7 Best Social Media Calendar Tools & How to Create One

Imagine this: It’s Monday morning, and instead of scrambling to figure out what to post on your social channels, you’re calmly reviewing a social media calendar filled with ready-to-go content tailored for each platform. Sounds like a dream? Not anymore.

Today, having a social media calendar isn’t negotiable, it’s a necessity for any marketer or content creator who's serious about maintaining a healthy publishing frequency without breaking a sweat.

If you assumed building a social media calendar is complex and tedious, you’ll be surprised to know there are many software that can do this in seconds. To guide you in using these tools and point you to seven best ones for 2025, we’ve compiled this great guide. We're demonstrating the entire process in 8 actionable steps, analyzing the best calendaring software, and outlining pro tips to make your work a breeze. Read on.

What is a social media calendar?

A social media calendar is a tool for planning, scheduling, and organizing your social media posts in advance. It helps you smoothly structure what content to share, when to share it, and on which platforms. By using a social media content calendar, you can:

• Ensure a consistent posting schedule
• Align your content with your marketing goals
• Avoid the stress of last-minute posting

The calendar can be in the form of a simple spreadsheet, a digital calendar, or a sophisticated dashboard on a platform like Sprinklr. It may include text posts, images, videos, links, hashtags, platform-specific formats, and publishing times.

It serves as both a blueprint and timeline, offering a visual overview of a brand’s content strategy across platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and more.

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Why having a social media calendar is necessary

A social media calendar is more than just a schedule; it’s a vital component of an effective social media strategy that empowers teams to be proactive, strategic, and results driven. Proactive social media scheduling helps teams and practitioners in many ways, including:

• Consistency: Ensure regular and timely posting to maintain audience engagement and visibility.
• Strategic alignment: Align content with marketing goals, product launches, seasonal trends, and brand messaging.
• Content variety and balance: Maintain a mix of content types (educational, promotional, entertaining, etc.) to keep the feed engaging.
• Collaboration and clarity: Enable seamless coordination among content creators, designers, copywriters, and social media managers.
• Performance tracking and optimization: Facilitate planning for A/B testing, hashtag strategies, and campaign tracking over time.
• Crisis management and flexibility: Prepare backup content and allow room for real-time adjustments when unforeseen events arise.

Social media calendar vs. content calendar: What’s the difference?

While social media calendars and content calendars are often used interchangeably, they serve distinct purposes. Here are some ways they differ:

Platform-specific focus vs. multi-channel strategy

Social media calendar focuses exclusively on planning, scheduling, and managing content for social media platforms (e.g., Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, X/Twitter, TikTok). It includes post copy, visuals, hashtags, publishing times, and platform-specific strategies.

Content calendar covers a broader range of content across multiple channels, including blogs, newsletters, videos, podcasts, webinars, and social media. It aligns content efforts with overall marketing goals and editorial themes across platforms.

Tactical execution vs. strategic oversight

Social media calendar is primarily used for tactical execution, ensuring regular posting, campaign rollouts, engagement timing, and platform consistency. It often operates on a weekly or monthly basis.

Content calendar serves as a strategic planning tool. It maps out high-level themes, key messages, and campaign timelines across all content types, social media included. It provides a bird’s-eye view of how different content pieces work together over time.

Real-time engagement vs. evergreen content planning

Social media calendar prioritizes timely, reactive, and trend-driven content like live updates, social holidays (e.g., #WorldEnvironmentDay), or real-time campaigns. It supports audience engagement in the moment and adapts quickly to platform trends or viral moments.

Content calendar focuses more on evergreen and long-form content, such as blog articles, whitepapers, and email newsletters. These assets are typically planned well in advance and have a longer shelf life, contributing to SEO, lead generation, or brand authority over time.

In short, social media calendars thrive on immediacy and relevance while content calendars emphasize longevity and depth in content strategy.

