50 Free Social Media Templates To Help You Get More Done

Social media can be a time suck, but it doesn’t have to be.

With the right tools and templates, social media can be a powerful platform to connect with your audience.

At CoSchedule, we’ve published tons of content helping marketers execute social media marketing more easily.

Most of those posts include some useful templates and other resources.

And in this post, we’ve gathered 50 of our best social media templates, all in one handy ZIP file you can download.

These templates will walk you through everything you need to plan, execute, and measure a complete social media marketing strategy.

Grab your templates now, then read through this post to learn how to use 'em all.

Or Get Expert-Led Tutorials With AMI’s Social Strategy Course

Wish you had a social media pro that could walk you through creating a results-driven social strategy from start to finish? 

AMI’s Social Media Strategy Certification Course features 11 lessons that include video tutorials, templates, and proven processes to help you create & execute a successful social strategy. Learn more.

Get Your Social Content Organized With An Editorial Calendar

If your team publishes a high volume of social media posts, you’re going to need a calendar to keep track of them all. That’s where our social media editorial calendar template comes into play.

Use this template to:

• Organize every post in one central location.
• Plan ahead and avoid the last-minute scramble of trying to get messages sent on time.
• Write and approve content ahead of time and perfect every post before publishing.

Create a Complete Instagram Marketing Strategy

Instagram is just a photo sharing app for Millennials, right?

Wrong!

Instagram can be a huge asset to your business and can help connect you to new customers through strong imagery and visual branding.

Our Instagram Marketing Strategy template will allow you to:

• Develop a content strategy to create posts your audience actually wants to see.
• Set real goals and objectives to use Instagram to build business and strengthen your brand.
• Maintain a consistent and effective posting schedule (psst ... you can even schedule Instagram posts with CoSchedule).

Complete an Effective Social Media Competitive Analysis

What's one of the best sources for social media marketing ideas?

Seeing what works for your competition.

Our social competitors analysis template walks you through how to analyze their tactics and figure out how you can zig when they zag.

You’ll learn:

• How to identify and find your competitors.
• How to find the right data you need to accurately assess your competitors.
• How to collect and interpret the information you find to help influence your social strategy.

Prove Social Media ROI With Google Analytics

Wouldn’t it be nice to say, “We make this much $$$ on every social media post that we publish.”

Seems impossible, right?

Not so! With the right Google Analytics report, it's totally possible.

Our social media ROI Report Template will teach you to:

• Set up UTM tracking tags for your social media messages.
• Create goals and determine KPIs that your team needs to meet.
• Combine data from your custom Google Analytics report and in-app social analytics into one report template.

Create An Easy To Read Social Media Report

Never let anyone tell you social media marketing doesn't work.

With this template, you'll be able to build reports that show exactly how it's working for you.

You’ll learn:

• How to find the metrics that actually matter and aren’t just fluff.
• How to spot trends in your analytics to discover what’s working (and what isn’t).
• How to explain data trends to people outside marketing and prove your work is worth the investment.

Utilize Social Media Best Practices To Elevate Your Presence

Ever wonder if you're doing social marketing the best way for a given tactic?

If so, it's time to take the mystery out of your processes and actually understand the why behind the how.

Our social media best practices bundle includes five infographics that give you everything from the best times to post on each social channel, to how to curate content to fill gaps in your schedule.

With these resources, you’ll be able to:

• Schedule your content at the best times to reach the maximum amount of people.
• Create a consistent posting schedule that keeps you at the forefront of everyone’s feed.
• Curate content to fill gaps in your posting schedule when your team has too much going on to create your own.

How To Interpret Your Social Media Data To Extract Valuable Insights

Gathering social media data is one thing. Actually making sense of it is something else. With this template, you’ll be able to translate data into actionable insights that actually guide your efforts.

Our social media insight analysis template will help you break down the data you’re team is gathering and find patterns that can help inspire your upcoming content.

You’ll learn:

• How to easily track social media data in one place.
• How to analyze social media content to understand why it did (or didn't) connect with your audience.
• How to spot trends in engagement rates and repeat what works to grow your audience.

Write A Social Media Proposal That Seals The Deal

If you’re an agency marketer or solo consultant, a solid social media proposal can make or break your chances of landing that next client.

More clients = more revenue.

And with this social media proposal template, you'll be able to position yourself as the best choice more easily.

With this template, you’ll learn:

• How to create a strong showcase for your agency's capabilities.
• How to pitch your services in the best way possible.
• How to show your client the benefits of picking your agency and why you’re worth the investment.

