As a marketing or social media manager, you know great content isn’t enough—it has to be timely too. 📅
To stay ahead of trends, publish consistently, and move fast when strategy shifts, you need a solid plan. That’s where content calendar templates come in.
In this guide, we’ll show you how to use free templates to streamline your content planning and publishing. Let’s go! 🚀
📌 Did You Know? Marketers who document their content strategy are 313% more likely to report success than those who don’t. A well-planned content calendar isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a game changer.
Free Content Calendar Templates
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.
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.
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.
💡 Pro Tip: Don’t just use a calendar to plan what you’ll post—add context like goals, channels, formats, and target audience for each post. It’ll help your team create with purpose and stay aligned.
15 Free Content Calendar Templates for Social Media
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.
🤔 When to use this template? Choose this template if you want a centralized, interactive hub for planning, tracking, and collaborating on all your content initiatives throughout the year. It’s ideal for teams who need to coordinate blog posts, campaigns, and social media in one place, with easy drag-and-drop scheduling and real-time updates.
2. 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.
🤔 When to use this template? Opt for this template when your primary focus is managing and visualizing social media posts across multiple platforms. It’s perfect for social media managers who want to plan, prioritize, and schedule posts, partnerships, and campaigns, while tracking performance and adapting quickly to trends.
📚 Also Read: Want to speed up your content creation without sacrificing quality? Check out this AI content generator guide to discover how the right tools can help you brainstorm, write, and publish faster.
3. Content Management Template
While offers hundreds of ready-to-use templates in its Template Center, one 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!
This template is your absolute one-stop shop for creating and managing content across multiple channels while having dedicated calendar views for each one.
🤔 When to use this template? Use this template if you oversee complex content workflows involving multiple channels (blog, email, social, web) and need a customizable system to manage requests, editorial calendars, and approvals. It’s best for content teams looking for flexibility and granular control over every stage of content production.
📚 Also Read: Looking for tools to streamline your blogging process? Explore our roundup of the 10 Best Blogging Tools and Software to find the perfect fit for your content strategy.
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.
🤔 When to use this template? Select this template if you prefer a list-based approach to content planning, where you can easily outline topics, assign deadlines, and monitor progress at a glance. It’s great for editorial teams who want a straightforward, checklist-style overview of upcoming content.
📮 Insight: A typical knowledge worker has to connect with 6 people on average to get work done.
This means reaching out to 6 core connections on a daily basis to gather essential context, align on priorities, and move projects forward.
The struggle is real—constant follow-ups, version confusion, and visibility black holes erode team productivity. A centralized platform like , with Connected Search and AI Knowledge Manager, tackles this by making context instantly available at your fingertips.
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.
🤔 When to use this template? Turn to this template when you need to organize, schedule, and analyze multiple A/B tests for your content or campaigns. It’s especially useful for marketing teams running experiments to optimize messaging, design, or calls-to-action, and who want to visualize results and track performance over time.
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!
🤔 When to use this template? Pick this template if you’re managing a publication schedule for blogs, newsletters, or editorial content and need to assign tasks, track statuses, and collaborate with writers and editors. It’s ideal for editorial leads who want to streamline content planning and ensure deadlines are met.
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.
🤔 When to use this template? Use this template if you prefer working in Google Sheets and need a simple, shareable calendar for planning and tracking social media or content activities. It’s perfect for small teams or freelancers who want a lightweight, cloud-based solution that’s easy to customize.
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 marketing 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.
🤔 When to use this template? Choose this template if you’re comfortable with Excel and want a flexible, offline tool for mapping out your content schedule. It’s a great fit for marketers who need to personalize their calendar with custom formatting, formulas, or additional data fields.
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.
🤔 When to use this template? Select this template if you want a straightforward, fill-in-the-blank document for planning weekly or monthly social media posts. It’s ideal for individuals or teams who prefer a document format over spreadsheets and want a simple structure to get started quickly.
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.
🤔 When to use this template? Go with this template when you need a comprehensive, year-long overview of your social media campaigns. It’s best for teams planning content far in advance, ensuring coverage of key dates, holidays, and events across all platforms.
11. Black and White Minimalist Monthly Social Media Content Calendar By Canva
This professionally designed Canva template offers a minimalist, modern layout that makes planning your monthly social media content both stylish and simple. Each day is sectioned clearly to allow for detailed content inputs. Think post type, caption snippets, hashtags, and platform icons.
Fully customizable in Canva, it’s perfect for social media managers who want a clean, high-level view of their publishing strategy without the clutter of spreadsheets. Its drag-and-drop flexibility and visual appeal make it an ideal choice for visual brands and design-conscious creators.
🤔 When to use this template? Use this template if you want a visually appealing, minimalist calendar that’s easy to customize and perfect for presenting your monthly social media plan. It’s great for design-focused brands or creators who value aesthetics and need a high-level, stylish overview.
12. Social Media Calendar with Best Times to Post by Buffer
Buffer’s expertly crafted PDF calendar doesn’t just help you plan, it helps you plan smarter. Pre-filled with research-backed “best times to post” across platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, X (Twitter), YouTube, and TikTok, this calendar template gives you immediate, actionable scheduling guidance.
