Here are nine social media templates to save you a ton of time and effort.
There’s one for every stage of your social marketing journey—from planning and creating content, to publishing posts and measuring results.
Fill the templates out, customize them, and execute. It’s that simple.
You’ll see results, too.
1. Social media strategy template
Whether you’re starting from scratch or looking to improve your current social marketing strategy, you need this essential resource.
The template makes it easy to:
- Clarify your goals on social media and how they support your overall business objectives
- Conduct research on your ideal customer so you can better target them
- Gather intel on the competition so you can stay ahead
- Audit the current state of your social media presence
- Create or improve all your social media profiles
- Develop a thoughtful content strategy and set a publishing schedule you can stick to
- Track your progress and adjust your strategy as needed
Get the free social media strategy template. To use it in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
2. Social media audit template
This template will show what is and isn’t working on social media—and what to do next. It’s also handy for identifying impostor accounts, out-of-date profiles, and new opportunities to engage your audience.
Gathering these insights will help you get the most out of your social marketing budget and resources.
→ Get the free social media audit template. To use it in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
Bonus: our companion article on conducting a social media audit guides you through the process step-by-step.
3. Social media content calendar
This is one of the most important tools to include in your social media toolkit.
A social media content calendar lets you plan and schedule all your social content in advance for maximum impact.
It will also help you:
- Identify and fill gaps in publishing
- Remember important dates and events
- Find your ideal content mix
- Ensure your content is fresh and performing well
- Collaborate with teammates and effectively allocate resources
- Gain visibility across your organization
→ Get the free, customizable social media calendar template. To use it in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
If you need help customizing the template, or you’re looking for more content calendar examples, check out our guide to creating your own social media content calendar.
4. Editorial content calendar
Another type of calendar favored by social media pros is the editorial content calendar.
This resource will gather all your content projects into one document to help you plan and schedule each release.
The easiest way to organize a content calendar is by using a separate tab for each month within Google Sheets or an Excel Spreadsheet for each month. Activities can be broken down by day or hour, depending on the volume and cadence of your content plan.
Your editorial calendar should include basic information about each of these projects:
- Title or description of the content
- Links to supporting documents, like content briefs
- Author or writer
- Deadline
- Channels you plan to promote it on
→ Get the basic editorial calendar template and add columns or rows as required. To use it in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
5. Social media analytics report template
Recording and analyzing social media results is key to proving the value of your efforts.
Get the free social media strategy template. To use it in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
But where to begin? We’ve created a useful template with a few of the key items you should record, with tabs to keep track of metrics for your different social channels. While the key figures may vary for your brand, these basics are important for everyone to keep track of.
This template gives you space to record social media metrics for every major network, including…
- Followers gained/lost
- Engagement
- Shares
- Views
- Click-throughs
- And much more
→ Get the free social media analytics report template. To use it in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
If you’re new to measurement, be sure to read our beginner’s guide to using social media analytics. The article includes a list of analytics tools that make reporting even easier.
6. Social media report template
The social media report template is for presenting results to your boss, clients, teammates, or any other stakeholder.
Yes, it will include hard data captured in the analytics report template. But, it also includes space for context and analysis. Both are important to include when presenting to people who aren’t as close to your business as you are.
Use this template to make recommendations, share lessons learned, and make recommendations for future strategies.
→ Get the free social media reporting template. To use it in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
Read our step-by-step guide on how to report your social media results for maximum impact.
7. Social media image sizes
Okay, calling this a template might be a bit of a stretch, but it will still save you time on social.
The quick reference resource includes image dimensions and specs for profile, feed, header and ads images for every network. And images of course are key when it comes to grabbing the audience’s attention and making a good first impression.
→ Get the always-up-to-date social media image size cheat sheet.
8. Social media bios template
Along with your profile photo, your profile’s bio plays a big role in the first impression you make on followers.
A bio on any platform should address six key pieces of information:
- Who you are
- Where you work
- What you do
- The topics that interest you
- Your brand’s tone
- How someone can get in touch with you
To make sure you cover your bases, we’ve created easy-to-use templates out of bios from some of the top brands on social media so you can effortlessly create your own.
Simply fill in the blanks and copy and paste the final product to your profile.
→ Get the free social media bio templates for every network. To use them in Google Docs, click the “File” tab and then select “Make a copy…” from the dropdown menu.
Bonus: read our guide to writing the perfect social media bio for every network.
9. Bulk upload template
Publishing or scheduling social media posts across multiple networks one-by-one can be a big drain on your most precious resource: time.
But if you use Hootsuite’s social media management tool you can bulk upload up to 350 social media messages across networks.
To do so you need to create a .CSV file of all the social messages you’d like to upload, placed in a specific format:
- Column A: Date and time (24-hour time). The accepted date formats are below. Choose one format and use it exclusively throughout:
- day/month/year hour:minute
- month/day/year hour:minute
- year/month/day hour:minute
- year/day/month hour:minute
- Column B: Your message. For Twitter there is a limit of 280 characters, including the URL (which reserves at most 23 characters).
- Column C: URL (optional). Enter the full URL. You can choose to have these automatically shortened to Ow.ly links.
- Times must be set in the future (at least 10 minutes from upload time).
- Posting times must end in either a 5 or a 0, i.e. 10:45 or 10:50. Define only one post per time slot.
- Duplicate posts are not allowed (it’s bad social media practice).
Unfortunately Excel often causes formatting issues, so we don’t recommend using it to build your spreadsheet. We prefer using Google Sheets for creating CSV files. You can also use TextEdit (1.7+) or TextWrangler.
Note: If you decide to use Excel, you’ll need to tell Excel that that data in column is text and not to be changed or it will try to convert your dates into a different display that will fail your upload.
→ Get the free, pre-formatted social media message bulk upload template. Open and customize it in Google Docs or any program that accepts CSV files.
Bonus templates for social media
Want to get even more out of your social strategy? Here are four more essential resources:
- How to conduct customer research to better target prospects (includes a template for creating audience/customer personas)
- How to work with social media influencers in 2019 (bonus template for brands building a influencer marketing strategy)
- Everything your brand pitch must include (with a template for social media influencers looking to partner with brands)
- How to write a social media proposal to win clients (template for freelance social media professionals and social media agencies)
Looking to increase your efficiency and performance on social media? Use Hootsuite to manage all your profiles from a single dashboard. Publish and schedule posts, monitor relevant conversations, engage your audience, and measure results. Try it free today.