Social media content calendar template, free for Excel and Google Sheets

A social media content calendar template gives every post a row: when it goes out, where, in what format, who owns it and whether it’s approved. If your plan lives in your head or in a group chat today, start here: Download the Excel template. It’s free, asks for no email and imports into Google Sheets. It has 12 columns, dropdowns for network, format and status, and a filled-in week for a coffee shop so you can see how it works.

Content calendar or editorial calendar?

Most teams use the terms interchangeably. When they’re separated, the editorial calendar sets the quarter’s themes and campaigns, and the content calendar turns them into specific posts: one per row, with a date, network, format and caption.

The columns a social media content calendar needs

The free template, in Excel and Google Sheets

The file has two sheets. Calendar has the columns, with a frozen header, dropdowns for Network, Format and Status, a color for each status and 60 rows ready to fill. How to use has nine short instructions.

To use it in Google Sheets, open a spreadsheet, go to File > Import, upload the file and click Import data. You can also upload it to Drive and open it with Google Sheets, as Google’s help explains.

How to fill a month: a coffee shop example

The template comes with the week of October 5 to 11, 2026, for a fictional coffee shop: 8 posts in 7 days.

To go from one week to a month:

1. Pick 3 to 5 pillars. The coffee shop uses product, behind the scenes, community and promotion, and adds team when it’s hiring.
2. Set how much you post on each network. Here it’s 3 posts and 1 story on Instagram, 2 on TikTok, and 1 each on Facebook and LinkedIn. If 8 a week is too many, start with 4 and add more once you have a rhythm.
3. Mark the fixed dates first: a launch, a change in opening hours, a holiday. Everything else fits around them.
4. Spread the pillars across the week. Promotion goes once, on Friday, and the rest alternates.
5. Produce once, adapt twice. Monday’s roasting Reel goes out on TikTok on Tuesday with its own title: one shoot, two posts.
6. Repeat the structure, change the ideas. At 8 a week, the month adds up to 32 rows.

Build it with Claude or ChatGPT connected to HeyMark

Ask an assistant to “make me a social media content calendar” and you get ideas that would fit any coffee shop. Connected to HeyMark over MCP, free on every plan, Claude or ChatGPT reads what you’ve already published and its numbers, proposes the month in your brand’s voice and, once you approve, saves it as dated ideas on your calendar.

Use HeyMark with the brand [brand name].

1. Go through what we posted in the last [90] days and tell me which formats and topics performed best, with their numbers.
2. Based on that, build the content calendar for [October]: [3] posts a week across [Instagram and TikTok], spread over these pillars: [product, behind the scenes, community and promotion].
3. Show it to me as a table with these columns: Date, Day, Network, Format, Pillar or topic, Idea and Caption. Write the captions in the brand's voice.
4. Wait for my go-ahead. Once I give it, create each row as an idea in HeyMark with its date, and assign it to [person's name]. Don't schedule or publish anything.

Creating an idea doesn’t schedule it: each post stays on the calendar, with its status, until someone schedules it. If you’ve already filled in the template, copy the rows, paste them into the chat and ask only for step 4. In ChatGPT, creating posts requires developer mode. How to connect it: HeyMark in Claude or HeyMark in ChatGPT.

When a spreadsheet stops being enough

A content calendar in a spreadsheet works while one person plans and publishes. It stops being enough when:

• There are three versions of the video and nobody knows which one is final.
• The client approves over text and the Approved by column stays empty.
• The Status column says scheduled, but nobody checked that it went out.
• You copy captions by hand from the sheet into each network.
• You want to know what worked, and the sheet has no numbers.

In HeyMark, every row of the calendar is a post with a status, a date and an owner. The idea, script and caption live together; the team comments and uploads versions right there, and the activity log shows who did what. The client approves from a link, on every plan, and what’s approved gets scheduled from the same post to Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook or YouTube. When you connect your accounts, HeyMark pulls in what you’ve already published with its numbers, and anything someone posts straight from Instagram shows up on the calendar too. The full workflow is in social media approval workflow, and each network’s options in schedule social media posts.

When another tool fits better

• You post two or three times a week and work on your own. The template is enough: you don’t need to pay for a planning tool.
• You want to schedule for free. HeyMark has no free plan: it has a 14-day trial and then starts at $12 USD a month. As of September 2026, Metricool has a free plan with 1 brand and 20 posts a month, without LinkedIn, and Buffer has one too, with channel and post limits.
• Your calendar includes X, Pinterest, Threads, Bluesky or Google Business Profile. HeyMark doesn’t publish there; Metricool does.
• You plan more than social media. If the same calendar runs your blog, newsletter and ads, HeyMark only covers the social part.

How to get started

1. Download the Excel template. If you work in Google Sheets, import it with File > Import.
2. Pick your pillars and how many posts you’ll publish each week on each network.
3. Fill in your first week using the coffee shop as a guide, then delete the example rows.
4. When you need approvals and publishing in one place, start HeyMark’s 14-day trial, connect your accounts and ask your assistant to move the calendar into HeyMark.