Hello there, social media doves!

I’m a social media community manager for over half a dozen brands.  With so many social pages for each client, most needing to be actively updated and monitored seven days a week (including holidays), I have to plan ahead to stay on top of everything.

Here is my 2012 content calendar planning template, with every possible holiday I could find filled in for you.  Please feel free to use it, improve it, tailor it to your needs or just pay it forward.  I’m happy to answer any questions about it as well.  

For example: sometimes I have special paper.li newspapers around specific events, hashtags or product releases which is why it gets a column.  Facebook posts get better results if they have an uploaded photo rather than a thumbnail, so that’s why there is a special “photo link” column next to the “FB Posts” column… It’s a Google doc: http://bit.ly/sioJBj

Also, I’d love to connect!

• LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/daniloebs
• Twitter: @DaniLoebs
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dloebs

Dani

I’m glad I could be helpful, Keri!

Your spreadsheet sounds fantastic!  I would love to see how you do things, as I’m sure there is much I can learn.  I hope you’re having a lovely day, thank you for connecting!

Best,Dani

@daniloebs Thanks for sharing your calendar!  Content calendars are essential!

Really happy to be of help, Alexandra, Lisa and Erica!

The content calendar is always evolving, so I’d love to see formats that you’ve used as well!  This is probably template attempt number seven or eight for me.  Always a work in progress.

Working at a marketing agency, I’m trying to streamline my client content calendars to incorporate the efforts of the PR, Web and Ad departments.  That way, social can enhance a press release/website launch/in-store signage, etc. and vice versa!  I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a content calendar out of a pinterest board.  It would probably be best with food and travel clients.  What do you think?

Thank you all for the positive feedback!  Cheers!Dani

Thank you Social Dude!  So glad you like it!

@daniloebs thank you! This is great! I have been in the process of putting a calendar together for a few clients and this is really helpful! Thanks for sharing

@daniloebs Dani, as a newbie to the Editorial Calendar I would just like to ask you about your posting strategy with regards to these holidays you have entered into the tool. 

Do you plan particular posts themed around each holiday? 

Alan

@Alexandrabriggs  Haha, good call with the professional/personal separation for Pinterest accounts.  The service is still invite only, and they may be trying to keep it pure.  The requests for invites that I’ve sent for my clients’ brand e-mails have been in limbo for some time…

The artist in me feels like it may be detrimental to the service if it gets clogged with pins that are actually advertisements in disguise.  I don’t want to kill Pinterest’s coolness!  

On the other hand, I’m actually a real fan of my clients’ products, so I can probably post all of those avocado pictures with recipe links to my personal board and not disturb the purpose of the pin!  Perhaps that is the best way. Hopefully the service will allow for private boards in the future, so I can have something really cool to show to clients.  

@chatmarketing :
Thank you for all of the questions!  I am delighted to share, because I’ve really only learned from trial and error (sometimes from other folks’ trial and error, mostly my own).  I just started using paper.li in September, and it has proven to be a steady form of outreach.  An underused part of the service is the “editor’s note” at the right column of the daily newspaper.  You can post the reason for the paper, link back to your website and Facebook page, and add a human touch to the auto-shared postings.  I highly recommend it as a supplementary form of Twitter follower-building.

For a client like a city’s tourism association, for example, a series of paper.li newspapers can be planned for the year around seasonal events in that city.  They don’t all post at once, but they can be set to go whenever you would like to flip the switch. That is one way I use that particular column.

All of my clients have different reporting deadlines, and reporting happens in several phases: (1) data collection by my assistant, (2) research into industry trends and external factors that may have influenced the numbers (did Twitter have a fail whale that day?), (3) analysis and suggested strategy changes to implement for the next reporting period.   I like to put all of those deadlines in that column as well as deadlines from other departments so I can figure out things like “did our fan count spike on the same day that press release with the Facebook link went viral?”

On holidays: holiday changes in your profile pic are regarded by many as a best practice for brands.  It gives users the immediate impression that you are up to date and producing content that may be relevant to them at that exact moment.  Holiday posts on Facebook seem to be a must, but the aggregation of those posts (ie. 35 of your contacts posted about “Christmas”) is starting to defeat the purpose.

So there are some answers to your questions!  Hope they were helpful!

@nitasexton and @leecg : I’m glad you like the template!  I’m sure you both will improve upon it.

-Dani

@daniloebs Thank you so much for offering this to the club! Def going to use it! Added to my graditude list! Gracias!

@lisaschulteis @theodoresturos @sheilaedens @nitasexton @chatmarketing @leecg @alexandrabriggs @thatsocialdude @einsley @connectyou :

Thank you all for replying to this forum topic with such positive feedback and kindness!  It is a pleasure to connect with you.

I just found a great template resource from the Content Marketing Strategy Institute: 10 Must-Have Templates For Content Marketers.  I thought you all would be interested!

Thank you for making my life a little sunnier!Dani

@alexandrabriggs  How long did it take you to get an account at Pinterest? I asked for an invite a couple of days ago and haven’t received one yet.

@daniloebs  The content calendar is awesome! Thank you so much!!!

@daniloebs Thanks very much for answering my questions so fully. I love the idea of using paper.ly for short term events. I thought that paper.ly was either on or off but if you can set dates then that adds an extra dimension. I’ll need to have a play around with it to figure out how you do that but knowing that it is possible is a good first step. Thanks also for the idea of theming my profile pic according to the holidays. As you say, it is another great way to appear current.

Thanks so much for sharing!

@daniloebs Thanks for this list – definitely comes in handy when scheduling content!

