As a marketing or social media manager, you’re constantly looking for some approaches that will give you a competitive edge in the market. Creating authoritative, informative, and relevant content is probably one area you’ve invested heavily.
But do you know that creating and publishing social media content at the right time matters? Yep—just like with everything else in life, it’s all about timing, even with content marketing.
So how do ensure you and your team produce quality content on time while staying competitive and on top of the ever-changing trending topics? Simple: plan ahead and plan strategically!
And in this case, you can lean on content calendar templates to help you get started quicker, plan your content, stay ahead of trends, and be prepared for any strategic changes.
This guide will show you how to use free content calendar templates to your advantage and teach you ways to take your content planning and publishing to the next level. 🚀
What is a Content Calendar Template?
A content calendar template is a schedule that allows you to plan and organize content in advance. This way, you can track the progress of your content creation, identify gaps, and measure your performance against specific goals.
Content calendars are crucial for social media managers since they help ensure that all the content is published at the right time and place.
Social media managers manage their content planning and publication using various tools such as Google Sheets, Excel, and other project management software. While these tools are effective in managing content, they can be pretty challenging to use, especially for those who are not tech-savvy.
That’s why we’ve put together a list of the 10 best free content calendar templates you can use to plan your social media posts and content ideas.
10 Free Content Calendar Templates for Social Media in 2025
1. Content Calendar Template
The Content Calendar Template is designed to help you plan and publish your content more effectively. This template offers a simple and user-friendly interface that makes it easy to drag and drop files, add comments, and track the progress of your content.
With ’s free content calendar template, you can easily add comments and attachments to your content. This way, you can keep track of the progress of your content and ensure that all the stakeholders are on the same page.
2. Content Management Template
is an all-in-one project management software that allows you to plan, organize, and collaborate on your projects in one place. Its fully customizable platform makes it possible to personalize every aspect of your content workflow.
While offers hundreds of ready-to-use templates in its Template Center, there’s one that stands out for content planning—the Content Management Template. This template makes the top of our list because it’s completely flexible and customizable to your specific content workflow.
The template not only has a content calendar for tracking all your content across channels (i.e. blog, social media, website, or email), but it also includes separate calendar views for each channel!
With the Content Management Template, you get comprehensive insights into everything from receiving requests, creating a plan with documents, managing an editorial calendar, and delivering content.
This template is your absolute one-stop shop for creating and managing content across multiple channels while having dedicated calendar views for each one.
Bonus: Blogging software!
3. Social Media Content Calendar Template
Since offers a simple and user-friendly interface, it makes it easy to drag and drop files, add comments, and track the progress of your content. And with the Social Media Posts Template, you’ll be able to:
- Plan and organize your social media posts and content, publish status, and more
- Visualize and prioritize your posts, partnerships, insights, and more
- Strategize and schedule posts as new trends develop
Additionally, with this template, you can easily track the performance of your social media campaigns and identify areas that need improvement to keep you on top of your social media game and marketing campaigns.
Bonus: AI Content Generators
4. Content Calendar List Template
In the Content Calendar List Template, you can plan your topics, keep track of your deadlines, and ensure that your content is aligned with your editorial goals.
This template can help you manage your content creation, editing, and production activities with internal and external contributors while giving you a clear overview of your publishing calendar. Using a content calendar list allows you to get an at-glance view of your upcoming content.
5. Content A/B Testing Template
Testing is crucial in deciding how you will write, format, or display content to your audience. That’s why the A/B Testing Template is an awesome choice for content teams that want to visually track campaign schedules, test variations, conversion rates, and other important tests.
Running A/B tests can get messy in a hurry when you’re not tracking results across multiple experiments. This is where having an A/B testing template can help. A great template keeps your testing program organized and also saves you time.
With statuses, you’ll see exactly what stage each campaign is in. Plus, you can use the Conversion Rate & Performance Tracking tab to get an overview of all of your campaigns and their progress so you know exactly how they’re performing.
6. Editorial Content Calendar Template
The Editorial Calendar Template provides a ready-to-use calendar that lets you edit it to fit your content planning needs—edit the content in each column in the template to meet your requirements.
You can also add tags to your content for better organization, track the statuses of each post and assign tasks to team members. This shared calendar template is perfect for keeping you organized and on track with your content creation goals!
7. Google Sheets Content Calendar Template by Vertex
If you’re looking for a content calendar template specifically designed for Google Sheets, this Vertex42 template is the one for you. This social media calendar template helps you plan and keep an overview of your social media accounts, content ideas and activities across your platforms.
It also makes it so you can easily track the progress of your content, and ensures that you consistently meet your content goals. This template is adjustable, so you can customize it based on your project’s needs.
8. Excel Content Calendar Template by Vertex
If you’re currently using Excel or are well-versed in using it, then Vertex42’s content calendar template is for you. Just like other templates, the Vertex42 Excel calendar template allows you to easily track the progress of your content, so you regularly hit your content goals.
This template also offers a variety of features that make it easy to customize and adapt to your specific needs. You can change font colors, highlight cells, add rows and columns, and more to personalize your content calendar to fit your content marketing strategy.
9. Google Docs Social Media Calendar Template by Template.net
If you prefer a document over Excel and Google Sheets or to use a template from scratch, then a blank social media calendar template might be for you.
