Being a marketer can be a difficult feat with thousands of things to remember and posts to schedule. Why not simplify your work with social media calendar tools?
But why a separate calendar for your media content? We’ll give you reasons.
Have you ever suddenly jolted into action, knowing you missed the slot to post that piece of content planned for the day? Have you scrambled through documents and notes trying to find the captions you created for these posts, unable to locate them?
These mishaps in a social media marketer’s life, are accompanied by a loss of coordination and panic attacks at the last minute.
A proper social media content planner can save you from this disarray. It helps track all your creative assets which in turn keeps you on a fixed schedule ensuring consistency.
That’s when social media calendar tools come in handy. They keep you well-organized and well-prepared with content. You can even run numerous campaigns on different social media platforms with them.
If you work for a digital agency as a social media manager or handle social media for a small business, you’ll need a social media posting calendar to help you visualize your content strategy.
Let’s audit some must-try social media calendar tools that make managing your content easy-peasy. In the end, we have a free social media calendar template copy for you to get started.
How we analyze and select these Social Media Calendar Tools:
We have compiled the following list of top-notch social media calendar tools through extensive research and evaluation. Our process involved actively weighing factors like user experience, G2 ratings and reviews, cost, and scalability. We assessed the proficiency of these tools in automation, crafting content, visualization, analytics, and teamwork to rank them. We have dedicated immense effort to curating this list, with the aim of equipping marketers with insightful data for choosing the right tools that will help grow their businesses.
ContentStudio is a well-known all-in-one social media management tool that offers content automation, social media scheduling, a social inbox, analytics, and content discovery.
In addition, the tool’s social media content planner enables you to plan, brainstorm, and manage when and where content is shared or published.
ContentStudio provides a social media content calendar that allows you to view, accept, reject, and edit posts easily. This reduces the likelihood of sending out incorrect or error-filled content. Furthermore, all team members can easily collaborate. For example, your social manager can contribute ideas, your designer can add images, and your copywriter can create captions right away.
To reduce clutter, you can also see your content as part of an organized list. To make things easier, you can sort posts by type, status, member, and even label them in the content calendar.
Pros
- You can use ContentStudio as your editorial calendar for a trial period to see how simple it is to manage social media with ContentStudio.
- It boosts productivity by utilizing a single interface.
- Its built-in approval workflow facilitates collaboration and workflow.
- It provides a variety of views (list and calendar) for your convenience.
- It has powerful filters that allow users to easily manage their calendars.
- Content management across multiple channels is available.
Alex M
I have used ContentStudio for several years now. I’m a big fan of using something that can simplify my content creation and posting. ContentStudio’s automation features keep me consistent with my social media management. The composer is easy to use and gives a great preview of what your post will look like on your different social channels.
Cons
- It lacks social inbox for IOS.
Brad Ford P
The content approval flow is a little wonky for the client or collaborator. The discovery area is nice, but there’s a lot of clicking to filter what you want, and there’s no way to save that filtering.
Pallyy is a social media scheduling tool which enables you to schedule posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest and Google Business Profile. It is more suitable to handle visual content with special capabilities for Instagram marketing such as bio link tool, first comment scheduling, Instagram Grid planner, inbox and analytics.
The social media calendar tool in Pallyy can be accessed through the scheduler itself. You can create posts, reschedule and edit them as well. The tool also shows users the best time to post on their profiles so they can gain maximum exposure upon being published.
Pros
- Perfect tool to manage your Instagram account.
- Instagram Grid tool helps shape a strong impression of a page
- It is a very affordable option for solopreneurs
Justyna R.
I love using Pallyy to manage my own and my clients’ social media accounts. I find it very helpful to be able to schedule to different platforms and have everything I need in one place. The customer service from Pallyy is excellent, he’s always been very helpful and quick to respond. I also like the fact that there are new updates and better features added, so it shows that this software is trying to give the best features to its users.
Cons
- It lacks features like social inbox and analytics for platforms other than Instagram
- The customer support service is lacking
Sue C.
When I schedule a post across multiple channels, I can customise the post, but not the schedule. In future, I’d like to be able to post at different times on different channels.
A popular tool that both individuals and companies use, Trello is typically a team management tool. It isn’t typically a social media content calendar tool but can be used as one. Managers can allocate and assign work to team members inside the Trello dashboard. This reduces the amount of ‘emailing’ required daily.
For example, you can create different columns: To-do, In review, Posted, To-repost, etc. So, once seniors have approved your ‘in review’ post, you can ‘post it’ and move it to the ‘Posted’ column. Or, you could create focused channels where you put in different cards under each and assign dates to these cards.