@daniloebs  Love the spreadsheet template !!!

@daniloebs  Happy, happy birthday!!! Hope it’s your best one yet!!!

Thank you  @amyhallbiz and  @valissa !

@daniloebs Dani, am I right in thinking that the ‘Themes’ column in your calandar would be used to highlight the gennaral themes for your status updates, so for example if this was SME using the guide to promote their Facebook Success Summit, the theme from anout a month before the start of the event would be ‘Facebook’ as that ties in with what they are looking to promote? 

Thanks so much Dani – very useful. I now need to go away in a quiet room and start turning the grey matter over…

Have a lovely weekend

Thank you  @matloup and  @deairby.  Always happy to help.

I have improved the template by adding another tab for what I call “content bins.”  In the scenario that you find a wealth of good content but are unsure of when to schedule it, save it in the content bin for a slow content day.  Often when my intern(s) have little to do, I task them with filling the bins.  Monitoring tools like HootSuite have a similar capability, where team supervisors must approve content before it goes live.  This is the free way.

I have included a few entries in red as examples for how I would recommend using the template for a food brand as well as hints and explanations by column.  http://bit.ly/wOp7tX

It gives me great joy to be useful, I’m so glad to have helped and hope this template is even better!

Thank you,

Dani

Thank you,  @atlantarobin!  Very happy to help!

@daniloebs Great calendaring solution. I had created a simpler version for editorial/marketing, but I like this better.Thanks.

Thank you Dani for the template. I am going to find this very helpful and will follow you as well.

Thank’s so much for sharing! Definitely can use one.

Thank you so much for sharing! This will be great to use- I currently keep everything organized by hand but keeping it in an excel spreadsheet will be easier. 

I also appreciate it, and will be happy to connect on Linkedin. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you for sharing this application. I also found dates I have missed!

Thank you for sharing. Does anyone use or have a favorite content planning software? 

Thanks, this rocks!

@daniloebs Thank you for making the cool content planning tool. As a music therapist who works with older adults and young children there are a few other days I like to celebrate. Being able to copy and make it my own is a great idea. I love you idea of papers for different occasions. That is one I will run with.

Thanks so much!

@daniloebs – I opened the file but I can’t see the full description because I can’t extend the Excel file windows, do you have any idea why that is?

Thanks  @deereinhardt that’s very helpful!

Good question, @stacyharp
When you click on the cell, you should be able to see the full text in the above function window.  If you download the calendar you can do this in Excel as well, or you can “select all”, click “format” then click “format cells” when the box comes up, go to the tab that says “alignment” and check off “wrap text.”  Then you’ll be able to see all of the text in all of the cells.

Hope that helps!

@DaniLoebs – I celebrate lots of fun, non-traditional holidays. For instance,     

• This Tuesday is pancake day. 
• February 28th is Tooth Fairy Day, 
• March 1st is Pig Day
• March 2nd – Dr. Seuss Day
• March 4th – (the name says it all – march forth)
• March 5th is Fun Facts About Names Day

@melissacalder I like sprinklr and am about to try social flow.

 @daniloebs Thanks-that looks like a great tool

I am feeling excited for all the day has to offer, @lyndagoldman-copywriting.

@webizingllc  A pleasure to help!

@daniloebs Dani, I’m so new I need to read an article to understand the value of the content calendar template.  My background is education, so I’m not, in terms of social media, understanding how you are all throwing around the word “theme”.  I mean, holidays, ok, that’s obvious, but other ‘themes”.  Are they built around my companies own parts of the business or something?

Whew! Thx , Dani, topics I can handle! Less to learn! And now…..I will only have one column for one company, but VERY nicely done spreadsheet and so kind of you to share it will us all.  Barbara

Very happy to oblige @penworth !

Great info @daniloebs. With our increasingly busy lives we need to be able to schedule everything… and I mean everything.

I created a very similar spreadsheet to yours but kind of flipped (transformed) on its side, meaning that the “events” are on the side (1st column) and dates in the heading row. My purpose for doing this is that I can add statistics to outlying date fields (after each “event”) and then calculate traffic generated.

For example: I will publish a post on day1 and tweet it from the blog account as well as trigger the RSS. I can note the “reactions” to this event.

The next day I will retweet it from my personal account and also search for other blog posts that are relevant so that I can comment on them with the appropriate links. Here also noting the reactions.

This goes on for each initial activity into the future as well as each new activity. It is getting to the point that I want to make a small database for this for easier management as a spreadsheet can get a bit unwieldy.

Thank you, everyone!  This is really great info!

@topmarkmedias Happy to help!  Paper.li features top picks on their home page, here’s a paper I found there tonight:  http://paper.li/WomensRadio/female-musicians 

Lately paper.li has actually been letting me down. They had a three day outage last week and their filters seem to be getting buggier. I’m currently looking into other tools to organize tweets. 

The Tweeted Times offers thematic newspapers where you can create an online paper for any topic of interest. Topical newspapers are based on streams produced by Twitter Lists or Twitter Search. This is less of a variety of offerings than paper.li has.  It appears the service organizes by most popular links.
Percolate looks the most promising for brands, as long as they announce some reasonable pricing options. Checking through the client list, it all seems very enterprise-level for now.
Anyone know of any others that may be useful for brands? 

Great.. Thank you… Now I have another great filling for  my Social Media Sandwich….It will surely feed many. 

Hehehe @eclecticartsnet now I’m hungry!  Thanks!

@gabriellamireles Wow! I’m glad that social media is being mentioned at all at the university level, but I’m also glad to help! Maybe you should guest teach on the topic.