Free Christmas social media content calendar template (+ instructions)

Organise your Christmas social media marketing efforts with a content calendar. We know it's a pain to create one yourself, which is why we have made a template for dropshippers to download!

Not everyone has access to Microsoft Excel, so to make it accessible for all, this resource is available to use in Google Sheets. Keep reading this blog article for guidelines and ideas for using our free content calendar.

How to access the calendar

1. Open the calendar template by using this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16xnRdZ3CNBILeXP_4bWvtfDgBgmuiIGK2mvXbUEeuH0/edit?usp=sharing

2. Make a copy of the calendar and save it to your Google Drive.

3. Edit, amend, and add your contents however you wish!

A Christmas social media content calendar is a spreadsheet for planning posts for your festive marketing campaigns. It helps you to see the social media posts you have planned for each month leading up to Christmas Day. The calendar we have created has tabs for you to add content between September and December.

A social media calendar is a useful tool, but it also creates work to complete. Is it worth using one at Christmas? These are the benefits:

• Keep your planned festive social media posts in one place.
• You can clearly see which posts you have already published and which ones you will post next.
• Your festive content is arranged neatly by day, date, and social media platform.
• Colour-coding and conditional formatting help you visually organise your content planner.
• Keep track of KPIs to see how successful each post has been.
• All data is saved on the cloud, which is easy to access, share, and update as opposed to using a spreadsheet saved to a local file on your computer's hard drive.

Once you follow the steps above to access the social media calendar, you can explore the tabs and see how it works. Thankfully, it's not a complicated tool, but here are a few tips for using it:

Tabs to separate your social media content by month

There are four tabs to keep the Christmas social media content calendar organised without overwhelming you with data. Each tab corresponds to a different month before Christmas (September, October, November, and December).

Tips for using tabs

You can edit these months if you wish, add more, or delete them. It's highly recommended to start your Christmas marketing efforts as early as September, as festive shopping usually begins at the end of summer.

Drop-down menus for each social platform

Choosing the social media channel for each post is easy with the drop-down menu. We've added the most popular platforms, which are Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. These are colour-coded to help you distinguish each one at a glance.

Tips for using drop-down menus

Edit the menu by double-clicking a cell and then clicking the pencil icon at the bottom-right. You can amend, add, or delete options for the drop-down as you desire, depending on your dropshipping business.

Colour-coded days with conditional formatting

Spreadsheets can be confusing to read when the only colours being used are black and white. We've added conditional formatting to Column B ("Day") so that each cell automatically changes to a specific colour depending on the day of the week.

Tips for using colour-coded days

There's no need to type in the day of the week. A formula has been added to the cell to automatically find the day of the week based on the date you add to Column C ("Date"). If the colours aren't for you, don't worry. Change them easily by right-clicking on a cell, scrolling down to "View more cell options," then clicking "Conditional formatting."

Select one of the days in the box labelled "Conditional format rules." You will have the option to change the colour, the day of the week you want to add, or delete the ones you don't need.

Check the status of your content

This content calendar can be used not just to track published content but also to plan posts at a later date. To keep on top of the status of each piece of content in the spreadsheet, mark it as "open" (not created yet), "in progress" (currently being written), "ready" (the copy is finished but it needs to be published), or "published" (posted on social media).

Tips for using the status drop-down

Edit Column E "Status" with the same steps as for Column A "Platform." Double-click, select the pencil icon, and edit as you wish.

Review the KPIs

Track how well your Christmas content is doing on social media by reviewing the key performance indicators (KPIs). You can access the metrics of your social media posts on each social media platform directly.

Tips for adding KPIs to your social media calendar

The KPIs you can add are:

• Column H ("# Views") - these are the number of views that your post has accumulated.
• Column I ("#Comments") - these are the number of comments that your post has accumulated.
• Column J ("Likes") - these are the number of likes that your post has accumulated.
• Column K ("Shares") - these are the number of shares that your post has accumulated.

Feel free to adjust, add, or delete these columns as you decide which social media KPIs are the most important for your dropshipping business to track.