Blank templates are fill-in-the-blank templates that provide a simple layout and immediate structure while giving you a blank canvas to work with. This type of template can help manage your content ideas, plan your weekly publishing schedule across your social media platforms, and create consistent and repeatable processes for you and your team.
10. Google Docs Annual Social Media Calendar Template by Template.net
Annual Social Media Calendar templates are great for short and long-term planning. It’s an exhaustive template that covers all the bases, and it’s perfect for content and social media managers who want a complete overview of their social media campaigns—plan your content calendar for the entire year and get granular by planning by month, week, and day.
This comprehensive calendar will guide your social media content creation for a year and ensure you hit all the key dates and events. As a result, you and your team can become more proactive about the publishing schedule and cadence and anticipate changes as necessary.
Benefits of Using Content Calendar Templates
Content calendars create a system that allows you to strategically plan and create content in advance, so you never have to scramble to make something new at the last minute.
Here are some of the main benefits of why you should use a content calendar:
Benefit 1: Keeps your team organized and aligned
A social media content calendar template will help keep your team organized and aligned because everyone can see what content needs to be created and when it needs to be published—avoiding any confusion or miscommunication within your team. Social media and content departments need to work cohesively as possible, and a content calendar will help you achieve that.
Benefit 2: Ensures consistency
One of the most important keys to a successful social media strategy is consistency. When you use a content calendar to strategically plan your social media posts and other content materials, you and your team will be able to organize your publishing schedule and deliver timely content. This level of consistency will not only provide your team with a familiar cadence to work with but will also help your audience anticipate when your next posts will be available.
Benefit 3: Proactive about social media posts, timelines, and saves time
Content creation can be time-consuming, therefore, planning ahead is key to staying within your deadlines and timelines. A content calendar can help keep your teams on track with content creation timelines and foresee when the hard deadlines are. Additionally, content and social media calendars can help you and your team plan for potential bottlenecks and other blockers.
As for content production, your team can use a content online calendar to organize and batch content items in advance to work on the topic cluster at once instead of scattered efforts that inhibit productivity. This will save you time, energy, and stress in the long run.
Benefit 4: Improves your ROI
Content calendars improve your return on investment (ROI). They’ll ensure your social media management team is organized and that they’re creating content that’s aligned with your monthly, quarterly, and yearly business goals. This will help you improve your ROI because you’ll be able to track your marketing efforts and the progress of your social media campaigns. Additionally, a content calendar will help you save time and enhance your bottom line in the business environment.
Benefit 5: Sustains your audience’s interest
Sustaining your audience’s interest can be difficult, but it’s crucial if you want to keep them engaged in your brand. A content calendar can help you maintain your audience’s interest because it’ll allow you to plan and publish timely content that’s relevant and interesting to them. Additionally, a content calendar will help you ensure that you’re consistent with your content publishing cadence, which is crucial for sustaining your audience’s interest.
Benefit 6: Tracks performance more efficiently
Tracking your social media performance can be difficult, but it’s crucial if you want to see what’s working and what’s not. A content calendar will help you track your performance more efficiently because you’ll be able to see when certain pieces of content were published and how they performed. Additionally, a content calendar will help you ensure that you’re consistent with your content, which is also essential for tracking your performance.
Benefit 7: Plans social media marketing efforts better
Planning your social media marketing can be difficult, but it’s essential if you want to ensure that your campaigns are successful. A content calendar template will help you plan your social media marketing better because you’ll be able to see when certain pieces of content need to be published. You want to perform better than your competitors, and a content calendar will help you achieve that.
Content Calendar FAQs
How do I create a content calendar?
Use ’s free content calendar template to plan and organize your content ahead of time. It allows you to keep tabs on the progress, identify gaps, and measure your performance against specific goals.
What is the best social content calendar template?
’s Content Calendar Template is extremely effective. It helps in planning, organizing and tracking the progress of your social media posts.
Does Canva have a content calendar?
Yes, Canva does have content calendar templates. But consider using a tool like for a more comprehensive content management system.
How to make a content calendar in Word?
To create a content calendar in Word, ppen a new Word document. Click on ‘Insert’, select ‘Table’ and choose the number of columns and rows you need. Specify dates on top of columns for a monthly view.
How does a content calendar aid in marketing?
A content calendar helps in planning marketing efforts in advance, ensuring consistent posting, and tracking marketing performance efficaciously.
What’s the best way to manage content schedules?
Use content calendar templates. They streamline scheduling, often offer easy drag-and-drop functionality, and help to track the progress of your content.
Can I customize content calendar templates?
Yes, content calendar templates are often are fully customizable to fit your specific content planning needs.
Can a content calendar improve ROI?
Definitely. Content calendar’s not only keep teams organized but also align content creation with business goals, aiding in improving ROI.
Manage your Content Calendar with
A content calendar is one of the most important tools you can have lined up in your marketing toolbox. It serves as the framework for your business plans, a hub for all your content marketing efforts, and is your ticket to delivering timely content to your audience.
Without it, it would be quite challenging to keep track of your content creation timeline and publishing dates and stay ahead of online trends.
So whether you’re new to content calendars or a seasoned content or social media marketer simply looking for a more effective way to plan and organize your content, then lean on the templates we provided above to help you get started. Ready-to-use and customizable social media and content calendar templates are available at your fingertips!
And if you’re looking for a comprehensive project management tool for your entire marketing team, is fully equipped with customizable features and templates for every team and use case. It’s time to level up with . 🚀
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