It’s especially useful for teams juggling multiple channels who want to boost reach without guessing. This is more than a planner—it’s a strategy companion, built to align your posting habits with audience behavior.
🤔 When to use this template? Choose this template if you want to optimize your posting schedule based on research-backed best times for each platform. It’s ideal for teams managing multiple channels who want to maximize reach and engagement without the guesswork.
13. Content Marketing Calendar Template by Template.net
This content marketing calendar template from Template.net is built for end-to-end campaign planning. With editable fields for content themes, channels, target personas, objectives, deadlines, and team assignments, it becomes a central hub for your content strategy.
Available in Word, Google Docs, and PDF formats, it’s flexible enough to be used by solo marketers or collaborative teams. Whether you’re launching a new content series or aligning monthly efforts across teams, this template keeps every piece of your marketing machine moving in sync.
🤔 When to use this template? Pick this template when you need a campaign-focused calendar that tracks themes, objectives, deadlines, and team assignments. It’s perfect for marketing teams coordinating multi-channel campaigns and aligning content with business goals.
14. Content Calendar for Product Launches by Template.net
Launching a product? This calendar was made for you. It breaks down your launch cycle into strategic phases—teaser, announcement, launch day, post-launch follow-ups, with clearly designated spaces to assign tasks, track assets, and manage deadlines across multiple platforms.
Perfect for SaaS, eCommerce, or event marketing teams, this template helps prevent last-minute scrambles and ensures your messaging flows cohesively across channels. It’s available in Word, Google Docs, and PDF formats, giving teams a collaborative and repeatable framework for each launch.
🤔 When to use this template? Use this template if you’re planning a product launch and need to break down the process into phases—teasers, announcements, launch day, and follow-ups. It’s ideal for SaaS, eCommerce, or event teams who want to ensure every launch detail is covered and deadlines are met.
15. Monthly Content Calendar Template by Template.net
If you prefer a bird’s-eye view of your monthly content plan, this template delivers exactly that. Designed for Google Sheets and Excel, it provides a classic grid-style calendar where you can plot out daily content, note campaign themes, highlight key dates, and maintain consistency across platforms.
Plus, it is lightweight but powerful—perfect for bloggers, social media freelancers, or small teams that want to stay organized without overcomplicating things.
🤔 When to use this template? Opt for this template if you want a classic, grid-style calendar for plotting daily content, campaign themes, and key dates. It’s best for bloggers, freelancers, or small teams who need a simple, organized way to maintain consistency and stay on top of their monthly content plan.
Benefits of Using Content Calendar Templates
A content calendar is essential for planning, organizing, and executing your content strategy efficiently. With , you can take your content calendar to the next level, leveraging powerful features that streamline collaboration, scheduling, and performance tracking—all in one place.
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.
How helps
Calendar and Tasks ensure everyone on your team knows what content is being created, who’s responsible, and when it’s due. Assign tasks, set deadlines, and add comments or attachments directly to each content item. With real-time updates and customizable notifications, your team stays in sync and miscommunication is minimized.
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.
How helps
’s recurring tasks, templates, and Automations help you maintain a regular publishing cadence.
With Brain, the AI power, you can take your workflow even further—automatically assign tasks to the right team members, prioritize content based on deadlines or impact, and even get AI-powered assistance for drafting and refining your content. This ensures your team stays on track, and your content is always consistent and high-quality, with less manual effort.
Check out this sample Brain output 👇
Also, watch this video 👇 to know more about what Brain can enable for you.
Benefit 3: Enables proactive planning 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.
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.
How helps
Plan ahead with ’s advanced scheduling tools. Batch-create tasks for content clusters, use dependencies to map out workflows, and set priorities to focus on what matters most. ’s Workload View helps you balance assignments and avoid bottlenecks, while templates let you quickly duplicate successful content plans.
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.
How helps
Align your content with business goals using Goals and Milestones features. Track progress on campaigns, measure outcomes with Custom Fields, and generate reports to see what’s driving results. By centralizing your content operations in , you reduce wasted effort and maximize your marketing ROI.
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.
How helps
Use the Calendar View and Timeline views to ensure a steady flow of posts, and collaborate with your team to brainstorm new ideas. Docs and Whiteboards make it easy to develop content briefs and creative assets, keeping your audience engaged with fresh, timely content.
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.
How helps
Monitor your content’s impact with Dashboards. Visualize key metrics, track task completion, and analyze campaign performance—all in one customizable dashboard. Attach analytics reports to tasks, and use custom fields to log engagement data, making it easy to see what’s working and optimize your strategy.
Benefit 7: Plans social media marketing efforts better
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.
How helps
’s integrations with tools like Google Calendar, Slack, and social media platforms help you coordinate campaigns across channels. Use templates for repeatable processes, automate routine steps, and collaborate in real time to ensure your social media marketing is strategic and effective.
Manage your Content Calendar with
A content calendar is one of the most important tools you can have 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 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.
And if you’re looking for a comprehensive project management tool for your team, is fully equipped with customizable features and templates for every team and use case. It’s time to level up with . 🚀
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, open 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 fully customizable to fit your specific content planning needs.
Can a content calendar improve ROI?
Definitely. Content calendars not only keep teams organized but also align content creation with business goals, aiding in improving ROI.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
