Managing content and the conversations around it have always been part of the PR job description. But today, there are many more communications vehicles, with advanced content marketing and management increasingly falling into the PR domain for many organizations. While there are some tools that simplify the end-to-end editorial and social media management process, they’re usually outside the budget range of Solo PR Pros and their clients. Having a repository of Conversation Calendar Templates can be enormously beneficial in meeting varied client needs.
While a separate Google Calendar is one option for planning, most clients feel more comfortable with an actual file to review. So once you’ve thought through your strategies, there are three calendar approaches I’ve found work best to manage updates in most client situations (note that these are separate from the blog editorial calendar process).
All of the calendar examples below use a separate worksheet for each month, with activities broken down by week, and you’ll customize the social networks/tactics based on each individual client (for example, some clients may have more emphasis on YouTube or Pinterest, others may not use LinkedIn).
Solo PR PRO Premium members, click here to access these examples as customizable templates.
New! Not a communications consultant? By popular demand, save time and purchase a .zip file of these templates in Excel for a one-time fee of just $19. $9! Click Here
Social Media Calendar Examples
Social Media Icon Calendar
1. If you want something pretty to show a client that doesn’t have a ton of news/content, a calendar that includes colorful icons can be very well-received (click to view larger):
Topic-Driven Conversation Calendar
2. Another way to handle, especially if you have an organization with a steady stream of new assets and events, is to focus on the new items without detailing what needs to be said or covered on each social network or communications vehicle:
In this case, unless you have an additional scheduling calendar, you’re trusting the person in charge of each communications vehicle to express the information appropriately. So, if you handle all the communications and social media for a busy client and have a good level of trust with them, this can be a nice way to show what you’ll be promoting when (and/or for them to report to you what will be available), without having to detail each message in advance.
Highly Detailed Schedule
3. For clients with a heavy emphasis on social media, especially those who like to be hands-on in their review of how messages will be expressed, the following calendar works well:
By including all of your channels on the left and listing out each communication (with color coding), you can see at-a-glance everything planned for a given week, and adjust as needed. This calendar can be as general or as detailed as you need it to be (word-for-word tweets, for example), and can be customized for any number of assets.
Of course, all of these formats can be combined or used in tandem. You can also combine them with other tools such as Trello to have a visual snapshot and a manageable calendar. If you’re working collaboratively with a team, Google Docs (now Google Drive) remains one of the best tools for handling content management, since all of the above calendars can be placed online as a spreadsheet and edited by those with permission on a desktop or on the go.
As we know, scheduled updates don't negate the need for real-time engagement across social networks, but proper planning is a necessity to stay on top of the many communications vehicles at our disposal today. If you’ve used other methods with success (or if you have any lessons learned to share), please let us know in the comments!
Solo PR PRO Premium members have access to these templates and much more. See all the benefits (including access to customizable templates of all the calendars shown here) and join today: https://soloprpro.com/join/
Not a communications consultant? By popular demand, now you can get the templates, too! Save time and purchase a .zip file of these templates in Excel for a one-time fee of just $9. Click Here
Love these examples! Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for sharing this! They are very helpful in organizing content!
Hi Nikki- glad you found it useful.
You’re welcome! Hopefully it gave you some new ideas — thanks for the kind words.
Great and incredibly helpful
Great ideas…
http://sippitechnologies.com/
I am so glad that I stumbled upon this today! We are in the process of reworking our content calendar! What awesome examples!
Great post and love the examples!
A good editorial calendar should be able to publish to social media sites. It should work with Twitter and Facebook because that’s where your customers hang out. Even better, it should combine content curation with content creation. Namely, it should be very easy to curate content, but also very easy to integrate with existing blogging platform like WordPress.
ContentDJ has a good social media calendar(http://bit.ly/150LBCJ). It integrates with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress. Each social account is color coded. You can drag and drop to schedule posts.
The tool also helps you find the most shareable content to publish.
Great templates, thanks Kellye!
this is a whole bunch of knowledge. Many social media marketers will be benefited from it, I do get a lot of learning from your post. Now I know how to approach on my social media profiles also the time to post it. Thanks
Where can I find the template used for the first example?
Hi CMG- We provided screenshots for those who would like to re-create the templates themselves. Downloadable/ready to customize templates are available for members of Solo PR PRO Premium. Pricing starts at $25/month – learn more at soloprpro.com/join
Thanks for sharing.Helphul
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http://calendar-template.haden.eu/
Here’s another tip Kelly – Try Google Calendar + ClipPod. We’re using it for planning and discussing our editorial and social media calendars and it’s worked out quite well so far.
Yeah, but is way too expensive at $600 per year for the cheapest option.
How much is this Calender?
Hi Michael-Ann- if you’re asking how much it costs to access the templates shared above, Solo PR PRO Premium membership is $25/month or $179/year: https://soloprpro.com/join/
You can cancel at any time, and all of our hundreds of pages of Premium content is available to new members on day 1, so you can try us out and get these calendars for just $25. Hope that helps, and feel free to use our Contact Us form if you have any further questions!
Thanks for the prompt answer Kelly!
Very useful content marketing calendar. Thanks for sharing.
Awesome examples!
I agree templates are the best way to organise all your information and to show your clients you’re on top of things.
One social media template i found that is super awesome from a design perspective is this one from
https://qwilr.com/templates/social-media-proposal-template/ .
hope you find this information useful
Hi, I love the first example here (1 – Social Media Icon Calendar) and think I’d like to pay the one-time fee to download it – can you fill in content where the ‘pretty’ icons are, or is it just ‘pretty’ icons?
Thanks!
Hey, Kellye!
I was looking for content on digital marketing today when I stumbled on your excellent resource. Great stuff!
In fact, I recently published a guide on social media proposal last month with a template for free. It’s a piece on what are the most important parts of a proposal today and the best ways to make to close the client.
I noticed your article didn’t mention the steps to get new clients, before creating a social media calendar (which usually is the hardest, ha-ha!) and I’ve added a few scripts on how to reach new potential clients + a presentation that anyone can download to prepare for the client in a few minutes. And I believe it might make a nice addition to your piece.
Here it is in case you’d like to check it out. If you’re able to add in this resource to your article, we can definitely share it across Planable’s social networks & my own.
Let me know how this sounds and if there’s anything else we can help you with.
Cheers,