Plan and schedule your social media content across multiple platforms with ease
✓ Free to download · ✓ Excel 2016+ and Google Sheets · ✓ Custom version in 24h
A content calendar that only holds dates becomes a schedule nobody learns from. This one records what was posted alongside how it performed, so the next month's plan is informed by the last one.
The actual columns, with sample rows
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Date | Channel | Format | Topic | Reach | Eng. % |
| 2 | 2026-07-02 | Carousel | Pricing myths | 4,120 | 6.8% | |
| 3 | 2026-07-04 | Text | Client story | 2,880 | 9.1% | |
| 4 | 2026-07-07 | X | Thread | Formula tips | 6,400 | 2.1% |
| 5 | 2026-07-09 | Carousel | Template walkthrough | 3,940 | 7.4% |
Why each one is written the way it is
=IF([@Reach]=0,"",[@Engagements]/[@Reach])
Engagement rate, which is comparable across posts of different reach. Raw engagement counts just rediscover which post got shown to more people.
=AVERAGEIFS(Posts[Eng. %],Posts[Format],[@Format],Posts[Channel],[@Channel])
Average by format and channel. This is the comparison that changes what you plan next month.
=AVERAGEIFS(Posts[Eng. %],Posts[Weekday],[@Weekday])
Performance by day of week, from your own audience rather than from a general best-practice post.
=COUNTIFS(Posts[Date],">="&MonthStart,Posts[Channel],[@Channel])
Posting cadence per channel, to check the plan against what actually shipped.
A worked example with real numbers
A B2B account posted carousels and text posts in roughly equal measure. Averaged over three months, text posts about client work engaged at 9.1% and carousels at 6.8%, but carousels reached 40% more people — so carousels won on absolute engagement and lost on rate. The plan that came out of it used carousels for reach at the top of the month and client stories for conversation, which is a decision the calendar alone could not have produced.
Tab by tab
| Tab | Contents |
|---|---|
| Calendar | Scheduled and published posts with topic and format. |
| Performance | Reach, engagement and clicks per post. |
| Formats | Format definitions and their averages. |
| Dashboard | Engagement by format, channel and weekday. |
| README | Where performance figures come from and how often to update. |
What is included, and what to look at next
Specific to this workbook, not generic
Two to four weeks of scheduled posts, with room left for reactive content. A fully booked quarter cannot respond to anything, and the reactive posts are usually the ones that perform.
Engagement rate for content decisions, absolute reach for awareness goals, clicks for anything meant to drive traffic. Optimising a single number across all three purposes gives you none of them.
Weekly manual entry is fine and takes ten minutes. Automated pulls are possible where the platform has an API — a short automation project.
"This calendar has revolutionized our social media management. We're now more organized and consistent with our content across all platforms."