Free social media content calendar template

Download a blank content calendar template

Prefer to start from an empty sheet? Both files cover four weeks, one row per day, starting on a Monday, with the same columns as the builder.

How to import the content calendar into Google Sheets

There’s no template link to copy in Google Sheets, but importing the file takes about a minute:

1. Open a new spreadsheet at sheets.google.com.
2. Click File, then Import.
3. On the Upload tab, choose the CSV or Excel file.
4. Pick an import option. "Replace spreadsheet" turns the empty sheet into your calendar; "Insert new sheets" adds it to a spreadsheet you already use. For the CSV, leave the separator on "Detect automatically" or set it to Comma.
5. Click Import.

For a calendar you built above, there’s a quicker way. Press Copy for Google Sheets, click cell A1 in an empty sheet and paste. The text is tab separated, so each column lands in its own cell.

Using the template in Excel

Open the .xlsx file directly. Pick a network in column D and the two limit columns fill in from the Limits sheet. The CSV files, the blank one and the ones the builder makes, open in Excel as well. They’re saved as UTF-8 with a marker Excel recognises, so accented letters in your pillars and captions come through intact.

What each column is for

Column	What goes in it
Date	The day the post goes out, as YYYY-MM-DD.
Day	The weekday, filled in for you.
Time	When to publish. If your audience lives in another time zone, the time zone planner gives you the time to set.
Network	Where the post goes.
Content pillar	Which kind of post this is.
Post idea	One line on what the post is about.
Caption	The text you’ll paste into your scheduler.
Character limit	The network’s documented limit for that text, or "Not documented".
Hashtag limit	The documented hashtag cap, or "Not documented".
Media	The photo or video file, or where to find it.
Status	Idea, Draft, Ready, Scheduled or Posted.
Link	The live post, once it’s out.
Notes	Anything else, like what you saw at the monthly check.

How to plan a month of posts with it

The calendar is the last step of a plan, not the first. Our one-page social media plan for small businesses settles the parts of the builder that need some thought.

• Networks: one or two where your customers already spend time. If you’re a local business, add your Google Business Profile.
• Posts a week: a pace you can keep for three months. One post a week per network is a fine place to start.
• Content pillars: the few kinds of post you’ll repeat, such as showing the work, answering customer questions, proof and offers. The builder rotates through them in date order, so your feed doesn’t turn into a row of ads.

Then work down the Status column. Write the idea, draft the caption and paste it into the character counter to see that it fits every network you post to. Schedule it, add the time, and mark it Posted. If your audience is in another country, the time zone planner tells you what to put in the Time column.

Once a month, open each platform’s own analytics, find the rows that did best and write what you noticed in Notes. After two or three months you’ll know which pillars and days work for you, and you can plan the next calendar around them.