Planning Your Month with the Strategy Calendar

Overview

The Strategy Calendar shows a whole month at once. You plan each day by picking what to post, and each day carries a status badge so you can see what's done and what still needs attention. With Auto-plan on, Social Cascade drafts the month for you and you review it.

Before You Start

• The Strategy Calendar is available on Pro, Premier and Enterprise, and a team Admin has to turn it on. Until then, the Calendar shows the classic week and month view. See Classic Calendar vs. Strategy Plan Calendar.
• Connect at least one social profile. See Connecting Social Profiles.
• Admins and Editors can plan, change and skip days. Viewers can look at the month but can't change it.
• To have Social Cascade draft your month, turn on Auto-plan and set your posting cadence. See Customizing Post Frequency.

How to Open the Strategy Calendar

1. Click Calendar in the left sidebar. The current month opens, with a status badge on each day.
2. Use the arrows at the top to move to the previous or next month.

The top of the page shows your progress, for example "12 / 20 days planned."

How to Plan a Day

1. Click a day. A panel opens on the right and asks What would you like to post?
2. Pick the platform at the top of the panel if you need to change it.
3. Choose one option:
   • Create a post: design a new post or upload your own. This option appears only when designed posts are turned on for your account. See Creating and Scheduling a Post.
   • Partner Library: choose from 3 curated recommendations from the Streams you subscribe to.
   • Record a Video: get 3 topic ideas to record in the Social Cascade Teleprompter app.
   • My Stream: pick from your own content in My Stream.
   • Skip This Day: don't post anything. The day counts as done.
4. For a post, finish the details and click Schedule. For Record a Video, pick a topic idea; the script is added to the day for you to record.

You'll see 4 options, or 5 when designed posts are on.

How to Change a Planned Day

1. Click the day. The panel lists what's planned for it.
2. Click a post to edit it, or use its delete icon to remove it.
3. To add another post or script to the same day, click Add plan.
4. If a day the plan created shows Planning, you can click Reset to unplanned to clear it and start over.

Day Statuses

The progress count includes days that are Planning, Script Planned, Script Recorded, Selected, Scheduled, Posted or Skipped.

How Auto-plan Builds Your Month

With Auto-plan on, Social Cascade creates a draft plan for each upcoming month:

• Next month's plan is created between the 1st and the 10th of this month. On the 10th, Social Cascade refreshes the draft and emails it to you. After the 10th, a missing plan is created within a day.
• Plans aren't created automatically for the month you're in. If you start partway through a month, click Generate plan to plan the rest of it.

Posts in a draft plan are already scheduled. You don't have to confirm a plan for its posts to publish. The plan shows Draft with "Posts are scheduled · confirms automatically" and the last day of the month.

To review a draft:

1. Open the month and check each day. Change, add or skip days as you like.
2. Click Confirm plan to lock the plan in. If you don't, it confirms automatically on the last day of the month.

Plan-Ready Email

When a draft is ready, team Admins get an email titled "Your [Month] plan is ready for review." It summarizes the month, lists your focus topics and any Teleprompter scripts due this week, and has a Review your plan button. To stop it, turn off Auto-plan.

Replan

Replan regenerates the month with your latest topics and cadence. It appears when the plan is out of date, when a replan is running, or when the draft is empty.

1. Click Replan.
2. Confirm in the Replan [Month]? dialog. Days you've planned or locked stay as they are. A confirmed plan goes back to draft and needs confirming again.

While it runs, a banner reads "Post plan is being replanned. Manual changes during this time may be overwritten."

Lock and Unlock Days

Use Lock in the toolbar to lock a day, a week or the whole month. Replan leaves locked days alone. A locked day shows who locked it. Use Unlock to allow changes again.

Topic Planning

The Topic planning panel below the calendar helps you choose what to talk about this month.

1. Click Topic planning to expand it.
2. Review This month's focus and Recommended for your practice.
3. To add a topic, type in Search topics to add, or click Suggest topics for more ideas.
4. On a topic card, click Show heatmap to see when similar topics have performed best, or Remove from this month's focus to drop it.

Focus topics appear as colored strips on the calendar days they're planned for.

Troubleshooting

FAQ

Q: What's the difference between Auto-plan and planning by hand? A: With Auto-plan on, Social Cascade drafts each month from your posting cadence. With it off, days start empty and you plan each one. Topic planning works either way.

Q: How is the plan-ready email different from the weekly digest? A: The weekly digest previews upcoming posts every week. The plan-ready email arrives once, when a new monthly draft is ready.

Related Articles

• Classic Calendar vs. Strategy Plan Calendar
• Customizing Post Frequency
• Using the Recommended Tab in Add Content
• Personalizing Your Post Captions
• Choosing Your Practice Focus