Shared Calendar The Ultimate Social Media Content Planner

Each social media manager has their own methods of producing a social media content planner. And although spreadsheets or slideshows may be helpful in doing this, you are only scratching the surface as to what’s possible for planning your content and sharing it with others. 

Vista Social is excited to spotlight our Shared Calendar feature that lets you plan your posts from one central Calendar and easily share it with your clients, team members, or other stakeholders—without requiring them to log in.

The idea is simple – create a sharable link to your content calendar (scheduled, planned or published) and share it with clients and colleagues

To show you how it works, we’ve create a live shared calendar link using our own content calendar. You can click this link to see it, or preview it using a live embed below. Note that while our link is not password protected, it is an option:

Interested in learning more? This post will cover everything between the current struggles with content planning, productivity hacks, and the time-saving features available in Vista Social’s Calendar.

The Current Struggles with Social Media Content Planning

It is very rare for a social media manager to send off a content calendar to a client for approval and not receive at least one revision or update. Collaboration is a huge part of social media management!

Here are the most common struggles we’ve heard from our customers prior to them switching to Vista Social:

1. Too Many Versions of The Same Content Calendar

Content calendars created in spreadsheets or slideshows will need to be saved as a new version each time there is a copy update, image swap, or link change. 

This often results in multiple content calendar versions, which can confuse all parties involved (and can create a very cluttered desktop). Nobody wants to sort through their files after downloading multiple versions to find the latest one—it wastes a ton of time and isn’t efficient. 

Instead, you can plan all of your content in Vista Social and share a view-only Calendar link with your team or client. This allows them to see the content calendar for the week, month, or any date range without logging in to Vista Social or downloading multiple files.

And the best part? Once the posts are approved, they are already in Vista Social and ready to be scheduled. 

2. I Don’t Want to Give Them Access to My Account

Most social media management tools charge a premium for adding new users to your plan. Unfortunately, agencies and social media managers get hit hard with hefty monthly pricing because of this. 

A workaround is providing login credentials to your clients or team members in order for them to see the Calendar. However, this is a security and privacy issue if you have other clients’ content they can see once they log in.

Aside from being able to share the Calendar view without logging in, Vista Social doesn’t charge for any additional users on the Pro plan. This allows you to add an unlimited amount of users to your plan and set up permissions based on what you want them to be able to access. 

3. Struggling to Organize All of The Moving Parts

Content planning involves a number of moving parts. Vista Social has features in place for marketers to organize their workflow and improve productivity. 

Our customers have peace of mind knowing that they can add as many users as they need without getting hit with additional charges. 

By setting up your clients and team members as users on your Vista Social account, you can assign the posts to them for review and effortlessly manage feedback and changes in one place. 

Our social media content planner also helps you:

• Source stock-free images and videos: Find free, digital marketing HD images for your social media posts with Vista Social’s integration with Pexels, Unsplash, and Giffy
• Design with Canva: Access thousands of social media post templates and easily design engaging on-brand content for you and your clients with Vista Social’s Canva integration
• Find the latest news: Our smart publishing feature allows users to automatically discover trending industry-related articles and schedule them in bulk.
• Find (and share) authentic user-generated content by Instagram hashtag or user: Enter a hashtag or user handle to browse through the latest posts, then save content to your Media Library for easy scheduling.
• Create saved hashtag groups: Organize your hashtags by saving them into groups and easily add them into your captions or as the first comment with one click.
• Set up universal mentions: Create a universal mention, and Vista Social will make sure that the correct page or profile is tagged per network.
• Label posts: Group and categorize messages based on workflow, business objectives, and marketing strategies to easily organize content and streamline performance analysis.
• Build approval workflows: Generate workflows to guide the submission, review, and approval of messages to maintain oversight, safeguard brand standards and simplify collaboration.
• Share Calendar without logging in: Manage individual posts and campaigns in a collaborative content calendar to improve visibility and facilitate long-term planning.

Want to see why more businesses and agencies are switching to Vista Social? Find out why Vista Social was named one of G2’s high performers.

Everything You Can Do With Vista Social’s Calendar

Part of having the perfect social media content planner is having an intuitive Calendar by your side. 

A Calendar should not only show you the content you have planned for a specific time period but support you in meeting your marketing goals and scaling your growth. 

A social media management tool like Vista Social can really tick all of the boxes when it comes to planning and managing your content!

Everything you can do with the Calendar in Vista Social:

• Post Previews: Preview the post between profiles and entities to check how it would look on each network right from your Calendar. 
• National Holidays & Observances: Vista Social’s Calendar automatically displays national holidays and observances, so you never miss a chance to connect with your audience, and you stay consistent with delivering content they love.
• View Status: Sort through posts in the Calendar by status to easily access which posts are in draft, in review, published, scheduled, rejected, failed, or set as a reminder.
• Manage Users: All posts that have been tagged by specific users can be shown in one view for easy access.
• See Post Labels: Sort posts by labels that have been created based on workflow, business objectives, and marketing strategies to easily organize content and streamline performance analysis.
• View Post Performance: Analyze cross-channel performance at the post level to understand what resonates and why directly from the Calendar.
• Export to PDF: Share your Calendar in PDF format with your co-workers or clients.
• Share via Link: Share a link to your Calendar without requiring clients and team members to log in or be a user. You can define the link title name, timezone, date range, link expiration, and link password directly from your Calendar.

Setting Up Shared Calendar & Managing Shared Calendar Links in Vista Social

Our Shared Calendar feature allows for effortless collaboration and is the ultimate social media content planner. Ready to improve visibility and facilitate long-term planning? Here is how to get started:

How to Share a Calendar via Link in Vista Social 

On the main menu bar, select Calendar on the top left side of the dashboard.

Once your screen is showing the Calendar, click on the ‘export’ icon (it looks like an arrow pointing to the right) on the top right side of the screen and select ‘Share via link’. 

Here you can customize your Shared Calendar link:

• Link Title: Choose the name for your link for easy accessibility.
• Timezone: Decide the publish time of the posts in the Shared Calendar.
• Date Range: Select a date range of the scheduled posts that you want to show in the Calendar.
• Link Expiration Date: Set an end date on the accessibility of the Shared Calendar link.
• Link Password: Set a password so it will only be viewed by the people who have the password.

And that’s it! In just a few short clicks, you’ll have a fully customized Calendar link that can be shared between team members and clients.

How to Manage Shared Calendar Links in Vista Social

Now that you know how to share and customize your calendar links, you will need to know how to manage them. But don’t worry, it’s super easy, and you never have to leave Vista Social!

Whether you’re dealing with a distributed team working in different timezones or want to create links based on multiple date ranges, the Shared Calendar links can be easily accessed right in your Vista Social account.

Here’s how to manage your Shared Calendar links:

1. In the Calendar, select the ‘export icon’ and choose ‘manage shared links’ in the dropdown.
2. Here you will see all of the Active and Expired links that you have created.
3. You may edit each link; this will allow you to copy the link or password (to share it again with someone else) or completely remove it from your list.

Wrapping Up!

There are a lot of factors that go into a good social media content planner. If your current process requires you to switch between multiple tools and tabs—you may need to look at revamping your strategy.

Vista Social’s Shared Calendar lets you customize your link so you can plan and create all your social posts from one central content calendar. 

Oh, and did we mention you can add an unlimited amount of users to your plan in Pro without any additional fees? Vista Social supports marketers in scaling their strategies with modern solutions for this decade of social media.