Trello can also be substituted as a social media content planner. If you organize all your posts on your Trello board, you can go to the calendar view, which gives a comprehensive insight into which post is scheduled to go out when.
Pros
- A simple user interface that anyone can start using without any help.
- The tool works on all devices: laptops, mobiles, and even tablets. That way, it helps you set your social media calendar even when you are on the go.
- You can color-code your cards, making it easier to understand the status of workflow on different campaigns. Trello makes content planning and publishing an effortless job.
Malcon C.
Trello is a striking, fun, and intuitive application that helps people to collaborate at work. The biggest challenge in using it is deciding if it’s the right type of collaboration app to manage your work. Trello is best described as a kanban board app, a category of software that is better at organizing, coordinating, and tracking work as it progresses through a workflow among a group of people.
Cons
- You will have to integrate Trello with a third-party social media tool to automate social media posting from Trello. This is additional work, which might make you rethink using Trello as a social media calendar planning tool.
- It gets difficult to manage and organize your work when you have multiple clients. The tool is best suited for handling only three or four social media channels for four or five clients.
Verified Trello User
It becomes difficult to manage cards with Trello boards once the company size grows. Difficult to manage a Trello board with a lot of cards added to it. Features like adding expected time to completion for a task, adding the completion percentage of an individual card can be more helpful.
With an easy-to-use interface, Evernote can be intelligently used to manage social media. Just like Trello, Evernote is more of a task management tool than a social media calendar tool that allows you to put dates on your social media content.
Evernote also makes it super easy to collaborate and work together with others in the team to manage your social media marketing campaigns. Using the app, you can organize your calendar into monthly, weekly, and hourly logs to view when your content is created, when it is being sent for review, or published on social media.
Pros
- Evernote syncs with multiple devices with ease. It also has a clean and straightforward interface.
- The feature “Related Notes” can be of much use for social media managers. The app uses an automated system that reviews content that you’ve earlier created in Evernote and recommends it if it relates to the content you are currently working on. This helps with better idea generation and helps dig out some excellent social media posts that have won you amazing results in the past.
James B.
I have used this software now for a little over two years, and I absolutely love it!! Evernote makes it easy for me to keep track of different things or tasks that I need to remember and can easily access and look at no matter which job I am working at.
Cons
- Creating a backup of all the content you’ve created, listed, and organized on Evernote, is difficult.
- Though the user interface is easy to understand, it isn’t very neat. There is a lot of scope for improvement on that front.
Hannah S.
They should improve account synchronization with different devices. You also have to pay, and for some people, this is not pleasant; the free version is not as good as the paid version, so if you want to enjoy all the options, you have to pay for the full Evernote version.
Loomly earlier went by the name Calendy. As of date, the tool positions itself as a ‘brand management’ platform. For companies, both small and big, Loomly is a social media posting calendar platform that helps in planning, creating, and executing paid and organic social media campaigns with ease. This social media calendar planning tool’s features allow you to view your editorial calendar in list-view as well as calendar-view.
Pros
- The tool can suggest ideas based on which you can optimize your posts for more engagement and conversions.
- Great tool if you have multiple clients and a big team to manage as it allows quick collaboration and effortless scheduling.
Daniel B.
Loomly is a tool that makes the job easier for me since I can schedule and optimize the posts in an innovative and multifunctional calendar, which can be customized at any time. It helps me simplify projects and create strategies that will help the business in the future.
Cons
- The tool provides very few integrations with other platforms. It also offers very few CRM integrations.
- There have been instances when the calendar and social media accounts have been disconnected.
Darien C.
Loomly is missing a few key features that you would expect on a social media management platform. Apart from those things, there are a number of simple UI issues that I wish they would remedy, including quickly adding a post from the calendar month view that ignores your preset posting schedule times. The Loomly Mobile Website is not fully optimized for mobile devices.
Planable is a great tool that offers a clear overview of all your social media posts.
The sleek Calendar View allows teams to schedule content easily and get a helicopter view of their social media initiatives. With a simple drag&drop, you can schedule content for an entire month. One feature that we find most useful is that you can drag & drop from draft posts directly into a time slot that automatically schedules your post.
Additionally, Planable’s “labels” feature allows users to file posts under the relevant category so nothing gets lost in the clutter. Hence the tool can also be called a social media content planner.
Planable supports Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google My Business, Twitter, and TikTok.
Pros
- low learning curve
- you have 3 more views for content: grid, list and feed
- can view multiple posts at the same time as grouped posts
Andrea R.
