Social Media Content Calendar Checklist

Pull the current ICP doc and confirm which personas you are targeting on which platforms this month. LinkedIn skews B2B decision-makers; TikTok and Instagram Reels skew younger consumer. A common mistake is reusing last quarter's persona mix when the GTM motion has shifted.

Tie the theme to a demand-gen campaign, product launch, or seasonal moment so social ladders up to a measurable pipeline goal. Document the messaging house pillar each post supports.

Pick 2-3 KPIs per channel: engagement rate, reach, CTR to landing page, conversions in GA4. Avoid vanity metrics as headline KPIs — follower count alone does not move pipeline.

Identify influencer collaborations, sponsored creator posts, or affiliate-driven content in the calendar. These trigger FTC Endorsement Guide requirements and a separate disclosure review later in the workflow.

Populate each row with channel, post date, format (reel, carousel, single image, text, story), draft owner, designer, reviewer, and target keyword or hashtag set. Aim for a 60/30/10 mix of educational, engagement, and promotional posts.

Reference the tone-of-voice section of the brand book. Match caption length to platform norms — LinkedIn 150-300 words with a hook in the first two lines, Instagram 125-150 words, X under 280 characters, TikTok 80-100 characters with the hook in the first three.

Use the locked brand color palette (HEX values from the brand book), approved typography, and the current logo lockup. Export at platform-correct dimensions: 1080x1080 feed, 1080x1920 stories and reels, 1200x627 LinkedIn link preview.

Describe what is meaningful in the image, not just what is present. WCAG 2.1 AA is the de-facto bar. Skip leading text like 'image of' — screen readers already announce it. For carousels, write alt text per frame.

Check stock photo licenses cover social usage, music sync rights for reels and TikTok, and signed releases for any identifiable people. Repost-style UGC needs a written reshare permission, not just a comment reply.

File finals in Bynder or Brandfolder with tags for channel, campaign, and post date. A versioned DAM beats a Slack DM thread when legal asks what shipped last month.

Route the full post — visual, caption, link, hashtags — to brand and legal reviewers with a deadline. Capture timestamped approval; a six-hour-old Slack DM that says 'looks good' is not compliance documentation.

Use the platform's native Paid Partnership label and put #ad or #sponsored at the top of the caption, not buried in 30 hashtags. The FTC looks for the disclosure to be unambiguous and impossible to miss. Train creators on the requirement; do not assume the agency handled it.

Performance claims, comparative claims, and customer testimonials need backing in the substantiation file under Lanham Act and FTC Endorsement Guides. 'Results not typical' caveats alone are often not sufficient for outsized claims.

Use the team UTM convention document — source=linkedin, medium=social_organic, campaign=<campaign-slug>, content=<post-id>. Convention drift across campaigns is the most common reason GA4 reports become uncomparable across months.

Queue posts in Sprout Social, Hootsuite, or Later against channel-specific best times informed by your own analytics, not generic industry benchmarks. Set first-comment hashtags where the platform supports it.

Preview every post on mobile and desktop, click every link to confirm it lands on the intended page with UTMs intact, and verify the scheduled time uses the correct timezone. A wrong-timezone send to a US-east audience at 3am is a recurring failure mode.

Pause the scheduled queue, fix broken links or wrong-timezone posts, and re-run QA. Do not let a partial batch publish while the issues are pending — rolling back a live post on LinkedIn is messy.

Aim for a sub-4-hour response time during business hours on the first 48 hours of any new post; that window drives the bulk of algorithmic boost. Escalate sales-qualified DMs to the SDR queue with the right lead source attribution.

Set up Sprout Social listening or Brandwatch queries for the brand name, common misspellings, executive names, and key product names. Flag negative-sentiment spikes to the crisis-comms playbook owner.

Spot-check GA4 against the social platform native analytics for clicks and conversions. A mis-mapped event firing on email-blur instead of form submit can distort reported conversions by 5x and warp next month's budget allocation.

Report engagement rate, reach, impressions, CTR, and conversions per channel against the KPIs locked in planning. Note top three and bottom three posts so the next calendar inherits the lessons.

Walk demand-gen, content, and sales through what worked, what did not, and the proposed shifts for next month's calendar. Decisions made here should land back in next month's planning step as concrete inputs, not vague intentions.