Business

How to Create Your Own Content Calendar (Tips for Content Creators)

July 18, 2022

I’m Tara.
 I'm an influencer strategy expert, the host of Project Influence the Podcast, and the founder of Creator Cube™, a co-creating space for content creators. 
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Gimme that

I recently shared over 50+ Instagram Reel ideas for Content Creators to start growing their Instagram in 2022. And like usual after I share something like that, my DM’s blew up with people asking me how they can organize all of that content to stay on top of posting consistently! 


You’ll learn in this post why having a content calendar can help you post consistently, avoid burnout and stay organized in your Influencer Business. But if you’re really ready to take your business full-time, you need the Influencer Blueprint™. I take all of the guesswork out of Influencing and growing your business. 

And did you know that the doors to the Influencer Blueprint™ are closing on Tuesday, the 26th of July? If you’ve been looking for an exact framework on how to grow your Influencer Business and Instagram in 2022, this is your sign to JOIN NOW before we close the doors! 

Join my free class, ‘How to Land Paid Brand Deals on Instagram’, happening this week, and make sure to enroll in the Influencer Blueprint™ before the opportunity is gone. 


Now I’m going to help you create your own content calendar. A content calendar is so important to helping you stay organized and on top of your posting, especially when you start working with brands! 

Staying organized is one of the best ways to run your Influencer business more professionally and efficiently. And with that, it’s also going to help you grow and leverage your growth! 

What is a content calendar?

First things first, what even is a content calendar? A content calendar is, of course, a calendar! But it’s a calendar that helps you organize the content that you’re creating and posting on social media. It’s a way to see the bigger picture of what content you have coming out and what spaces you have available to offer to brands for partnerships. 

Another way that a content calendar can help you with your business is actually by helping you avoid burnout! One of the most common enemies we have as Influencers is burnout. Showing up consistently and creating content can burn you out fast.

If you have a realistic calendar with dates and times prearranged, it’ll help you feel like you arent’ creating all of your content at the last minute. Instead, you’ll find that you actually get ahead and have more time for breaks when big collaborations and posts are due! 

Where to start?

Before we create your own content calendar, I want you to think about a couple of things. These things can help you determine where and how you make your content calendar. 

What are you scheduling?

A content calendar can (and should) be used for all of your channels. At Tara Carr Companies, we use our content calendar to plan blog posts, email newsletters, and social media posts. All of this should fit into one calendar, so everyone working on content within your team can see how their contribution fits into the schedule seamlessly. The goal is to get everything into a single place so that you can allocate your time, money, and energy! 

How often do you post?

For example, if you’re posting on your blog once a week, and sharing a newsletter once a week, that’s going to look different than your 3-5 posts on social media a week. You’ll want to determine how often you’re going to post on each channel and create tags or color coordinate your calendar so it’s easier to stay on top of. 

*Pro tip: Be realistic! It’s so easy when you’re creating a content calendar to say that you’re going to post 3 blogs a week and 2 TikTok videos a day and 7 Instagram posts a week, but is that actually manageable for you long term? Or is that posting schedule going to lead to burnout? It’s better to be consistent in the long run than get burnout in the short term trying to do too much. 

Who is helping? 

Do you have a team that’s going to be helping you with content creation, scheduling, or posting? Make sure the content calendar is built in a way that you can share it with everyone who needs it! Maybe you have someone on your team that is in charge of pitching brands, they’ll need to see the content calendar so they know when you have space to promote a brand on your various channels! 

Answering these questions before getting started can help you make sure that the content calendar template you choose, really works for you! 

Recommended tools for content calendars

Now let’s help you pick a tool for your content calendar. Trust me when I say there are a million ways you can create and manage your content calendar. There are free options like Google Sheets or paid options through platforms like Planoly or Coschedule. 

You can also turn a project management tool like Asana or Notion into a content calendar. (This last option is especially good if you’re working with a team cause you can assign tasks to team members along the way.) 

The best way to create your own content calendar is to choose a method that you’re already familiar with, or that won’t take you very long to learn. The easiest way to get started is with a paper calendar (but keep in mind that this only works if you’re a solopreneur.) In my opinion, the online tool that is easy to learn and best mimics a paper calendar is Notion. 

Paper Content Calendars

Having a physical content calendar that you can keep on a wall in your office is a great option for anyone just getting started. Simply write the content that needs to be published on the date that it needs, with as little or as much detail as you want. You can use different colors to refer to different types of content. 

Opting for a large wall calendar can help make the process more visual and set it apart from the rest of your to-do’s.

Notion Content Calendars 

In my opinion, the next best option is Notion! Notion comes with a lot of premade templates for content calendars that you can adapt to your needs. They make it easy to view your content calendar in a calendar format, or as a list of tasks that you need to get done. 

You can sign up for Notion for free, which means it’s also a great low-cost option for anyone just starting out! I recommend using a free Notion template like this one. Or for a very low-cost option, this content calendar template with Notion is amazing! 

What information do you need?

Now that you have an idea of what content calendar template you want to start with, let’s talk about what information you need to have. This can help you organize a template to better fit your needs. 

For example, the information that it’s important for our team to have in our content calendar looks like this: 

  • Title/Caption
  • Hashtags
  • Overview of where the idea came from and how you can make it original for your audience
  • Who is the target audience
  • Does the post solve a problem or answer a question or inspire your audience?
  • SEO keywords we want to rank for (YUP you should even start thinking about SEO on Instagram too) 

You don’t need to include all of these things in your calendar. I recommend starting out with something simple, and when you get used to using a content calendar, you can expand and add fields. 

Additional tips to create your own Content Calendar

I’ve said this 1,000 times but I’m going to say it one more time!! Keep it simple and use something that works for you. When I started my business, I used a big paper calendar on the wall in my office. Now my team uses a complex calendar with all of my channels in Asana. So find something that works for you and stick with it! 

Remember that a content calendar is meant to help simplify your posting and avoid burnout. So don’t get burnout just by creating the calendar! 

Before you go, have you joined my free class ‘How to Land Paid Brands Deals on Instagram’? There’s no gatekeeping here! This class is going to help you learn how you can start making real $$ on Instagram, with as little as 2,000 followers. 

How do I know? Because that’s exactly how many followers I had on Instagram when I started working with big, National brands, making 4 and 5 figures in a single collaboration! This is a totally free opportunity for you to learn exactly how I got started! Join here

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