I'm patting myself very firmly on the back.

I'm even going to award myself five gold stars because I have finally found a way to make social media scheduling not an absolute pain in the butt. A way where you can plan and view your days and weeks in one organised file.

It was always my biggest downfall. I would spend hours creating the very best content I possibly could, the post would go live and then I'm just thinking "please come and have a read". I don't care what anyone says, getting readers to your blog - readers who will enjoy and remember to check back for new posts often is a hard job. We haven't got a multimillion pound social media team behind us. We haven't got billboards and pages in magazines or adverts on the tv (or is it youtube now?). We only have ourselves in the driving seat pushing our content forward, among all the other jobs we have to do daily.

Does anyone else feel guilty or that they're annoying their followers when they share promotional posts on social media? I do. When you think about it, it's quite silly seeing as unless they're only following you, or you post non-stop throughout the day, I doubt it's going to annoy anyone. I guess it's just bloggers guilt.

I think I've spent enough time yabbering on about why I used to completely suck at social media promotion, so I guess it's the right time to turn this around and share my secret. (Not exactly a secret seeing as it's in the title but let me try and be as mysterious and wondrous as possible).

Let me introduce you to my social media content calendar - a spreadsheet where you:

• Can plan your promotional posts in advance, daily or weekly.
• Can see an overview of how you're scheduling posts so you share a variety.
• Keep a note of the best times for each platform.
• Easily prepare hashtags that you can just copy and paste into your post.
• Prepare your links.
• See what images are being used on which platform.

Overall, it's going to be something that will change how you schedule posts dramatically.

What I love most about my content calendar is it allows me to see what's going up where and when and be able to see an overview so I don't end up posting the same links and images at the same time on 5 different platforms. It also gives you time to plan the right words for each share, and be able to use different images. (Every platform suggests different style/size image, and different content but that's a whole other post). You can think about the style of post you're putting out. I post 4 scheduled tweets each day, and I try and pick a variety - I like a motivational one in the morning, maybe a recipe or book review for the afternoon, and beauty or blogging tips for the evening. And what a great reminder to have ready on your desktop for easy and effortless promoting.

To get your calendar, all you have to do is sign up to my newsletter - which will be launching very soon, filled with even more fun and creative inspirational content. Once you've signed up, you should get a welcome email with the link where you can download and customise. This is my first email-download file so if something isn't working for you, let me know and I'll be sure to put my geek goggles on and try and work out any problems.

HOW TO USE

Using your content calendar is very simple. Once you have saved the spreadsheet onto your computer, feel free to fully customise your calendar using your brand's colours, fonts and logo. Spreadsheets are very easy to add rows and columns in if you need to add another platform, or if you'd like to add or remove the number of posts shared on that platform per day. I played around with the orientation, but I much prefer the day going horizontally as you're able to see a clear overview. I have also included an example of how I like to use my calendar, but obviously, feel free to use it as you wish.

TIME: Add the time you'd like your content to go live. You can also add comments to remind yourself at which time your content did better.

CONTENT: Write what you would like your caption, tweet, etc to say.

IMAGE: Include an image that will be shared in the post. You may prefer to add the file name instead or use both.

LINK: Add your links.

HASHTAGS/OTHER: Use this to add your prepared hashtags so you can just copy and paste them onto your post. Some platforms don't use hashtags so you can use this to leave yourself comments or reminders.

I created my social media calendar at the start of December to help during Blogmas, and I've been using it on and off in January to try and get it perfect. As times goes on and my needs change, I may have to change my calendar too, so be sure to let me know how you like the calendar and if you'd prefer changes as I would definitely be okay with making an updated version.

Let me know in the comments below if you have downloaded my calendar, and what you like most about it. If you use a different technique for scheduling posts, let me know too. Don't forget to download your calendar here.