How to Plan 30 Days of Social Media Content in One Hour

Have you seen those posts that go something like “create a month’s worth of social media content in 0.2 seconds!” because same.

As someone who creates social media content for a living, I assure you that it is not normal, nor advised, to create months of content in one day. 

It might work for certain businesses. And if you can do more in less time, good for you. 

But I’ve found that A) creating 30 days of high-performing social media content across the Instagram feed, stories, reels, TikTok, graphics, etc is going to take way longer than one day. And B) when working with CPG brands, there is such a thing as creating too much content. 

Because things change. Instagram launches a new feature every 3 seconds. You never know when you’re going to experience supply chain issues, decide to move up a launch, a brand might reach out to do a collaboration, etc.

Life happens. Business happens. 

That being said, there is value in planning months of social media content. 

Why You Should Plan Ahead

This is one of the many reasons you might invest in done-for-you social media content; to get help with content planning.

When you plan ahead, you have an overview of what’s coming up. You get more time to create stellar social media content your community will engage with. You get flexibility for last minute changes. And you get consistency, which we all know is important on socials.

But you also get the chance to make the most of founder-led storytelling. Rather than looking at each post on its own, when you plan ahead you can create a story that’ll help your community understand who you are, what you do, how you can help them, and why they should care.

This is especially important for launches! For each new launch you want to walk your audience through the story of why and how this product will improve their lives.

How to Plan 30 Days of Social Media Content in One Hour

Step #1: Open your marketing calendar, notebook, a google doc, whatever you use to track your social media content.

Step #2: Add your launches, sales, collaborations, or campaigns. This is your A-List content: the most important posts that have to be published. Each topic will likely need more than one post to be properly promoted, so making room for them first is essential.

“What do you mean I’ll need more than one post for each topic??” 

I’m so glad you asked. 

For example, let’s say you’re launching a sale. Posting once won’t capture that many eyeballs. Instead you might have a launch post, share a meme related to the sale, create a reel to entice new customers to shop, use a graphic to show all of the items on sale, and have a last chance post to capture last minute shoppers. That’s five feed posts for one sale! You’re welcome.

Maybe sales aren’t your thing.

So let’s say you’re launching a new product. You might tease the new product two weeks before launch, the day before launch, have a big launch post, use a reel to share the new product with new customers, use a graphic to share the benefits of the product, use a meme to show how your customers will feel once they buy your product, and share user generated content or reviews from happy customers. That’s seven posts for one launch, just in the first week. Enjoy! 

Step #3: Add your B-List content. This could be monthly features like a round up of user generated content or testimonials, shout-outs to your local retailers, a monthly blog round-up, or a product of the month.

It’s the content you post regularly, but it’s not *as* important as the A-List and their dates are more flexible. 

Step #4: Fill in the rest of your calendar with the ideas you’ve saved over the last month. 

What’s that, you don’t have ideas saved? Here’s how you’ll get them. 

Find one place to write down all your marketing ideas. There’s no pressure to organize this: the could be for a blog post, email newsletter, or social post. But find one place to keep all the ideas and anytime you think of something, add it. You don’t even have to use the ideas but this will get you into the habit of capturing any and all ideas for your marketing. And it’ll mean you always have a list of ideas to pull from. 

Include inspiration here wherever possible: if you saw a cool trending meme, add the link. A funny reel audio? Add the link. And when you’re sitting down to plan the content, use these ideas to fill in any gaps in your content calendar.

If you’ve gone through steps #1-4 and still have empty spaces on your social media calendar, pull up your Instagram insights. Look at your top-performing content and identify key themes or topics. Then consider how you can repurpose them. Have you learned more on the topic? Could you turn a carousel post into a reel? Use these ideas to fill in the remaining spaces.

Your Next Steps

And there you go! You’ve got an entire month of content planned out, ready to be created and shared with your customers. Want even more social media content ideas? Download 54 social media hook ideas here and get 30 days of done-for-you content here.

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Wait, Who Am I?

Hiiii! 👋🏻 I’m Sarah, a CPG social media strategist with over 10 years of experience. I went from starting a clean beauty blog right out of high school to managing social media for Canada’s largest wellness retailer. Now I live in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina, helping high-growth entrepreneurs get SEEN so they can build a crazy fun life their business supports, and not the other way around.

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