TikTok Content Calendar: How to Plan and Publish Consistently Without Burnout [+ Template]

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A TikTok content calendar can save you from racking your brain when it’s time to publish content on TikTok.

Even more, it can help you publish content consistently to achieve intended TikTok marketing results.

So, how do you create a TikTok content calendar that delivers these benefits?

That’s what I’ll show you in this guide.

I’ll take you through how to create a content calendar for TikTok, a template you can use, and tools that can help plan a calendar.

Why use a TikTok content calendar?

If TikTok is an important social media platform for your business, here are reasons to create and use a TikTok content calendar:

• Consistent publishing: A calendar lets you plan TikTok posts at regular intervals throughout a month. Publishing content consistently means you can stay on top of your audience’s mind long enough for them to take profitable action.
• Better collaboration: If you work with team members, you can specify tasks for each member in your TikTok calendar. This way, every member can see and complete their tasks ahead of the planned publishing time.
• More quality content: Since a calendar allows content planning for a few weeks, you’ll have more time to come up with better ideas and create better content.
• Healthy variation of post ideas: If all your TikTok posts showcase a product or deliver a tutorial, you’ll bore your audience fast. A calendar lets you plan various content ideas throughout a month.
• Align content with goals: To create an effective calendar, you have to list your TikTok goals for the month. With these goals in mind, it’s easy to plan content that will help achieve the goals.

Now that we’ve seen what you stand to gain with a TikTok content calendar, let’s go into how to create an effective calendar.

How to create a TikTok content calendar

Before working on a content calendar, you should already understand the ideal audience for your overall TikTok strategy.

After all, your audience’s needs will determine most of what you do on TikTok.

With an ideal audience profile, you can then move on to these steps:

1. Set TikTok content goals

If you spend time and effort creating content for your business’s TikTok account, you do so to achieve business goals.

And you have to specify these goals before creating content.

Why?

TikTok content goals provide a focus for your content during a month. Your goal will determine publishing frequency, content ideas, and metrics to track.

Common goals for TikTok content include:

• Engagement
• More followers
• Brand awareness
• Lead generation
• Sales
• Customer retention

However, just stating any of these goals is insufficient to achieve them.

You have to set the goals properly.

A common framework is to set SMART goals. This means goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

For example, you can set a goal of 200 new followers in a month for an account that has 1,000 followers. This is achievable and relevant because more followers means you can reach more people.

After setting goals, move to the next step.

2. Determine your content publishing frequency

Content publishing frequency is the number of times you publish content on TikTok daily or weekly.

The frequency will help calculate the number of content pieces you need in a month.

And when you know this number, you can plan how many times each content idea (like user-generated content, tutorials, etc.) will show up in a month.

To settle on a publishing frequency, you have to consider your goals, audience, and the number of posts to reach the goals.

3. Determine the best days and times to post

Publishing content at a time when your audience is off TikTok is like using a megaphone on an empty street.

Nobody will get your message.

So, as important as publishing content is, you have to publish it when your audience is likely to be online. After all, people can only engage with posts they see.

The first place to start is to check your followers’ most active times on TikTok. 

To see this, visit your TikTok profile and click the 3 lines at the top right corner. From the options, click Creator tools. On the next page, click Analytics.

On the analytics page, click the Followers tab and scroll down to see your followers’ most active times. TikTok shows both hours and days.

Of course, your audience on TikTok is bigger than just your followers because of recommendations.

But knowledge of your followers’ most active times can help set an initial benchmark to use.

Over time, you can adjust based on post performance.

Alternatively, some social media management tools suggest the best times to post. So, if you use one of the tools to plan your calendar, you can follow its suggestion.

After setting the best times to publish on TikTok, you can now dive into content ideas.

4. Define TikTok content ideas for the month

TikTok content ideas are concepts you can use for content.

They include:

• User-generated content (UGC) 
• Product tutorials
• Testimonials
• Product promotions
• Influencer collaborations
• Giveaways and contests
• Holidays
• Trending topics

There are even more ideas. These ideas serve two main functions.

