Staying organized and consistent with your content strategy is crucial for success. After all, our research into content marketing trends suggests a focus on quality over quantity. One way to ensure quality with your content efforts is to use content calendars. Content calendars streamline content management, ensuring every blog post, social media update, and marketing campaign is strategically planned and executed.
Whether you’re coordinating a small team or managing a complex, integrated marketing campaign, a well-structured content calendar can save you time, reduce stress, and enhance your overall effectiveness.
In this article, we’ve curated a list of 7 free content calendar templates available for Excel, Google Sheets, and other popular platforms. These templates are designed to help you plan, schedule, and track your content effortlessly, allowing you to focus on what truly matters – creating impactful content that resonates with your audience. Our selection spans a range of features and formats to cater to various needs, from social media scheduling to comprehensive editorial planning.
Let’s dive in and explore the best options available to keep your content strategy on track and your audience engaged.
What Is a Content Calendar Template?
A content calendar template is a pre-designed schedule used by marketers to plan, organize, and manage their content across various platforms in advance. These templates typically include fields for dates, content types, topics, deadlines, and responsible team members, offering a clear overview of what content needs to be created and when it should be published.
By using a content calendar template, teams can ensure a consistent posting schedule, align content with marketing goals, and avoid last-minute scrambles.
What's Included in Content Calendar Templates?
Content calendar templates typically include the following:
- Fields for dates, content types, topics, deadlines, and responsible team members.
- Sections for different platforms - social media, blogs, emails, and more.
- Space for notes
- Performance metrics
- Campaign goals.
This structure provides an overview of your content strategy, ensuring all elements are organized and easily accessible.
How do Content Calendar Templates Work?
Content calendar templates work by providing a structured format to plan, schedule, and track your content. To use these templates, you must:
- Step 1: Fill in Key Information. Begin by entering essential details such as publication dates, content topics, and the platforms where the content will be published.
- Step 2: Visualize Your Content Plan. The template provides a visual overview of your content strategy over a specific period. This helps you see the big picture, making it easier to manage deadlines and ensure content is evenly distributed.
- Step 3: Coordinate Team Efforts. Assign tasks and deadlines to team members within the template. This structure facilitates communication and ensures everyone knows their responsibilities, promoting efficient collaboration.
- Step 4: Update Regularly. Keep the calendar current by adding new content and performance metrics. Regular updates help you track progress and adapt your strategy as needed.
- Step 5: Refine Your Strategy. Use the performance data tracked in the calendar to identify what works best. Adjust your content plan based on these insights to maintain a consistent and effective posting schedule.
Content calendars work best when you have a consistent posting schedule, especially for social media. However, you must also know the best times to post on social media to get the most out of your marketing campaigns. For that, we recommend you read our following guides:
Top Content Calendar Templates and Tools
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is one of the top social media management tools and offers robust features. You can use it for virtually anything relating to social media management, but if you are specifically searching for a tool to help you with the content side, it offers automated publishing, content management, keyword filtering, multi-account management, post scheduling, and multi-user collaboration. You will find that this tool is more cost-effective if you use it to collaborate with only a few fellow marketers.
On their blog, they offer a free, customizable week-by-week content calendar template that you can download to plan and schedule your content ahead of time. It focuses on the four main social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Though, as it is very customizable, you are welcome to tweak it to include the platforms that you mostly use.
One of the useful features of their template is that they include a tab for evergreen content. This is for timeless blog posts that perform well throughout the year.
2. Adobe Express Content Scheduler (Previously ContentCal)
Adobe Express is a social media management platform with a heavy focus on planning and scheduling content. With regards to content scheduling, its calendar is one of the best as the posts are placed in a big format so that you can read the caption easily and view the images clearly. It also uses color-coding which helps you to categorize your different posts and two rows for additional labeling. The one row specifies the campaign, while you can use the other row for writing down notes for different members in your team. Speaking of which, if you are working with a small team, it is also one of the most cost-effective tools.
On their website, they offer a free content calendar template as a lead magnet. After you have downloaded the template, you need to answer four questions. Your answers will then be used to generate your template automatically.
