Social Media Calendar Tools for 2023:
Related Content:Top Social Media Marketing Software You Should Consider in 202345 Social Media Marketing Tools That Will Give You an Edge in 2023…What is Influencer Marketing? – The Ultimate Guide for 2023 Single users and small teams can opt for the Essentials plan, which features a content calendar and campaign planner, along with advanced analytics dashboards and a unified inbox for all your social interactions. Larger companies with multiple teams and markets are more likely to choose the Full Suite, which takes everything from the Essentials plan and adds unlimited use of channels, reports, and teams, social media advertising, and competitor benchmarking. Your content calendar is one of the most important tools you’ll use in Brandwatch. It shows all your scheduled content. Your posts are scheduled by date, clearly identifiable by social platform. You can plan, schedule, edit, and post across your social networks. With Campaign Planner, you can map, create a brief, roll-out, and collaborate on your campaigns. The Sendible calendar gives you an overview of all the posts you have lined up over the coming days. It even allows you to optimise your posts and images without having to leave the platform. Sendible has also introduced a preview feature that shows you how your posts will look before you publish them. This makes it much easier to make edits and changes that will look great on each platform. Loomly also lets you schedule your posts and provides you with ideas and tips to optimise your posts, so you can get the most out of social media. The efficient approval workflow is one of the key highlights of this tool. It helps ensure that your posts get approval from the right people and that everyone on the team is on board. Iconosquare’s social publishing tool is versatile and easy to use. It leverages drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy to order content. You can use it to schedule your Instagram posts, Carousels, and Stories, Facebook statuses, and tweets. Iconosquare features a Media Library where you can upload images using Dropbox or OneDrive. You can categorize your content so you can easily search for images. It even tags your used images to stop the risk of you accidentally posting the same content twice. It lets you preview your Instagram feed, so you can understand what your Instagram feed will look like before you post your content. You can even schedule your first comment in advance, including your hashtags, for improved reach and engagement. For agencies who need client approval on scheduled content, Agorapulse offers a shared calendar add-on. With the shared calendar, clients can view and approve (or reject) scheduled content without having access to other parts of the Agorapulse dashboard. It even helps you find the best times to post on various social networks so you can optimise your social media calendar for better engagement. The ReQueue feature is perfect for maintaining a consistent social media presence. It automatically reshares your top-performing content at the right times to drive engagement.
You can draft your posts, customise them for each social network, send them for approvals, and manage it all using a single dashboard. The calendar feature makes it easier to visualise the posts you have lined up and make changes or optimisations as necessary. ContentCal is an excellent tool for team collaboration, Not only does it integrate with tools like Slack and Trello – its inbuilt collaboration feature lets you extend ideation and feedback as far out of the marketing team and into the wider business as you wish. This enables team members to create, view, and approve posts in one place, as well as discuss ongoing projects. Meet Edgar lets you create a content schedule based on category so you can evenly distribute different types of posts throughout the week. Each category is colour-coded so you can easily organise them in your calendar. The best part is that even after you’ve reached the end of your queue, the tool will automatically reshare content to maintain a consistent publishing schedule. It also comes with a feature that lets you filter your calendar according to group or account. So if you’re managing multiple social media accounts, this is an extremely useful feature to easily manage the specific calendars for each account. Monday.com includes numerous templates to give you a starting point. One of these templates is specifically designed for social media management. This template builds two boards:
Campaign ideas and requests Campaign progress and status
However, Monday.com is useful for far more than just social campaigns. You can incorporate your entire marketing activity into the platform. It helps you see the big picture immediately. You can display data in ways that are easy to digest and understand and gain critical insights across multiple boards from your projects, teams, and processes. You can add assignment cards to these boards for each social media platform and create to-do lists for each team member. This makes it extremely easy to keep track of your publishing schedule and individual tasks to keep everything on track. It even comes with an image editor that lets you add filters, borders, and text overlays as well as change the orientation or other aspects of your images. PromoRepublic offers a wide range of content options to choose from, including templates, videos, GIFs, and more. If you need help coming up with ideas, it also features a content calendar updated daily with timely social media post ideas. Moreover, its AI will recommend the best time to post based on your current published content for maximum visibility and engagement rate. StoryChief’s calendar has over one thousand first-party integrations to make your social media scheduling more efficient. This means you can easily manage all your accounts in one place and even collaborate with other team members in real-time to get feedback and approvals before anything goes live. It also has a feature that grades your posts for SEO and readability to help you rank higher on search engines. If you spot an empty time slot, it’s really straightforward to create a new post. Alternatively, if you want to edit, reschedule, or delete scheduled posts, you can do that too via the Planner. For example, to reschedule a post, it’s as simple as dragging it to the new time slot. Thanks to the use of icons and color coding, you can instantly distinguish between drafts, scheduled content, and posts that have already been published. It will also notify you if a particular post couldn’t be published. So, you’ll never miss a marketing opportunity. If you sign up for its Business or Enterprise plan, you’ll also be able to see extra approval statuses which are useful if you need to collaborate with other marketers.