7 best social media calendar tools

Managing a social media calendar becomes effortless with robust tools. But with countless tools promising to streamline your social media workflow and scheduling, selecting the right tool can be overwhelming.

In this section, we critically evaluate a few popular social media calendar tools, not just on what they offer, but how well they deliver where it counts. You must look beyond their flashy interfaces and automation features to answer a deeper question: Does the tool truly align with your strategy, team dynamics, and content goals? Answering this will surface the best-fit tool, one that takes the pain out of social media calendar creation and maintenance. Let’s get started.

1. Sprinklr

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Sprinklr editorial calendar is a go-to social media calendar platform that enables you to create a calendar, schedule content, and manage publishing across multiple channels and platforms while fostering team collaboration to keep everyone aligned. It also allows you to monitor content performance and make informed, data-driven decisions for future planning. Voted as a Content Marketing Platform Leader by Gartner Magic Quadrant 2024, Sprinklr exemplifies a future-ready platform that offers disruptive AI capabilities and aggressive roadmap for all its products designed to keep users leading the race.

Key features

• For campaign planning: Multiple views (Gantt and Timeline) allow you to see your posts across the week, month, quarter, and year. Organic and paid campaigns on one screen give you a wholistic picture of your distribution strategy. It allows external sharing to other stakeholders for collaboration and reporting purposes.
• For content management: Find Social, Non-Social & Paid Content in a single screen across multiple channels and geographies in a single screen. Bulk Import & Export Capabilities are complemented by bulk actions allow easier management of content.
• Calendar personalization: Make it easier to understand, categorize, and find what you need using color tags on content. Choose whether or not some key aspects of content such as the name, image, channel type, account details etc should be included in the preview.

Pros

Provides a unified view and facilitates collaboration, which streamlines workflow and eliminates redundant efforts in content creation and review. Enhances the ability to review ad content across all channels, ensuring consistent and on-brand messaging, which leads to better customer trust and satisfaction.

Best for: Enterprises and large agencies managing multiple clients with complex, multi-channel marketing strategies.

2. Buffer

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Buffer provides a user-friendly interface to schedule posts on a weekly or monthly calendar. You can connect your social media channels to Buffer and use the publishing tools to schedule posts efficiently. It also offers templates and guides to help you plan your content effectively and allows you to automate your content creation workflows, collaborate with team members, and streamline approval systems before posting.

Key features

• Built-in motion for centralized organization of blog and social media content.
• Offers customizable views (calendar, broad, list) and properties (status, author, publish, date, etc.)
• Facilitates team collaboration with clear visibility of content progress and responsibilities.
• Designed to be minimal yet flexible to adapt to evolving content strategies.

Pros

Keeps all essential content information in one accessible place for a distributed team. Buffer's features allow for tailoring the calendar to specific team needs and workflows.

Best for: Small to medium-sized social media teams that require a flexible and collaborative system for planning and tracking their content across blogs and social media platforms.

3. Hootsuite

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Hootsuite’s Calendar view allows you to see, schedule, and adjust your social posts across all major networks at a glance. You can drag and drop content to fine-tune the timing of your cross-platform campaigns and view paid and organic content side by side. Hootsuite’s calendar publishes content automatically at designated times and is accessible via desktop and mobile apps, giving you the flexibility to manage your content both at the office and on the go.

Key features

• Visually displays scheduled content (organic, paid, published) in a calendar or list view.
• Allows for bulk scheduling of up to 350 posts at once.
• Provides recommendations for the best times to post for optimal engagement.
• Enables easy collaboration and streamlined approval workflows for team members.

Pros

Features like bulk scheduling, AI-powered caption generation, and the best time to post recommendations significantly reduce the time spent on social media management. Identifying and scheduling posts for the optimal times, along with AI-powered suggestions and hashtag generation, helps users connect with their audience more effectively.

Best for: Agencies, marketing teams, and mid-sized businesses.