One of the attractive features of this template is that it asks you to identify your content goals for the year. From increasing traffic to getting more leads, by adding your specific goal it will help you to remember what it is that you wish to achieve. They also suggest that you restrict it to five social channels. This will help you to remain focused and make it easier to keep tabs on how your content performs on each platform.
After you have answered the four questions, you need to copy the colored boxes at the top of the Excel sheet into the calendar. Now, you will be able to see your content goals, target platforms, types of content you want to post and how often you plan to post.
3. CoSchedule
The primary focus of CoSchedule is content marketing and it is best for businesses that focus a lot on blog content. It has an Editorial Calendar that is more aimed at small businesses and a Marketing Suite which will likely not be within the budget of smaller businesses.
Unlike the other tools, CoSchedule offers a trio of free content calendar templates. In addition to offering a content calendar template, it also shares an email marketing calendar template to help you plan each email before you hit send and a social media editorial calendar template to help you keep tabs on all your social media content conveniently via one place.
While the content calendar template is perhaps a tad bit too simplistic, the other two templates are more detailed. One of the attractive features of the template for email content is that it includes a column for identifying your target audience or persona. This way, you can create targeted email campaigns more efficiently.
A useful inclusion in the social media marketing template is a column where you can add the time. Considering that the time can make a difference in your results, it is a key factor that any decent content plan should include.
4. HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing platform that includes email marketing and CRM functionality to mention only a few of its features. On their website, they offer a free downloadable social media content calendar template. This package includes a spreadsheet for scheduling, monthly planning, Twitter updates, Facebook updates, LinkedIn updates, Instagram Updates, and Pinterest updates.
It also has a very practical content repository. Here, you can add your different types of content along with an interesting snippet about it. Having this type of database on hand can also help with content planning. This way, you do not always have to create new content from scratch as you can simply refer to this spreadsheet to see if you do not perhaps already have a suitable piece of content that you can repurpose.
When you download these free content calendar templates, you will also get access to a guide for startups. From creating a brand strategy to what to measure and analyze, it will help you to plan your content in advance making it simpler to coordinate different marketing campaigns.
5. Small Business Trends
Small Business Trends, an online publication for small business owners, has shared a template for small businesses based on the calendar format that they use internally. Their template can be downloaded as a Word doc, Excel spreadsheet, or a PDF doc.
6. Backlinko
Backlinko offers a free content calendar template that you can either open as a Google Sheet or download as Microsoft Excel document. It is ideal for individuals who want to start a brand new blog or teams who want to grow their current efforts.
Included in the download are a content list and workflow and a monthly calendar template. While the monthly calendar template is rather basic, the content workflow sheet is quite detailed and offers a step-by-step assembly line that will help you to stick to those looming deadlines.
7. Trello
Trello remains one of the most popular tools for project management. It is especially great if you work as part of a bigger team as you can easily include due dates and add comments to ensure everyone in your marketing team is on the same page. Additionally, with the help of boards and cards, you can assign a task to a specific team member and define the steps needed for individual projects which can help you to organize and prioritize your posts.
One of its useful features is that you can keep tabs on your team members’ progress by means of a checklist. This way, you can ensure that your campaign is still on track for a particular week or month.
How Can Social Media Content Calendar Templates Boost Your Marketing?
Social media content calendar templates are powerful tools that can significantly enhance your marketing strategy. Here are five ways these templates can boost your marketing efforts.
Benefit 1: Streamlined Content Planning
Organizing your content in advance helps maintain a consistent posting schedule and ensures you never miss important dates. By laying out your content schedule in advance, you can see your entire content plan at a glance and make necessary adjustments. This comprehensive view ensures a smooth, cohesive strategy that aligns with your marketing goals.
For example, Hootsuite's free, customizable week-by-week content calendar template allows you to plan and schedule posts across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Source: Hootsuite
Benefit 2: Enhanced Collaboration
Clear, color-coded templates facilitate communication and task assignment among team members, reducing the risk of miscommunication. This setup makes it easy to assign tasks, track progress, and ensure everyone is aligned with the content plan. The enhanced collaboration promotes productivity and coordination, enabling your team to work more efficiently towards common objectives.
CoSchedule exemplifies this with its use of color coding for different types of content posts. For example, you might use one color for social media, another for email newsletters, and a third for blog posts.
