Perfectly planned social media marketing with our 2021 editorial plan template

Why is a social media editorial plan necessary?

Social media platforms are playing an increasingly important role, not only in marketing, but also in business development as a whole. That’s hardly surprising, since they offer the opportunity to directly interact with every imaginable target group and customer. By adopting a suitable social media strategy, companies of all sizes and from all industries can activate specific target groups in the desired way, using precisely the right content, and on precisely the right channel.

However, to implement your social media strategy, you need three things above all:

• A clearly formulated goal.
• A wisely planned social media budget.
• A plan that visualizes and defines the path for reaching your objective.

A social media editorial plan can help you achieve the last point.

What are the benefits of a social media editorial plan?

For social media management itself, there are of course a vast array of software solutions and tools available, and their suitability for reaching your goals varies depending on your specific purpose, strategy, and budget. The benefits of a free editorial plan that can be flexibly adapted to your own requirements are obvious, though – and definitely cannot be fully replaced by a single tool:

• All processes are clearly visualized and their progress status is immediately visible.
• The tasks and responsibilities of different employees are clearly assigned.
• Every employee can see what needs to be done at all times.
• The budget and time required can be calculated in advance.
• If several people are working on a campaign, the editorial plan creates order and structure.
• The documentation of all activities is visible across channels. Every action can be reconstructed and evaluated at a later time.
• When crossposting, you always have an overview of which channels you could still post on or have already posted the same content on.
• You can pre-plan posts and campaigns as well as systematically schedule entire seeding plans in advance.
• Creative work becomes easier in the long run because you can note down trends and ideas right away and flesh them out later.

The social media editorial plan is your roadmap to success, whether you want to increase your brand awareness or focus on content marketing or social selling. When combined with a cloud and document sharing service, multiple members of a social media marketing team can also work on our 2021 social media editorial plan template at the same time. Download it here now for free:

What should a social media editorial plan contain?

A social media editorial plan should be transparent, have a clear structure, and enable you to plan and schedule. Certain categories should be incorporated in every editorial plan. These essentially consist of the following questions:

• What content is to be communicated?
• How should this content be packaged? What format is suitable for it?
• When should the content be published?
• Who is responsible for which editing step?
• Where should the content appear? Which channels is it to be published on?

The social media editorial plan should provide the necessary space and structure to answer these questions. Our social media editorial plan template for 2021 has designated columns and fields for this purpose:

• Large calendar section: Here, you’ll not only find a calendar containing the calendar week, date, and day of the week, but also information on public holidays, big events that have been planned for 2021 so far, as well as theme and action days as inspiration for generating content.
• Topic: Here, there is space to enter an initial definition of the thematic content for the planned post.
• Campaign: You should try match the planned post to an overarching campaign that is already running.
• Notes: Here, you can write additional comments that are important for creating the post.
• Link: This column is for entering links that will be integrated in the post.
• Photo/video: Media content (image, graphic, video) that is required to create the post can be linked here.
• Keywords: Here, you can note down keywords or hashtags that need to be included in the post.
• Deadline: Enter what time the post should be published.
• Person in charge: Who is responsible for creating and publishing the post?
• Seeding: Who is responsible for seeding, i.e. spreading, the content?
• Progress status: The progress status lets you immediately see whether a post is still in the planning stages, is in progress, is awaiting approval, or has already been published. If you don’t see the status category you need in the dropdown list, you can simply add it.
• Fields for formulating and preparing each post for every individual social media channel.

Creating your plan with our 2021 social media editorial plan template

There’s no one perfect social media editorial plan template for every social media strategy. Instead, it is far more important that the plan can be easily customized with regard to

• the specific topic,
• the choice of social media channels used,
• your company’s product and service portfolio,
• the internal workflows within your social media team, and
• your target group communication.

For that reason, our 2021 social media editorial plan template is designed precisely so that you can quickly and conveniently adapt it to your specific needs by adding, modifying, or deleting columns, rows, and fields. Download it here now for free!