4. Planable

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Planable offers a visually intuitive calendar that makes scheduling and managing social media content seamless. By connecting your social accounts, you can plan, preview, and collaborate on posts in real time. Its drag-and-drop calendar interface simplifies scheduling, while collaborative features like internal comments, feedback threads, and multi-level approval workflows ensure that your content is reviewed and aligned before going live.

Key features

• Real-time collaboration with commenting, version history, and feedback management.
• Drag-and-drop calendar for intuitive content planning across multiple platforms.
• Multi-level approval workflows to streamline the review and publishing process.
• Side-by-side post previews to visualize content exactly as it will appear on each platform.

Pros Planable’s visual interface and real-time collaboration tools make it ideal for teams needing quick feedback loops and clear visibility into the content pipeline. Its approval system ensures content quality and brand consistency.

Best for: Marketing teams and agencies seeking a highly collaborative and visually driven tool for planning, reviewing, and approving social media content across platforms.

5. SocialBee

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SocialBee calendar is a central tool within the platform, designed to help you plan, organize, and visualize your social media posting strategy across multiple platforms.

Key features

• Offers multiple ways to view your scheduled content (by category), Feed (platform preview), Calendar (broad view), Grid (visual consistency), and list (chronological). The variety allows you to choose the view that fits your planning style.
• Uses AI to suggest topics, ideal posting times, and the best platform, helping you build a smarter, data-driven strategy.
• Allows you to recycle posts with automated re-quilling, keeping your content consistent and impactful with minimal effort.

Pros

Centralized scheduling, repurposing, and publishing across platforms – saving time with streamlined, automated workflows. Its content categories, bulk scheduling, and flexible calendar views help you plan and organize your strategy with ease and control.

Best for: Small businesses, startups, and agencies needing structure, recurring content plans.

6. Google Sheets

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With spreadsheet format and AI powered features like Gemini, Google Sheets can help you auto-generate content plans, suggest post timing, and even create formulas to track engagement rates or frequency. It keeps your entire workflow organized and transparent across the team whether you're scheduling Instagram reels, Twitter threads, or LinkedIn posts.

Key features

• Smart chips allows efficient organization of information without needing extra tools or apps. You can easily tag teammates, link assets, images or documents, and assign deadlines – all in one place.
• The sheet allows teams to co-edit in real-time, leave comments on post ideas, and assign tasks directly within the sheet.
• The sheet easily integrates with platforms like Asana and uses data from Google Analytics, which helps track post performance and adjust strategies.

Pros

It's free and accessible anywhere (on web, mobile, or tablet) – even offline. Making it perfect for remote teams. Smooth customization and scalability make it easy to create workflows, visualize timelines, and analyze post engagement trends.

Best for: Freelancers, agencies, and enterprise.

7. Trello

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Trello is a project management tool ideal for building social media and content calendars. It allows you to create boards with customizable lists and easily move tasks between them. You can assign tasks to team members, set deadlines, and add files or notes for better collaboration.

Key features

• Trello allows easy toggle between zoomed-in day views and broader weekly/monthly overview to manage campaigns and content planning effectively.
• You can quickly reschedule posts with simple drag and drop.
• You can have card details at a glance, as each calendar item displays labels, members, and checklists directly on the calendar for fast reference.

Pros

Better team collaboration allows you to easily do tasks and see everyone's workload at a glance – making work distribution fair and simple and avoiding duplicate efforts.

Enhance focus and efficiency with clear to-dos and a well-organized calendar view, that allows you to focus on what matters and meet deadlines without stress.

Best for: Freelancers and agencies

How to plan a social media calendar

You can advance your social media game by creating a social media calendar and automating posts. It ensures your content is always on point and your followers are consistently engaged. Here’s how you can achieve this:

Step 1: Set your social media goals

The first step to creating a social media calendar is to understand your goals.

Your goals can be

• Increasing brand awareness
• Driving website traffic
• Boosting engagement (likes, shares, comments)
• Generating leads or sales
• Providing customer service

Having a clear goal ensures your content calendar aligns with your business objectives. At the same time, it should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).