Set Social Media Goals That Contribute To Your Overall Business Goals

Social media goals should connect to overall business goals.

After all, building business is your objective, right?

That's easy enough to understand. Actually setting those types of goals, though, is more challenging.

That's where this set of templates comes into play.

This bundle will help you:

• Determine the metrics that will tell your team if your strategy is on track.
• Brainstorm social KPIs that your team must meet in order to have an impact on your business goals.
• Measure data and track how social media marketing is impacting real business outcomes.

Build A Social Media Strategy That Drives Your Team To Success

Doing social marketing without a strategy is like running through a maze with a blindfold on. You need a map to guide you from start to finish.

Our social media marketing strategy kit will help your team craft a strategy that will drive your team to success.

Here are just some of the things this kit will help you establish:

• Find your core audience that is most likely to convert to paying customers.
• Develop goals and content strategy to reach that audience.
• Determine how you'll measure success.

Develop Clear Social Media Branding Guidelines

What's one way to make sure you stand out on social media?

Invest time and resources into strong branding.

Fortunately, creating your branding guidelines doesn’t have to be difficult, and this kit can help you get started.

You’ll learn how to:

• Develop the voice and tone you'll use when creating social content.
• Set design standards for your social imagery.
• Choose fonts and filters to help create a cohesive look everywhere on social media.

Avoid PR Disasters By Building A Social Media Policy

Ask anyone about a social media disaster and they’ll probably have a company or two come to mind.

To make sure that your team doesn’t become one of them, use our social media policy template to help build your emergency backup plan.

By using this template, your team will learn:

• How to set up a series of steps and people to contact should a social media crisis occur.
• How to draw a line in the sand of what should and shouldn’t be posted across company accounts.
• How to set guidelines on how your employees should identify themselves online and how policy guidelines will be enforced should someone step out of line.

Turn Your Employees Into Your Biggest Social Media Brand Advocates

Did you know that your biggest brand advocate could be sitting right down the hall from you? Your employees can help your brand multiply its social media presence and all it takes is a little training.

Our social media advocacy starter kit has the templates you need to help your team members authentically promote your brand on social media.

When you work with this kit, you’ll learn how to:

• Approach your team and convince them to take the time to be an advocate for your brand.
• How to set up guidelines for your new brand advocates to follow to make sure you avoid social media mishaps.
• How to train your employees and provide resources and materials to help get their social channels started.

Write Better Social Media Copy

The success of your social media strategy hinges on the quality of your posts. Only the sharpest copy will cut through the noise.

Our social media style guide template will help you establish brand standards and guidelines that will ensure every post you publish is on-point.

If you really want to hit a home run, check out CoSchedule’s Social Message Optimizer. It’s a  a free tool that will analyze your messages and make sure that they are optimized to achieve success on each network.

This guide will help you learn:

• Write social media posts with a consistent brand voice and the most appropriate tone.
• How to create guidelines for images and media that align with your post copy.
• How to create copy standards for each network that your social media team needs to implement in every message that they write.

Increase Your Engagement Rates With Crazy Effective Tactics

Engaging with your audience is key to your success on social media. People love companies that let them know their voice is being heard.

Increase that engagement with our social media engagement tactics kit. We’ve included some of our most information packed infographics, templates, and more to help make your social media channels a powerhouse of conversation and interactions.

You’ll learn:

• How to create images that stand out in the feed of your audience.
• How to write some of the most engaging content on the web.
• How to track and record the results of your efforts to see what is and isn’t working.
• Plus a whole lot more.

Crush Your Social Media Campaign Planning Process

Effective social media campaigns have a lot of moving parts. From establishing your “big idea” down to nitty-gritty details like channel and hashtag selection, there’s a lot of plan.

Our social media campaign planning toolkit will help you get it all done with ease..

You’ll learn:

• How to craft a proposal to pitch your social media campaign.
• How to organize your campaign content in one social media campaign template.
• How to integrate your social media campaigns and incorporate them into your social media publishing schedule.

Enroll In AMI’s Social Strategy Certification

If you want a step-by-step plan to create your social strategy, check out AMI’s Social Media Strategy Certification. 

Drive more traffic, more leads, & more growth from your social media efforts. Check out the course for more details

This post was originally written by Devin Joubert and published on July 7, 2016. It was updated and republished by Breonna Bergstrom on Nov. 13, 2017.