time. When you use a social media scheduling template, you can take a look back at the content you’ve published and how it performed. This data will inform your strategy going forward.
Creating a Strong Social Media Posting Schedule
Managing social media—even a single account on a single platform—has a lot of moving pieces. You need to create new content, engage with your audience, and promote your content. And most social media managers actually manage multiple accounts on multiple platforms. Without a social media scheduling template for each account you manage, you’ll find yourself missing things and your clients, not to mention your own business, will suffer for it. Fortunately, building out your social media scheduling template doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, here’s a simple and straightforward 7-step process:
Achieve Success With a Social Media Scheduling Template
That’s it! You’ve successfully planned and built out your social media scheduling template. Now it’s time to implement. Hopefully, this article has shown you that, while social media marketing has tons of moving pieces, creating a plan makes it much more manageable.
Your current social media accounts (including the handle for each) The goals for each account Key demographics for each account (based on your analytics) Who is responsible for maintaining the account How often you’re posting on each account How your content is performing based on your chosen social media metrics
What channels your competitors are using How they present themselves on those platforms How they measure up to social media benchmarks for your industry The type of content they’re creating How customers respond to their content The hashtags they use If they’re running any paid social ads
You can choose from a number of social listening tools to get this information. Otherwise, you’ll need to choose your top 3–5 competitors and dig for the information manually.
Best time to post on Facebook: Monday to Thursday between 9 AM and 2 PM. Post daily. Best time to post on Twitter: Monday to Thursday between 9 AM and 4 PM. Post at least 3 times per day. Best time to post on Instagram: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday between 9 AM and 11 AM or 2 PM to 3 PM. Publish content at least once daily. Best time to post on YouTube: Weekdays between 2 PM and 4 PM. Post at least weekly. Best time to post on TikTok: Tuesday at 9 AM, Thursday at 12 AM, Friday at 5 AM. Post at least 3 times per day. Best time to post on Instagram Reels: Tuesday at 9 AM, Thursday at 12 AM, Friday at 5 AM. Post at least 3 times per day.
Images Videos Text Links
Within that, of course, there are pretty much unlimited types of social media content you can create and share. We recommend sharing a mix of content and not just posting promotional content all the time. While the ultimate goal of marketing is to generate sales, you’re going to turn your audience off of your content if all you do is try to sell to them. Instead, publish a mix of educational, entertaining, and promotional content. A traditional rule of thumb is called the “rule of thirds.” This means that one-third of your content is promotional, one-third is entertaining and engaging, and the final one-third is curated content that would be of interest to your followers. Some marketers use the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, in which 80% of your content is for educating, entertaining, and engaging, while the remaining 20% is promotional. Here’s what the popular social media platforms are mostly used for:
Facebook: Videos, live videos, blog posts, and curated content Instagram: High-res photos, quotes, and Stories Twitter: News LinkedIn: Jobs and career information, company news, and professional content Pinterest: Infographics and photo guides YouTube and IGTV: Long-form video content TikTok and Instagram Reels: Short-form video content
No matter what you choose, be sure that you’re adding value to your followers, so they keep coming back for more. HubSpot Services Offered: Analytics, Automated Publishing, Content Management, Multi-Account Management, Post Scheduling, Customer Engagement, Multi-User Collaboration, Reporting/Analytics, Social Media Monitoring Channels: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube HubSpot has a full CRM as well as Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub software. Social media management is a big draw for the platform. HubSpot lets you publish, monitor, and report on your social posts so you can understand which posts and channels drive leads and sales.
CoSchedule Services Offered: Analytics, Automated Publishing, Content Management, Multi-Account Management, Post Scheduling, Customer Engagement, Multi-User Collaboration, Reporting/Analytics, Social Media Monitoring Channels: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr CoSchedule is perfect for businesses of all sizes, but it’s particularly useful for organizations that run a blog or some other frequently-changing website. CoSchedule’s Marketing Suite includes a content organizer, work organizer, social organizer, and asset organizer.
