Best Content Calendar: 6 Top Editorial Calendars for Marketers

If you are struggling to find the best content calendar for your needs, then perhaps we can help. We are a small team of content writers and marketers and we are always on the hunt for new tools which are going to help us manage our team and seamlessly track our content strategy.

Modern marketers understand that high quality content is the key to driving site leads and sales.

Whether you outsource your writing to a company like Content Hero or carry it out in-house, a content calendar is a very useful tool which will help you to plan, create and distribute content.

The content calendar, often referred to as an editorial calendar, is a road map which helps to connect the dots within your content strategy by creating a link between ideas and themes. With a good editorial calendar you will be able to improve brain storming, organisation, research and optimisation within your content marketing strategy.

There are many different applications out there which want to be your new calendar of choice. So, we did a little research and opened up free trials with some of them to see what’s what. Hopefully within the list of editorial calendars below you’ll be able to find the best service for you.

Note to providers: We are always on the lookout for new tools, so if you own or work for a company which offers a content calendar service, we’d be VERY interested in chatting to you.

1. Divvy HQ – link.

Perfect for: Small teams, agencies, corporations. Also good for bloggers and freelancers.

Divvy HQ is a fantastic service for content marketers. It markets itself as a spreadsheet free editorial calendar application, and in practice it’s very effective at what it sets out to do. There are four payment options: The Small Team, The Agency, The Corp and Custom. These are priced at $60 p/m, $140 p/m, $200 p/m and $TBA respectively. They offer a free 14-day trial which allows you to get to grips with the service.

Divvy HQ is ideal as a brainstorming tool, and offers the ability to quickly add content ideas to a web based dashboard. These ideas can then be organised on to calendars, and  the calendars are extremely customisable; you can set them up by capmaign name, team name, content type or by the website. Head on over to the website (linked, above) to find out more.

2. Kapost – link.

Perfect for: Marketers seeking an all-in-one solution; calendar, workflow and analytics.

Kapost is a premium, crisp content marketing tool that combines all elements of the content marketing life cyle together in order to help marketers get the most out of a campaign. It is a content planner, work flow manager and analytics tool which is used by some of the biggest names in content marketing. Despite this, pricing is reasonable: Standard costs $95 p/m, Pro costs $175 p/m and Enterprise costs $250 p/m. All of those levels include unlimited content types, unlimited work flows, unlimited integration and idea creation tools.

Kapost offers the ability for marketers to get a free demo of the product, but you’ll have to contact them first for approval. Head on over to their website to find out more.

3. Compendium – link.

Perfect for: Companies managing content in-house. Large teams.

Compendium is a fully featured content calendar which takes the full content marketing life cycle in to account. Although pricing plans start at $400 p/m, which is on the pricier side of the services here today, what you get is a content calendar that can manage practically all editorial demands with multi-level approval options. This service is more than just a calendar on the wall; it is perfect for big companies who manage their content marketing in-house.

4. Marketing.ai – link.

Perfect for: Multiple website owners. A team of writers.

Marketing Ai’s content calendar comes with a 30 day free trial, and doesn’t ask for any credit card details upfront. The calendar is very simple to use; firstly, you set up themes which are a way of grouping content topics and subjects together. Secondly, you add content items to your calendar – the editorial calendar is, as you’d expect, the center of work flow and it is incredibly simple to add new blog post ideas one after the other. The ability to assign more than one author is a bonus. The calendar can be a little bit complicated as you delve in to deeper features – such as analytics – but there is a good support page to combat this.

5. WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin – link.

Perfect for: Bloggers. Websites built on WordPress.

This content calendar is only useful for an individual or team of writers who use the WordPress CMS solely. The Editorial Calendar plugin is a free tool which integrates in to your administrative panel, allowing you to effectively manage publishing dates and ideas for your blog. It is a very basic tool when compared to Kapost or Divvy HQ, but then again it doesn’t ask for any money throughout your life time – if you require something simple and don’t need any of the bells and whistles those services offer, you can do far worse than take a look at this option.

6. Vertical Measures – link.

Perfect for: Basic users. Bargain hunters.

Last on our list is not a software program at all. Instead, this is a simple and free Excel template download from Vertical Measures and having downloaded it, we can recommend it. It’s very simple and also a great way to simplify your content production. We recommend saving this template to Google Docs rather than on your desktop, as this way you’ll be able to access it from any device with an internet connection. Adapt the template to suit your own individual needs to get the most out of it.

Do you have any experience with the content calendars above? Perhaps you’ve got a new inclusion for our list? Make yourself heard by commenting below, or simply tweet us @content_hero.