Step 2: Audit your existing content

Keep track of what content is already performing well and what is not. It prevents you from relying on hunched and helps make informed decisions.

What to check:

• Content attracting the most traffic, engagement, conversions, and backlinks
• Content that isn't getting any traction
• Best posting hours
• Audience preferences

You can now track content performance and audience reactions across all major social and digital channels with Sprinklr's analytics and social listening tools. Never miss what’s gaining traction or falling flat.

Learn More: A-Z Guide on Social Media Auditing

Step 3: Categorize your content based on your goals

Categorize your content into different types and align it with your social media goals:

• Brand awareness: Share content that showcases your brand’s story, values, and culture. This could include behind-the-scenes videos, employee stories, and brand milestones.
• Engagement: Post interactive content like polls, questions, and contests to encourage audience participation.
• Education: Share informative content such as blog posts, how-to guides, tutorials, and infographics.
• Promotions: Announce sales, special offers, and product launches to drive conversions.
• User-generated content: Showcase content created by your audience to build community and trust.

With Sprinklr, content categorization is a simple affair, courtesy of features like:

Content buckets: Create content buckets in Sprinklr to organize your posts and campaigns by category (Campaigns, Sub-Campaigns, Messages, Paid Initiatives, Events). This helps in maintaining a balanced content mix.

Tagging: Use tags and labels to categorize content within the calendar. This makes it easy to filter and view specific types of posts.

Templates: Utilize Sprinklr’s content templates to ensure consistency in your posts. Customize templates for different content categories to save time.

On top of this, use Sprinklr’s analytics tool to understand which channels and content types perform best, creating content that meets your audience’s interests and needs.

Step 4: Schedule posting times for your posts

Since posting at the right time significantly increases engagement and reach, timing becomes crucial. Here are some factors you should consider before scheduling your post.

• Audience insights: Use analytics to understand when your audience is most active. This data-driven approach ensures your posts get maximum visibility.

By using Sprinklr’s Smart Audience Insights, you can maximize your ROI by analyzing real-time digital signals from consumers. It allows you to understand what your customers care about the most. By narrowing in on audience affinities, you can create custom segments, uncover new business opportunities, and create content that resonates with your audience.

• Platform differences: Different platforms have different peak times. Tailor your posting schedule to fit the specific platform’s audience behavior. Want to learn how often you need to post on your social channels? Jump right into this blog and uncover the secrets to posting on each channel. Here’s an infographic with the gist of the blog if you're short of time 🔽

• Content type: Consider the type of social media content you are posting. For example, video content might perform better during off-work hours, while educational posts might be more effective during lunch breaks.
• Schedule posts: Use Sprinklr’s Smart scheduling feature to plan your posts. You can schedule posts for multiple platforms simultaneously.

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• Auto-post: Set up auto-posting to ensure your content goes live at the optimal times without manual intervention.
• Recurring posts: For evergreen content, use the recurring post feature to automate reposting at regular intervals.

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• Monitor and adjust: Continuously monitor the performance of your posts through Sprinklr’s analytics and adjust your schedule as needed for optimal results.

Step 5: Brainstorm and organize content ideas

Planning a content theme not only saves you from scrambling daily to decide “what to post”, but also helps you create multiple posts in one go. It further saves time and helps align content with campaigns. Consider these things while organizing ideas:

• Content pillars (eg, educational, promotional, testimonials)
• Use a shared spreadsheet or project management tool
• Align with important dates (campaigns, holidays, product launches)

Also Read: 10+ Ideas for Social Media Posts That Move the Needle

Step 6: Create your social media calendar

Now, this is your master plan for what gets posted, where, and when.