Planable has simplified my content marketing work. Now I spend less time doing manual work and collaborate better. In addition, it’s making my social media management and creativity very easy for me. This app allows me to manage social media channels where and when I want to.
Cons
- doesn’t have recommended publishing time, only custom time slots which you can set for each day
Amber B.
Planable is a great product that would have been a 5-star for me had I been able to get some analytics for my social media efforts. Not only do they not provide any kind of reporting, but they also don’t even provide you with the tools to figure out your own numbers.
Taking social media content creation to the next level, MeetEdgar can write posts on your behalf. What the tool does is that it uses intelligent algorithms to extract content that’s winning the most engagement from the right audience. It then suggests those to you so you can post and promote them on social media too.
With Edgar’s social media planner, you can schedule posts category-wise. This means you can segregate your post into blog posts, infographics, discount/promotional posts, webinars, etc. Color-coding on these category posts makes this task super easy.
Pros
- A comprehensive social media posting calendar tool that allows you to handle all work by logging in only to one account.
- The platform is very easy to use and understand.
Dawn M.
Create a schedule of categories to pull from. Generates a two-week Queue so you can see what will be posted. You can also skip content. Keep content so content can be reused at a later time. Organizes content into a library of categories.
Cons
- It supports 5 social media platforms so you can only publish posts for Twitter, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
- It is a comparatively expensive choice for a social media calendar tool.
Verified MeetEdgar User
We like the tool for scheduling purposes but the reporting really lacked the details we needed to send to our clients, which resulted in more work – so we weren’t saving any significant amount of time. Edgar is ideal for managing one company’s social media, but as an agency, we found it difficult to manage multiple clients on a single account. You’d essentially have to create multiple accounts, making it more costly than competitors.
Those who use Gmail and not Microsoft Office would be well-versed with the Google Drive Suite. There are features inside Google Drive like Google Sheets, Google Docs that social media marketers can use to plan, create and organize their work.
You can use the Google Calendar to organize and set dates for different social content that has to go out on different channels. For example, you can lock ‘25th December’ for ‘Christmas posts’.
Pros
- The free version is loaded with features and capabilities. You really don’t need to buy a paid version of Google Drive.
- Needless to say, people around the world are very comfortable using Google Drive. It is extremely intuitive and user-friendly.
- Both small and big companies can make elaborate content on Google Drive. There is no limit to the number of accounts or channels you can manage from within Google Drive.
Philip R.
Google Drive allows me to organize all of my files easily and have access to them on the go. With the mobile application and website access, I can access my files anywhere I have the internet.
Cons
- Difficult to integrate with other channels of communication. Even the number of plugins you can use with Google Drive is limited.
- Not a great fit if you are looking to manage all your social media postings and social media calendars in one place.
- It’s more of a file-sharing and storage platform than a social media calendar tool.
Verified Google Drive User
Google Drive could offer better security to keep all your sensitive data safe. With the ease of accessibility comes the risk of breach. Adding more features that allow Google Drive to be secured more easily would be helpful.
Where several social media calendars that we’ve talked about aren’t so Instagram-friendly, Hopper HQ markets itself as the #1 Instagram scheduling tool. Fashion brands, cosmetic brands, restaurants, food bloggers, models, and influencers – Hopper HQ is for you.
Social media marketers who handle more than one Instagram account have the added advantage of managing all accounts using a single Hooper HQ login.
Other than Instagram, Hopper HQ works for only Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. The social media calendar planner is easy to use and has a neat layout. It also helps in rescheduling posts you’ve lined up for sharing on social media.
Pros
- The tool enables bulk uploading, which means you can upload up to 50 posts in one go.
- The tool has some interesting image editing features. It helps you add filters, borders, text overlays, etc., to make your images more eye-catching.
- You can make sure that your audience on mobile sees quality images and pictures. Before posting, you can preview how the images will look on mobile screens.
Eric K.
I like the straight-forward UI and clean, uncomplicated layout. It’s easy to use, too. Most tasks are self-explanatory. It does the job for me. I don’t really need much more than what it already does, and I’m hoping the ease-of-use will not change in future.
Cons
- Sometimes, posts that you have scheduled randomly fail to get posted. This makes the whole automation exercise a fail.
- Editing pictures, though a feature, is really difficult in reality. You have to work hard to adjust the image sizing as per your requirement for different device screens.
- It supports only Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, so you have to use another calendar tool for managing other social media platforms like TikTok and Pinterest.
Rachel M.
Dragging and dropping using the calendar option is limited to one month at a time. If I am working at the end of a month, I’m not able to drag it into the beginning of the next.
