Imagine having a quick and fast way to get up to speed with social media or to get your work done in less time (and with more confidence).
When I’m in a pinch or into something new, one of the first places I turn is toward a template. I’ve built a stash of headline formulas, social media updates, and more to help organize my mind when it comes to working fast and learning something new.
Templates can be a lifesaver and a time-saver.
I have my favorite go-to templates, and I was also able to dig up a huge number of others, created by some really amazing folks who are generous to help us all work smarter. I’ve collected them here below. I’d love to know which ones might be useful to you!
24 Time-Saving Social Media Templates
The list below is full of a variety of different templates, some helpful in a high-level way of organizing your marketing efforts and others in a specific area of social media marketing and sharing. If you have a favorite template that didn’t appear on the list here, let me know in the comments!
1. Social Media Report
We built this social media report to be easy to fill with just a simple Buffer data export. Take your Buffer stats and import them here, and you can see stats for the past week as well as how they compare week-over-week and to your monthly benchmark.
Instructions:
- Export your data from Buffer or add in some stats manually
- The spreadsheet does the rest!
>> Free download <<
2. The 15-Minute Social Media Audit
We’ve used this template on a monthly basis to check in with our social media accounts and see how things are growing, changing, and (hopefully!) improving. It’s also good to run through the list here to stay on top of any new networks or pages that might need a visual update to stay consistent with your branding.
Instructions:
- Add all your social media profiles to the spreadsheet
- Duplicate the sheet every month to have a fresh template to start with
>> Free download <<
3. Social Media Publishing Schedule
This template comes in handy for each new blog post that you publish—a way to extend the life of your content and get as much value as possible. Share a new piece of content multiple times, and schedule these shares once the article publishes. Here’s the schedule we go by:
Other great scheduling templates include:
- 1 headline tweet, 1 question tweet, 1 quote tweet per post (via)
- CoSchedule’s reposting schedule
4. Tweet Headline Templates
We get a lot of mileage out of headline formulas at Buffer, and a lot of this value comes in the way that we can use variations to share on Twitter and other social media outlets. In many ways, we consider these headline formulas to be a really excellent source of Twitter headline templates. I’ve placed them all in a PDF here for you to reference easily:
>> Free download <<
5. Copywriting templates
A copywriting template might seem a bit far afield from social media, but where we find the most social media value from these templates is in composing a short update or thinking through the value and message behind what we’re sharing.
For instance, here is a handful of copywriting templates that we’ve found valuable to think on while we’re scheduling new updates:
- Before – After – Bridge
- Problem – Agitate – Solve
- The 5 Basic Objections
- The 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 Formula
Michael Hyatt has a great system also for blog posts and longer social media updates:
Killer Opener – Story – Main point – Practical application
(via)
The copywriting formulas are all here in this blog post.
6. Ways to write an update
We’ve written before about 71 ways to write a social media update (a handful of variations for each of the different networks). It’s been helpful for me to refer to this list often for new ideas and templates to try. Here is a sampling of favorites:
- Multi-line tweet
- Fill-in-the-blank
- Title case vs. Sentence case updates
- [NEW], [new post] or [blog post] to tell people what they’re clicking on (via)
All these templates are available in a spreadsheet where you can quickly test out and reference the different styles.
>> Free download <<
7. Visual social media templates
Visuals are a key component of the social media updates we post at Buffer, and one of the best resources for developing a system of visual sharing is the templates provided by HubSpot. The free download gives you 30 rectangular and 30 square templates, plus an assortment of warm, cool, and neutral color combinations.
Instructions:
- Download the PowerPoint files and open in PowerPoint or Google Drive
- Choose the template you wish to edit
- Add your text
- Save to your computer
- Share to social media
8. Influencer Marketing Template
With influencer tracking, you can keep on file all those who have reached out to you or linked to you or otherwise made an impact on your social media profiles. You can turn the list into potential/future outreach options as well.
The great part of this template from Content Marketing Institute is that it includes social media follower numbers as well so you can easily combine your website and social strategies together.
9. Editorial Calendar Publishing Schedule
Along with organizing the way that you’ll promote each of your articles, it can be helpful to see how your content and social media marketing fit together from a bird’s eye view. Which campaigns are coming up? Which holidays? Which major events? What product launches or feature releases are on the horizon? Things like this can be great to add into an editorial calendar so that all your many events and activities can mesh with your social media marketing.
Instructions:
- Print off the editorial calendar template
- Add your big events to the year-at-a-glance view
- Add events, campaigns, holidays, etc. to the monthly templates
10. Social Media Strategy Template
Most all good social media programs begin with a strategy. The strategy template from Hootsuite covers all the essentials:
- Clarify your business’ social media goals
- Audit your current social media status
- Create or improve your social media profiles
- Develop your content strategy
- Use analytics to track progress and adjust your strategy as needed
Plug in your business’s unique info, and away you go!
11. Social Media Content Calendar
Adding your content to this template from Hootsuite will help you stay on top of the performance of your social shares, making sure that you’re focusing on the best-performing posts and maintaining a steady stream of content across all your accounts.
Instructions:
- Place the title or category of your update in the first column.
- Add the update text to the second column.
- Add the URL to the third column.
- Check back on the performance of the post and add the number of clicks (or whichever metric is most key for you)
12. Social Media Image Sizes
There are many great social media image size templates out there. The one I keep coming back to is this resource from Sprout Social, which lists the ideal image sizes for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, and Tumblr.
Sprout Social keeps the list always up to date, and you can find the ideal image sizes either via the blog post or via a free Google Doc.
>> Free resource <<
13. Social Network Overview
For specific advice on each network—including a simple tutorial on identifying the different pieces and parts of the social network—the templates from Short Stack provide a lot of great value. Each one is available as a separate download so you can pick and choose the ones that are relevant to your strategy.
14. Social Listening Template
This helpful template from James Prideaux allows you to track the conversations and engagement happening around your business or keywords.
Instructions: Add the following information to the spreadsheet.
- The social network where the conversation happens
- The day and time
- The post and topic
- The potential reach, clicks, and reshares
>> Free download <<
15. Twitter Chat Planning template
This template from Cathy McPhillips is great for those interested in starting up a Twitter chat. We’ve found that many of the fill-in-the-blank options here are similar to what we do for our weekly #bufferchat.
>> Free download <<
Bonus: Free Photoshop plug-in for ideal image sizes
Social Kit—a free resource from Source—contains templates for Facebook, Twitter, Google, and YouTube, as well as custom social buttons. If you’re savvy with Photoshop, you can download the Social Kit plugin for free and have an easy way to build ideal social images for your business.
Over to you
Which templates do you use to help with your social media marketing?
Which ones from the list above looked most helpful?
I’d love to hear from you about your favorites! Feel free to leave a comment below.
Image sources: Pablo, UnSplash, IconFinder
