How to Use Notion for Social Media Planning

Tired of wrangling your social media content in a chaotic jumble of spreadsheets, fleeting notes, and a dozen different folders? Let’s build a powerful, flexible content command center right inside Notion. This guide will walk you through setting up a complete social media planning system from scratch, turning your inspired ideas into a perfectly organized, actionable calendar.

Why Choose Notion Over Traditional Spreadsheets?

While spreadsheets can track dates, they fall short when managing a dynamic content strategy. A social media plan is more than just a list of captions and publish times, it’s a living system of ideas, creative assets, strategic pillars, and performance feedback. This is where Notion is uniquely suited.

Imagine a space where you can:

• Keep everything in one place: From your high-level strategy and content pillars to half-baked ideas, final video assets, and post-publication notes. No more hunting for "that one document."
• Visualize your workflow: Move an idea from a simple thought to a fully produced piece of content using visual Kanban boards. See your entire month at a glance with a drag-and-drop calendar.
• Customize it completely: Unlike rigid software, Notion adapts to your process. You build the system you need, with the properties and views that make sense for your brand, team, and content style.
• Connect everything: Notion's relational databases allow you to link your content directly to larger marketing campaigns, strategic goals, or even a swipe file of inspiration.

Essentially, Notion lets you build the exact social media management hub you've always wished you had.

Building Your Social Media Command Center: A Step-by-Step Guide

Ready to get started? We'll create one main database and then build different views to manage your entire content pipeline. This approach keeps everything organized in one central location while giving you the specific dashboards you need for different tasks.

Step 1: Create Your Master Content Database

This database is the heart of your entire system. Every single piece of content, from a fleeting TikTok idea to a published LinkedIn article, will live here as an entry.

1. Create a new page in Notion and name it "Social Media Command Center."
2. On the new page, select the Table option under the "Database" section.
3. Name your new database "Master Content Database."

Now, let's customize the database properties. These are the fields that will hold all the vital information about each piece of content. Delete the default "Tags" property and add the following:

• Post Name (Title): This is the default title property. Use it for the primary idea, the working title, or the post's main hook. Example: “Three surprising habits of productive founders.”
• Status (Status): The most important property for your workflow. Notion's "Status" property type is perfect for this. Configure it with stages like:
  • To Do: Idea, Researching, Writing/Scripting
  • In Progress: Designing/Filming, Editing, Awaiting Review
  • Complete: Ready for Scheduling, Published, On Hold
  You can customize these to match your exact process.
• Platform(s) (Multi-select): This lets you tag each piece of content for one or more platforms. Add options like: Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, LinkedIn, X, YouTube Shorts, Threads. This is a multi-select property so you can tag content destined for cross-posting.
• Content Type (Select): To categorize the format. Use options like: Reel, Video, Carousel, Static Image, Story, Text Post.
• Publish Date (Date): The date you plan to post the content. This property will power our calendar view later.
• Caption (Text): A text property where you can write, edit, and finalize your copy. You can make this longer by dragging the column width or by opening the entry as a full page.
• Media (Files & Media): Upload your final, approved creative assets here - images, videos, graphics, etc. - so everything is together in one place.
• Content Pillar (Select): Connect your posts back to your core content strategy. Create options based on your brand’s content pillars, such as: Educational, Entertaining, Promotional, Community Building.
• URL (URL): Once content is live, you can drop the URL here for easy reference and to track its performance later.

Step 2: Create Powerful Views for Your Workflow

This is where the real power of Notion comes to life. A "View" is simply a different way of looking at the same database. We’ll create a couple of essential views to give you a true command center feel.

Next to your database name "Master Content Database," click the "+" button to add a new view.

The Visual Content Calendar

This view gives you a bird's-eye glance at your entire content schedule for the month. It's perfect for spotting gaps, planning ahead, and ensuring a consistent publishing cadence.

1. Click the "+" and select the Calendar layout option.
2. Name this view "Content Calendar."
3. Ensure the "Show calendar by" option is set to your "Publish Date" property.
4. Pro Tip: Click the "..." at the top right of your calendar, go to "Properties," and toggle on the properties you want to see at a glance on each calendar card, like "Status" and "Platform(s)".

Now you can see your scheduled posts laid out visually. Best of all, you can drag and drop cards to different dates to reschedule content on the fly.

The Kanban Workflow Board

This view turns your workflow into a visual pipeline, showing you the status of every piece of content at a glance. It's inspired by the "kanban" methodology and is incredibly motivating.

1. Click the "+" again and select the Board layout option.
2. Name this view "Workflow Board."
3. For the "Group by" option, choose your "Status" property.

You now have columns for each stage of your content creation process (Idea, Writing, Filming, etc.). As you work on a post, you can simply drag its card from one column to the next, giving you a clear, satisfying sense of progress.

An Inbox for New Ideas

You need a quick, frictionless place to dump new ideas before they disappear. This view will act as your brainstorming inbox.

1. Create a new Table or List view and name it "Idea Inbox."
2. Click the "Filter" button at the top of the database.
3. Set the filter to: Where Status is Idea.

Now you have a clean list where you can quickly add new ideas without cluttering your main calendar or workflow board. Periodically, you can review this list and drag promising ideas into the "Writing/Scripting" stage on your Workflow Board to get them started.

Beyond the Basics: Streamlining Your Process

Once you've built the core structure, you can add layers of sophistication to make your social media planning even more efficient.

Use Database Templates for Different Content Types

Inside your "Master Content Database," you can create templates that pre-populate with checklists, prompts, or standard copy, saving you time and ensuring you never miss a step. Next to the blue "New" button in your database, click the dropdown arrow and select "+ New Template."

For example, you could create a "New Instagram Reel Template":

• Preset Properties: Automatically sets the "Platform(s)" property to Instagram and "Content Type" to Reel.
• Built-in Checklist: Inside the body of the page, add a checklist for your Reel creation process:
  • [ ] Research trending audio
  • [ ] Write video script/hook
  • [ ] Film A-Roll and B-Roll
  • [ ] Edit video clips
  • [ ] Add captions/text overlays
  • [ ] Write SEO-optimized caption
  • [ ] Select hashtags

When you go to create a new Reel, just select this template, and your entire workflow is ready to go.

Build a "Resource Hub"

Your Notion Command Center isn't just for planning posts. Create separate, simple pages within your workspace for key resources.

• Hashtag Bank: A page with categorized lists of hashtags for different content pillars or topics that you can easily copy and paste.
• Brand Kit: A gallery view holding your logos, brand colors (with hex codes), and font names for quick reference.
• Inspiration Swipe File: Use the Notion Web Clipper to save links to articles, great social posts, or interesting data points to fuel future content ideas.

Final Thoughts

By building a custom social media command center in Notion using a central database, powerful views, and smart templates, you can transform a scattered process into a streamlined and effective content machine. You’ll spend less time searching for files and more time creating content that really connects with your audience.

Once an entry moves to "Ready to Schedule" on your Notion board, the final, most important step is getting it out into the world reliably. This is where moving from a planning tool to a scheduling tool becomes necessary. For our own team, when a post is finalized in Notion, we use Postbase to handle the actual publishing. Its rock-solid scheduling across all platforms - especially for modern formats like Reels and Shorts - means our carefully planned content goes live exactly when it should, closing that crucial loop from idea to published post.