ClearVoice is a great tool that can bring lost coordination amid teams of varied sizes. Their dynamic social media content planner helps in streamlining content creation and effective management. The intuitive dashboard sums up metrics of the latest campaigns. This social media calendar tool also offers collaboration tools for establishing workflows.
ClearVoice has a ‘Project creation’ feature for both internal and external collaborators to further fuel the content process. You can add, edit, and approve various projects and keep track of them on a single interface. Apart from this, you can also conduct your talent search and find professional help if needed.
Pros
- A valuable tool for daily scheduling and overall content management with CMS integration.
- ClearVoice gives you quick access to writers.
Eric P.
We have a ton of different clients, and projects and it often gets difficult to find the projects that only apply to you.
Cons
- The tool is pricey and not affordable.
- There is a steep learning curve, and it takes time to understand the product.
Casey L.
We have a ton of different clients and projects and it often gets difficult to find the projects that only apply to you.
StoryChief is the perfect combination of collaboration and publishing solutions. This has a complete content solution for B2B ventures, including calendar features. The calendar feature has multiple filters to sort through your different content types like Social media campaigns, posts, and stories.
You can even track the status of progress with each task and assign relevant collaborators with this efficient social media posting calendar tool. You can get the daily, weekly, or even monthly view on the StoryChief calendar to get a comprehensive insight. Not just that, you can track multiple campaigns and calendars as well.
Pros
- The platform is reliable and quite responsive.
- The tool gives advanced analytics with easy publishing capabilities.
Marilyn D.
The main benefit has been the speed with which I can go from a blank screen to a published blog. I also love that it syndicates the content across my social media channels which also saves a lot of time.
Cons
- Editing images within the tool is often buggy.
- It is an expensive tool for the features it provides.
Diego B.
Despite being an online publication and writing tool, publication does not offer me innovation as it does not contain preloaded templates and I must conform to its standard and boring design.
Sendible is designed to assist agencies in managing social media marketing for various businesses, from interaction to analytics. This tool works with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google My Business, Youtube, and Pinterest, as well as blogging platforms such as WordPress, Medium, and Tumblr.
Sendible helps you magnify your brand’s voice through true storytelling. The plans are relatively affordable for small enterprises, despite being meant for agencies. So, it is one of the popular social media calendar tools.
Pros
- You can maintain track on your brand, as well as key industry terms and competitors, using the social listening feature.
- It has a straightforward, user-friendly UI that does not necessitate any training.
- It helps you produce quality leads and improve ROI in addition to increasing audience engagement.
Scott N
It has an awesome user interface (UI) which is easy to use and generally a great user experience (UX). I don’t think there is another software I would use for social media management or analytics. Due to the ease of use, I find it costs down on the time I have to take in order to get work done on Social media – which frees me to get other things done.
Cons
- Because the mobile app crashes frequently, it’s difficult to use and plan posts successfully.
- There are times when scheduling goes wrong and administrators are unaware of it.
- The reporting and analytics capabilities are minimal and may be enhanced.
Verified Sendible User
The Reporting section has quite a bit of bugs, mainly for Google Analytics connections. Not quite sure if Sendible is to blame or the API to google, but our reports tend to not pull 50% of the time. Sometimes the integrations don’t work 100%. Instagram often doesn’t pull featured images even when fetched. Hashtags sometimes run together after they’re added to various services.
NapoleonCat offers social media automation not only in terms of content scheduling but also in content moderation. You can set up predefined responses to repetitive questions in comment threads and direct messages on Facebook and Instagram.
The automation rules work for Instagram and Facebook ads comments as well. You can define up to 20 different responses to the same trigger so that your comments look natural – not robotic.
What’s more, if you spend hours fighting the Excel sheet to showcase your results, you can say goodbye to going through the process manually every week or month. With NapoleonCat, you can automate and schedule professional social media reports that get sent directly to your or other stakeholders’ inboxes.
Pros
- It allows you to schedule posts for multiple platforms and profiles simultaneously.
- It’s compatible with most of the main social media platforms: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Google My Business.
- You can automatically hide, delete, or reply to comments under your organic content and Facebook and Instagram ads.
- It significantly cuts the workload thanks to automated publishing, moderation, and reporting.
Mary N
One of the things that surprised me about NapoleonCat is simply the sheer number of functions it can perform. The scheduling tools are helpful and reason enough to consider utilizing it. But it also has some of the most effective comment moderation tools I’ve ever used, with the ability to automatically hide comments containing certain words or phrases. This has been extremely helpful, as someone who works in a field with a lot of sensitive information.