What are the Benefits of Using a Social Media Content Calendar?
Using social media to build and market your brand has become a basic necessity in today’s internet and digital age. By using a social media calendar, you benefit from the following:
1) It saves you time by automating your content.
A lot of social media calendars come with AI social listening features that recommend the kind of content to post for your brand and its audience, from the word copy to the image copy to include. In fact, a number of them have done-for-you templates that are fully editable according to your brand guidelines. This means that there is less hassle of spending more time every day thinking of what to post and what it will look like. You will be pleasantly surprised by the level of productivity relief this automation can bring about.
2) You are more consistent with your social media posting schedule.
A social media content calendar can help you streamline your social media efforts to build a strong presence online. Using one for all your social media platforms helps you avoid any lapses in posting, which can result in a drop in engagement and reach. Simply set up your social media calendar to your preferred schedule in advance on when to go live, and it will do the work for you.
3) You get analytics to help improve your social media strategy.
Most social media calendars come with some form of automated analytics that show which content pieces perform well so you can adjust your future posts accordingly. You can even drill the data down even to the basic demographics of those who engage with your posts. This analytics feature allows you to change or replicate the content that resonates with your target audience.
4) You can measure the ROI by tracking social media leads.
If you are not using a social media calendar, it can be difficult to measure the return on investment (ROI) of your social media marketing. By having all your social media activity in one place, it is easier to track leads and conversions back to specific posts. When you determine which content pieces are driving the most traffic and conversions, you can adjust your strategy accordingly. This data can be invaluable in helping you close more deals and grow your business.
5) You can better plan and budget your social media marketing efforts.
By mapping out your social media calendar, it will be easier to keep track of your social content marketing activities for your followers. You can plan and be strategic with your online marketing efforts, which is essential for any business that wants to justify its social media spending.
6) It enables you to efficiently collaborate with other team members.
If you work with a team of marketers, a social media calendar can be a great time saver. Even if you are on separate teams or even time zones, it is easier for everyone to communicate and collaborate in one tool. By having a common reference point for your marketing activities, everyone can better coordinate their efforts accordingly so that strategic messaging reaches your intended audience at the optimal times.
Things to Consider When Choosing a Social Media Calendar
Using a social media calendar gives you a visual representation of your social marketing effort. So, it is important to provide your followers with a digest of awesome posts that correlate to business goals. Here are other things you should consider when selecting the right social media calendar for your needs:
Automation: The ability to automate social media posting tasks can save you a lot of time, especially if there are recurring post patterns you want to maintain for all your social media platforms. Scheduling: You should be able to actively schedule social media posts in advance so that you can better plan your content strategy. Ease of use: The best social media calendar tool for you should be easy to use and understand and navigate. Functionality: The tool should have the features and functions that you need to help you increase your engagement. An example of this is the import-export feature, which keeps you on top of your roadmap for referencing data or planning content releases. Analytics: What kind of data do you need to measure your social media efforts and performance each work day? The information you need will determine which features to use in your social media calendar. Customer Service: One thing to consider when choosing a social is the quality of customer service. If you encounter any technical difficulties, you want to know that there is someone who can help you resolve the issue promptly.
Pricing: What is your budget? Some social media calendars offer a free version with very limited access to features. Others offer a free trial, but afterward will charge you a monthly fee as you decide on which subscription plan fits your business.
Free Social Media Calendar Template
Not every business will have the resources to invest in a social media calendar tool. However, you can use Excel sheets to maintain an organized calendar for your social media posts. For this, following a template will help you ensure that you keep everything uniform for every team member to understand and follow. You can use this sample template from Small Business Trends for free and customize it per your unique requirement:
Final Thoughts
In a time when people are doing more research before buying anything, investing in a tool where you can stay on top of your social media presence can be a very profitable decision for your business. Using a social media calendar will increase the effectiveness of every campaign on all channels by ensuring that each post is best crystallized in content with good timing. Month-Year Scheduling social media posts ahead of time with a social media calendar can help take some of the pressure off you and your team while still ensuring that your social media channels are updated regularly. Check out the detailed features and pricing of each platform to find one that works for you. Even if you have limited resources, you can still create a social media calendar using the template given above and maintain it in an Excel sheet. At the end of the day, social media is all about building relationships. Maintaining a social media calendar can help you nurture those relationships by making it easier for you to connect with your audience regularly. Besides, if you stay on top of all of your accounts, you will be well on your way to growing your brand in the near future. 2. Hootsuite 3. Sendible 4. Loomly 5. Iconosquare 6. Agorapulse 7. Sprout Social 8. CoSchedule 9. Buffer 10. ContentCal 11. Meet Edgar 12. SocialPilot 13. Monday.com 14. Trello 15. Percolate 16. Hopper HQ 17. Promo Republic 18. SocialBee 19. Story Chief 20. Missinglettr
