What is a social media calendar?
A social media calendar is a strategic solution, tailored for social media teams to plan, track, manage, and schedule content across social media platforms. A social media calendar keeps track of what content has to be posted, the date and time for each post, the creatives of the posts, who owns and approves them, and so on. It helps ensure that social media activities are timely and aligned with broader marketing strategies.
Why should you use a social media calendar?
An efficient social media calendar can help in advanced planning and enhanced coordination. It can also pave the way for consistency in content delivery across multiple social media platforms. By streamlining your social media operations, you can boost productivity, leading to improved metrics and better engagement with your audience.
To save the effort of creating a social media calendar from scratch, you can use a predefined template to organize all your posts and relevant details.
6 key things to consider when choosing a social media calendar template
Using a template is a great way to get things started with managing your social media schedule. But with so many templates available, finding the right one can be daunting.
To begin, understanding your social media practices goes a long way in choosing the right social media calendar. List out some essential details, like the platforms you currently use, the frequency of your posts, the types of content you post, and the audience engagement metrics you track. This should give you an idea of what to look for in a social media calendar.
Here are some other tips that’ll help you choose the right social media calendar:
1. Accommodating and easy to use
The social media calendar template you use should be intuitive, simple, and easy to navigate for all your team members, irrespective of their tech expertise. It can be the number of times you post in a week, the number of platforms you post on, or the documents/images/PDFs you work on with respect to every post; the template should accommodate all of your social media practices and help you make them more efficient.
2. Efficient data management
Ensure that the tool/template you choose is compatible with other popular tools, so that you can import data from any source. It should allow you to consolidate information, reduce redundancy, and ensure consistency.
3. Contextual collaboration
Choose a template that supports multiple team members working and updating in real time on the same template, enabling meaningful collaboration. Going a step further, templates that let you post comments and give feedback on every single item you’re working on will make communication and coordination easier.
4. Better performance tracking
The template should include fields that can accommodate all your performance metrics—engagement, reach, conversion rate, etc—for every single post and for the profile/account/channel as a whole. It should also let you add notes and insights about these metrics, to help refine future strategies based on the numbers.
5. Scalability
You’re probably going to increase your posting frequency, add more members to your team, or build a presence on new channels as your brand grows. The tool/template you choose should scale to accommodate all your future needs, without any loss in performance.
6. Presentability
Functionality is key—no doubt there. However, choosing a visually appealing template can also make it easier to work with on a daily basis, and a sleek and clean look can improve presentations to stakeholders.
Social media calendar template from Zoho Tables
Zoho Tables offers a social media calendar template that you can leverage to manage your social media marketing efforts.
With this template, you can manage details like:
Posts
Create a posting schedule, store content and creatives, and track the status of your posts.
Channels
Keep a list of all the channels that you use for engaging with your audience, along with their metrics.
Post owners
Delegate team members to manage posts, from ideating to publishing, and the details of published and pending posts.
How can this social media calendar template enhance your marketing efforts?
By providing a clear and complete picture of your social media content creation and distribution, this social media calendar template from Zoho Tables helps you stay organized, consistent, and strategic, resulting in more effective and impactful social media marketing efforts.
Here are a few key benefits to using our social media calendar template:
Improved organization
Keep track of what needs to be posted and when, preventing last-minute chaos and ensuring a steady flow of content.
Enhanced collaboration and coordination
From ideating to approval, feedback to suggestions, all efforts made by your social media team are in the same place, eliminating the need for separate email or text threads to keep track of what’s happening.
Custom views for every team member
Everyone on your team doesn’t need access to every piece of data you manage. Tables lets you create individual views for your team members and customize them to suit their needs.
Broader view of your content
Managing all your social media efforts in one place gives you a fuller picture of your posting patterns, the kind of content you create, popular content among your published posts, and more. This helps you understand what’s working and what’s not.
Efficient use of time and effort
By automating progress updates, data updates, and approval processes, our social media calendar template makes sure your time and effort is spent on the right things, not on repetitive and mundane tasks.
Future decisions and efforts driven by data
Managing metrics along with content details lets you analyze how your content is performing and refine strategies based on what works best.
Encouraging new initiatives
Our social media calendar template also lets you collect new content ideas and turn them into a full-fledged social media marketing initiative seamlessly.
Make our social media calendar template your own
Our comprehensive social media calendar template gives you insights into how social media teams normally operate. It also gives you a head start on managing your own social media marketing efforts. But that doesn’t mean you have to use the template as is—you can customize our social media calendar template to fit your organization’s requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to pay to use this social media calendar template?
No! The template is completely free to use for all free and paid users. In fact, all our templates in the template gallery are free to use.
Our templates are free for up to 2 users. Pricing restrictions apply if you want to add more than 2 users.
Who can use this social media calendar?
Anyone who manages social media activities, like social media managers, content creators, social media influencers, content marketers, content writers, marketing analysts, marketers, digital agencies, and even freelance social media consultants, can use our social media calendar template.
Is this social media calendar industry-specific?
No, the social media calendar template was created keeping all industries in mind. You can easily customize the template to further match your specific industry requirements.
What type of templates are available in Zoho Tables?
Zoho Tables offers various templates for different use cases, including project management, CRM, inventory tracking, and more. Explore the template gallery to find options that match your requirements.
Can I customize existing templates in Zoho Tables?
Yes, Zoho Tables allows customization of templates. After importing a template, you can modify field names, format it, and add or remove fields to suit your specific needs.
Can I share Zoho Tables templates with my team?
Yes, you can share templates with team members. After creating or customizing a template, use the Share option in Zoho Tables to grant access to specific individuals or the entire team.
What should I do if I encounter issues with template imports?
If you face difficulties adding templates, check for any error messages during the import process. For troubleshooting, contact us via support@zohotables.com.
How can I track changes made using a template in Zoho Tables?
Zoho Tables keeps a record of changes made to your data. Use the Activity Log feature to track modifications, ensuring transparency and accountability in your workflow.
Are Zoho Tables templates mobile-friendly?
Yes, with the Zoho Tables Android and iOS native mobile apps, you can view all the data created in the web app with an intuitive UI optimized for mobile users. Swipe through screens to swiftly create new tables, records, and fields in seconds. Extract data via images, use voice notes on records, customize the configured gallery cards, and more—all from the mobile app.