First, some content ideas align better and increase the chances of achieving specific goals. For example, product promotions like discounts can improve sales.

Second, using many content ideas will add variety to your content and interest followers.

To define content ideas for a month, you have to use those that align with your goals. Sometimes, a few content ideas can work towards the same goal.

Defining TikTok content ideas takes you closer to filling up your calendar.

5. Create quality TikTok content

Defining quality TikTok content is a subjective task.

But I like to judge quality content through the lens of what satisfies the audience. After all, you create the content for your audience.

So, quality content should:

• Have good media
• Have a clear message
• Present the message in an easy-to-consume way
• Solve problems for viewers

With quality content, you can attract more engagement and encourage viewers to take intended actions.

Most importantly, quality content delivers helpful information that your audience will appreciate.

To create quality TikTok content, specify important elements in your posts. These involve:

• Defining your media type. This can be videos or images.
• Creating content summary. This should explain the main points of your content.
• Creating captions. This should provide the content summary. You can also use an AI caption generator to create captions.
• Using the right hashtags. This can help people searching topics find your post.

Of course, not every post will be ready at the beginning of a month. But you should have an idea of what the post will be about.

And if you work with a team, every member should see the calendar and know what to do before the publishing date.

That said, your calendar should have a space for spontaneous content. This is usually content around trending topics that need to be published quickly.

TikTok content calendar template

A TikTok content calendar template means you don’t have to build a calendar from scratch.

All you have to do is populate the template with content details for a month.

So, I’ve created a TikTok content calendar template you can use to plan content.

The Google Sheets template has 2 pages: a calendar and a table.

In the calendar, you can enter details such as:

• Post idea 
• Post type
• Description

The calendar provides an overview of what each post is about.

On the table, you can enter more details about each post. For example, you have columns such as:

• Title
• Goal
• Caption
• Hashtags
• Media
• Creator
• Status

On both pages, you can have all the important information about a TikTok post.

Check out the TikTok content calendar template here.

Note: To edit the template, you have to make a copy of it. Click File at the top right corner of the page and then Make a copy.

If you need more features in your content calendar, the next section will interest you.

TikTok content calendar tools to plan content

While a TikTok content calendar for Google Sheets can meet your basic needs, social media management tools deliver even more features.

Apart from having information about content on the calendar, these tools also let you schedule posts. 

So, you can set up content, and it will go live on TikTok on the set date and time. 

These tools also let you manage a calendar for multiple social media platforms.

Here are 3 tools that offer robust content calendars:

Vista Social 

Vista Social is one of the best social media management tools you can use. And you get many features in the calendar.

First, you can see weekly and monthly calendars and post previews for each day.

Vista Social can also populate the calendar with holidays of your chosen religion or country. With this, you get more post ideas to plan your calendar.

There are filters and labels to categorize posts according to your needs.

To learn more about other features of this tool, read my Vista Social review.

ContentStudio

In the ContentStudio Planner, you can see weekly and monthly views of your calendar. In addition, there’s a TikTok grid view that shows a preview of your scheduled posts.

ContentStudio lets you label posts to categorize them. But beyond that, you’ll see the number of posts in statuses like scheduled, published, in progress, and more.

To learn more about its other social media management features, read my ContentStudio review.

Pallyy

Pallyy is an affordable yet robust tool.

In the calendar, you’ll see post previews on each day. You can also drag media files to a date to schedule a post.

Pallyy lets you label posts to organize them and import holidays for various countries.

To see more of what Pallyy offers, read my Pallyy review.

If you’d like to explore more calendar tools, see the best social media management tools.

Conclusion

With a TikTok content calendar, you can plan your content for a month. 

This will ensure publishing consistency to achieve your TikTok marketing goals.

You can check out the Google Sheets template if you need a basic calendar to plan your content.

For more features like scheduling and collaboration, try out the calendar tools.

Create a TikTok content calendar today to take your TikTok game to another level.