Source: CoSchedule
Benefit 3: Improved Content Quality
Scheduling posts at optimal times increases engagement and interaction, leading to higher-quality content delivery. By scheduling posts for peak times when your audience is most active, you increase the chances of higher engagement. This targeted approach ensures your content reaches its maximum potential impact, improving the overall quality of your social media presence.
Again, CoSchedule's social media editorial calendar template includes a column for post timing, helping you optimize when your content goes live.
Benefit 4: Better Performance Tracking
Monitoring key metrics helps refine your content strategy based on what resonates most with your audience. Regularly reviewing these metrics allows you to understand what types of content are most effective. By analyzing this data, you can adjust your strategy to focus on the content that performs best, continuously improving your social media efforts.
Benefit 5: Increased Efficiency
Detailed task assignments and progress tracking streamline the content production process, saving time and resources. Trello's project management features, including boards, cards, and checklists, allow for detailed task assignments and progress tracking. This organizational structure helps you prioritize tasks and ensure timely completion.
Source: Trello
Using social media content calendar templates can significantly enhance your marketing strategy in several ways:
- Streamlined Content Planning: Organizing content in advance maintains a consistent posting schedule and prevents missed important dates.
- Enhanced Collaboration: Clear, color-coded templates facilitate communication and task assignment, promoting productivity and coordination among team members.
- Improved Content Quality: Scheduling posts at optimal times increases engagement and interaction, leading to higher-quality content delivery.
- Better Performance Tracking: Monitoring key metrics helps refine your content strategy, focusing on what resonates most with your audience.
- Increased Efficiency: Detailed task assignments and progress tracking streamline the content production process, saving time and resources.
Wrapping Things Up
It can be hard to create captivating content continuously. One of the biggest hurdles is to identify what to write about. Though, with the help of one of these content calendar templates it is much easier to plan ahead based on current events.
Then, to ensure that your content does not get lost in your target audience’s feeds, these templates will also help you to identify the best time to post the content. For example, Tuesdays or Thursdays are generally the best days to send emails. So, knowing this, you can make sure that you allocate these days on your calendar for email content.
If these free templates do not meet your needs, it doesn't take a lot of time or effort to come up with your own template. At the end of the day, if your content is your livelihood, the only thing that matters is that you use some type of template to guide your planning the month or, even better, for the year.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best free content calendar?
The best free content calendar depends on your specific needs and preferences. Popular options include Hootsuite for its comprehensive social media management features, Asana for its project management capabilities, and HubSpot for its all-in-one marketing tools. Each offers customizable templates that can be tailored to suit your content strategy.
How can I create a content calendar?
Creating a content calendar involves several steps:
- Choose a Template: Select a template that fits your needs from platforms like Excel, Google Sheets, or specialized tools like Hootsuite and Asana.
- Define Your Goals: Identify what you want to achieve with your content, such as increasing engagement or driving traffic.
- Schedule Your Content: Fill in key information such as publication dates, content topics, and platforms.
- Assign Tasks: Delegate responsibilities to team members and set deadlines.
- Review and Adjust: Regularly update the calendar with new content and performance metrics to refine your strategy.
How to get free social media calendar templates?
Free social media calendar templates are available from various platforms. You can download them directly from websites like Hootsuite, HubSpot, and Adobe Express. Simply visit their blogs or resources sections, where these templates are often offered as free downloads.
What are some personal recommendations for managing content calendars effectively?
Here are some tips for managing content calendars effectively:
- Consistency is Key: Regularly update your calendar to keep track of upcoming content and ensure a steady flow of posts.
- Use Collaboration Tools: Leverage tools that facilitate team collaboration, such as Trello or Asana, to keep everyone on the same page.
- Set Reminders and Deadlines: Use alerts and reminders to stay on top of deadlines and ensure timely content publication.
- Analyze Performance: Regularly review performance metrics to understand what content works best and adjust your strategy accordingly.
- Plan Ahead: Always have a buffer of planned content to avoid last-minute rushes and ensure you can adapt to any unforeseen changes.
How can I create my own content calendar template?
Start by reviewing your marketing strategy and identifying who your target audience is. Once you understand your target audience and the different platforms, you can begin to plan the type of content. You can decide how much detail you need on your calendar, but popular categories include dates, times, networks and links.
