How to build a social media content calendar

Before you fill anything in, answer one question: what should this month's plan achieve? Awareness, a product announcement, messages or bookings are all valid answers. Once the goal is clear, deciding which posts earn a slot gets easier.

For each channel, set a realistic number of posts per week. Planning five posts and delivering three works worse than delivering three on a steady schedule.

• List the channels you actively manage.
• Write the weekly post count for each one.
• Decide whether the same content will be adapted for more than one channel.

Looking for a topic from scratch every week slows the calendar down. Pick three or four recurring themes, such as product tips, customer questions, a look behind the scenes and announcements. Once you spread them across the days of the week, the empty slots shrink on their own.

Campaign launches, product releases and dates that matter in your industry are the fixed points of the calendar. Place them first, then spread your recurring themes around them. That way an important announcement doesn't land on the same day as an ordinary post.

A full calendar depends on having material ready. Collect topics in an idea list as they come to you. When publishing week arrives, you turn a developed idea into a post instead of starting from a blank page.

Before the week starts, go through the calendar and check:

• Are there any empty days?
• Do two heavy pieces of content land on the same channel on the same day?
• Is a campaign post still waiting for approval?

In Fourdeck, posts show up on the calendar. You can see at a glance which days are full and which are empty, and before publishing starts you can move a post to another day or send it back to draft.

A calendar is not a document you write once and leave. At the end of the month, check which themes got more engagement, cut back on the ones that didn't work and give the others more room. Start next month's plan from those decisions.