What to include in the calendar:

• Date and time of posting
• Platform
• Content type
• Caption copy
• Visual/media asset
• Status
• Goals or CTA for the post

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Step 7: Create and schedule content

Batch-creating content saves time and ensures consistency. Follow these steps:

• Write captions in your brand voice
• Design visuals (using Canva, Figma, and Photoshop)
• Record or curate videos
• Use Sprinklr to schedule content for all platforms

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Step 8: Track and analyze your social media calendar

Your social media calendar should also be a tool for tracking and measuring metrics across platforms and social media campaigns.

3 essential tasks to improve your social media calendar:

📈Seasonal trends: Staying on top of seasonal themes and events will keep your content timely and relevant.

💬 Audience feedback: Consistently review and incorporate audience feedback to ensure your content hits the mark.

🔎Competitor analysis: Stay informed on competitor activities to find gaps and opportunities for your content strategy.

Pro tips to make a better social media calendar

Creating a social media calendar is one thing; making it truly effective is another. The right tweaks can turn a basic schedule into a strategic powerhouse. Here are some expert tips to help you plan smarter, stay ahead of trends, and maximize your content’s impact.

1. Integrate performance-based content recycling

While reposting old content is a great idea, make sure you recycle posts that hit a specific engagement benchmark (eg, 3% + engagement rate or 10k + reach)

Mark these posts as “Evergreen Gold” in your calendar tool. Change captions, update visuals slightly, and schedule them 4-6 weeks apart.

This way, you keep your feed optimized with content that's already proven to perform while saving creative bandwidth.

Example

Cognism repurposes a blog on the B2B sales process into a YouTube video, featuring their senior video marketing expert, Emily Liu, explaining the content in a talking-head format, leveraging YouTube’s search power to reach a wider B2B audience.

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2. Layer campaign timelines with micro-content bursts

You can always have content ‘bursts’ (3-5 short form posts like reels, stories, tweets) around the main campaign post before and after. It helps build hype before the main post.

• Keep momentum going after, so your audience doesn't forget.
• Keep people going after, so your audience doesn't forget.
• Keep people engaged and insecure overall reach.

A great example here is the Netflix “Stranger Things” campaign. It drops teasers, cast behind-the-scenes, character countdown, and fan Q&A content in a structured way across a social calendar in timed bursts before releasing a new season.

After the season airs, they continue micro-contents like reaction videos, memes, and fan art features.

As a result, there always remains a buzz before and after the big drop.

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Using AI to Streamline Your Social Media Calendar in 2025

AI isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a game-changer for social media planning. In 2025, smart tools can automate scheduling, generate content ideas, and even predict performance. Let's talk about how to harness AI to make your social media calendar faster, smarter, and more impactful than ever.

1. Automated Scheduling to Optimize Posting Times

AI calendars can analyze engagement data and suggest the best times to post content across platforms, ensuring maximum reach and interaction without manual guesswork.

🎁Bonus: When integrated with tools like Sprinklr, it can even auto-schedule based on audience behavior trends.

2. Conflict Resolution to Prevent Overlapping Campaigns

AI can detect when too many posts are scheduled in a short time frame or when posts from different teams overlap, helping social media managers avoid content clashes and fatigue.

3. Personalized Scheduling Across Channels

AI learns platform-specific preferences (like optimal formats or timings for Instagram vs. LinkedIn), allowing you to personalize post timing, content type, and frequency — all from one centralized calendar.

4. Voice & NLP for Rapid Post Scheduling

You can say, “Schedule a Twitter post on Friday at 10 AM” or “Move next week’s campaign to Tuesday,” and AI will handle it, perfect for fast-moving social teams juggling multiple tasks.

Final thoughts

A well-structured social media calendar helps you boost engagement, consistency, and strategic alignment across channels. And Sprinklr simplifies the process for you by centralizing planning, scheduling, and performance tracking in one intelligent platform.

Whether you're managing a single brand or multiple campaigns, Sprinklr empowers you with advanced features like content categorization, smart scheduling, and real-time analytics. S, take control of your content strategy now and save valuable time and elevate your social media impact.

Book a free demo today and see what Sprinklr Social can do for you.