Cons
- It takes 24 hours to fetch data for new profiles.
- The interface may seem outdated in terms of design.
Anna A
Nothing major. The only shortcoming we’ve experienced was the fact that newly added accounts might take up to 24 hours to sync for the first time, so if you’re preparing a presentation for the next day, you might be in a difficult place.
Free Social Media Calendar Template
If your business does not plan on using a social media calendar tool for now, you can still create a online content planner using an Excel sheet. This will act as social media content calendar alternative for you & your team.
If you utilize a template for it, you can create a calendar for all your social media planning. This will make it way easier for all your team members to understand and follow it.
You can access an absolutely free social media calendar template from SocialPilot and customize it to meet your specific needs.
Along with this plan outline, your free template contains a social media planner for specific platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn.
So, if you are someone looking to build your own calendar for social media planning, you can download your free template by clicking on the link given below.
Over To You
Marketers who handle several campaigns across multiple platforms must use social media calendar tools. They increase your reach by allowing you to share posts at the most optimal times.
If you’re working with several accounts or campaigns across multiple platforms, you’ll need a social media calendar to stay organized.
With its broad capabilities for scheduling, rescheduling, managing bulk posts, and working across several channels, SocialPilot tops the list of all the tools we discussed. Take advantage of the free trial to learn more about the premium features.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Social media calendar?
Social media calendar is an excel sheet or a tool that keeps track of all your social media activities with publishing dates and content types with relevant dependencies and owners.
What are the advantages of using a Social media content calendar?
Some of the advantages of using a social media content calendar are:
- Saves time
- Syncs collaboration
- Ability to visualize calendar
- Bird’s eye view of the content activities
- Analytics and performance tracking
How do I create a social media calendar?
You can create a content calendar either on Google sheet, excel with the help of available templates online. There are also social media content calendar apps for efficient work.
What are the best Social media calendar tools for 2024?
The best Social media calendar tools for 2024are:
- SocialPilot
- ContentStudio
- Pallyy
- Trello
- Evernote
- Loomly
- ContentCal
- MeetEdgar
- Google Drive
- HopperHQ
- ClearVoice
- StoryChief
- Sendible
- NapoleanCat
What is a Social media calendar tool?
A Social media calendar tool helps you visualize your entire content strategy and sort out the chaos of handling multiple social media accounts and postings altogether. You can’t just post randomly to your social media accounts. You need a content plan to help you target the exact audience you are looking for, and here’s when a social media content calendar comes in handy.
What is the best Content calendar app?
SocialPilot is the best Content calendar app for easy publishing features for multiple channels. It also has URL shortening, content curation, analytics, reporting facilities, along with the visual calendar and scheduler.
Is there an app that posts to all Social media?
Yes, SocialPilot is a fantastic social media posting app that can be used to post on all popular social media channels at an affordable price. SocialPilot lets you post on 9 social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and more.
About the Author
SocialPilot
$30
SocialPilot is one of the best social media calendar tools of choice among marketers if you are looking for an easy-to-use posting calendar tool. It is an extremely comprehensive platform for social media scheduling.
You can create posts on this online content planner, easily move a scheduled piece of content from one time slot to another, and have a bird’s-eye view of the entirety of your content strategy.
Here are the robust features it offers.
That’s why the rescheduling feature is a really helpful one. It’s super easy and quick because you just need to drag and drop your posts on the desired date or time on the editorial calendar.
There are 4 pre-defined time slots for every hour of the day to choose from. You can drop your post on any of them to directly reschedule it without any manual data input at all.
Other Important Features:
Why waste time writing new content from scratch when you already have posts working the way you want? Of course, you can’t reuse your old content, but some new posts with some evergreen content make a superb mix.
Let it generate innovative social media post ideas, captivating captions, and strategic hashtags. It also tailors content for diverse platforms, creates unique copy variations, repurposes posts, and broadens your global impact with swift translations – all achievable with just a few clicks.
What People Say About SocialPilot
JoAnn J.
SocialPilot is easy to navigate. I especially like the “calendar” option, where you can view a full month’s worth of posts, even segmenting by the social media platform. This comes in handy, especially with Pinterest. The analytics tab is easy to read and allows me to see which days and times my followers are most engaged without having to visit that particular social media platform.
Lydia F.
The social media calendar feature helps me visualize my post schedule, and the drag and drop feature makes rescheduling extremely easy. I prefer to schedule rather than put posts into a queue, but the times I’ve used the repeat post feature (publish X times in Y days), it has been easy to set up.