Publishers require editorial content calendars to stay organized, plan their content in advance, and ensure consistent content delivery. With the right tools, you can brainstorm topics, assign tasks, and manage deadlines, ultimately streamlining your content creation process and making it easier to maintain a consistent flow of content.
An editorial calendar software solution provides a central hub for managing all aspects of content production, from brainstorming to publication, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
In this article, we’ve rounded up 13 powerful editorial calendar tools to help you plan, manage, and streamline content production workflows across teams and channels.
What Are Editorial Calendars?
An editorial calendar is a visual tool for content creators to organize, schedule, and monitor their content and publishing across channels. It provides a visual roadmap of their content types, promotional channels, authors, and publishing dates.
The Benefits of Using an Editorial Calendar
Having an editorial calendar keeps your content organized and your team aligned, making it easier to meet deadlines and maintain consistency.
Here are the most crucial benefits that make editorial calendars important for publishers:
- Ensures consistent publishing to keep your audience engaged and maintain your brand’s presence in the market.
- Provides a clear overview of upcoming content, major campaigns, and key deadlines, making strategic planning more efficient.
- Reduces last-minute rushes by giving your team ample time for content creation, review, and approvals. This helps you avoid gaps or overlaps in your publishing schedule.
- Aligns every story and campaign with your publication’s overall business goals, supporting both editorial and marketing objectives.
- Enables you to monitor content performance over time, so you can refine your strategy based on what resonates best with your audience.
The Key Features to Look for When Choosing Editorial Calendar Software
If you’re looking for a good editorial calendar software solution, here are some important features you should consider when comparing options:
1. Ease of Use
Check a tool’s ease of use before investing in it. This is an important factor whether you’re choosing a content marketing editorial calendar tool or project management software for your personal blog.
You should look for editorial calendar tools that:
- Have an intuitive, straightforward interface with drag and drop functionality that’s not confusing or clunky
- Allow you to easily switch between different views, such as calendar view and list view
- Enable you to create a content workflow easily
- Provide a smooth onboarding experience, with tutorials, guides, and customer support to help new users
- Let you create reusable task templates to speed up work
2. Collaboration Features
Collaboration among teams is important for the success of your publishing and marketing efforts. That’s why you should look for editorial calendar tools that support seamless collaboration among team members.
Multi-user access, for example, allows multiple users to work on the same calendar in real time. With access rules and permissions, you can easily add authors and editors to your publication for faster and more efficient content creation.
Your content marketing editorial calendar tool should also allow users to leave comments, notes, and feedback to improve team collaboration.
3. Content Planning and Workflow Management
You should look beyond basic content planning capabilities to find features like:
- Task and project management tools for task creation, assignment, and completion tracking
- Customizable calendar templates for different types of content, such as blog posts, website pages, social media posts, and more
- Editorial workflows with clear stages like drafting, review, approval, and publication
- Setting up editorial guidelines or checklists in your workflows to ensure everyone knows exactly what’s expected
4. Integration with Other Tools
Your content calendar tool can’t work in a silo but needs to be in sync with other publishing, marketing, and project management tools.
Look for calendar tools integrated with different CMS (content management system) platforms and publishing software to facilitate content publishing. Integration with team collaboration tools like Slack and analytics tools will also be helpful.
5. Customization and Flexibility
The more customization options a tool offers, the easier it will be for you to create personalized website and social media content calendars.
Look for tools that offer multiple views, such as list, calendar, daily, weekly, or monthly views. Check if a content calendar tool allows you to categorize content or tasks using tags and sends automatic reminders for deadlines or other updates.
Lastly, find tools that offer custom dashboards for performance tracking and reporting.
6. Scheduling and Planning Capabilities
Some other essential features you should look for in content calendar tools are:
- Content scheduling: Can you schedule content in advance and create recurring tasks?
- Editorial calendar visibility: Can you track all content in your pipeline for different channels in a unified view?
- Lead time for planning: Does it allow you to plan your content months in advance, or just a week or a couple of weeks before the publishing date?
- Priority management: Is there an option to let you prioritize tasks based on deadlines or urgency?
7. Content Performance Tracking
A good content calendar software solution should be able to track key performance metrics like engagement, traffic, and conversions. It should also visualize data in digestible reports, graphs, and charts to facilitate insights.
8. Content Publishing and Distribution
Content calendar tools are not just for planning, but should also make it easy for you to distribute and publish your content across multiple channels.
Look for tools that allow you to directly share your content on social media and other channels. Also, prioritize tools that have built-in search engine optimization features and content republishing capabilities.
9. Reporting and Analytics
Look for content calendar tools that track key metrics and provide visual reports with clear insights. Prefer the ones that allow you to customize these reports to focus on metrics that matter most to your publisher revenue.
In-depth analytics will help you understand what content types, topics, or channels are performing best. You can use these insights to adjust your strategy and content efforts.
10. Support and Training
Customer support can improve or ruin a tool’s experience based on how prompt and useful it is. That’s why you should always invest in tools that offer reliable customer support via multiple channels.
Better yet, choose the ones that offer a library of online resources you can use to solve problems yourself. Also, if a marketing editorial calendar platform has an online community or forum, you can get help from other users to unlock its full potential.
11. Pricing and Value
Price is another important factor you should consider when choosing a content calendar software solution. However, don’t look at it in absolute terms; instead, look at it in relative terms.
What does that mean? Well, compare all its features and pricing to analyze what value you’re getting for your money. Opt for tools that offer a free trial or plan to let you experience the interface before investing. Some tools also offer free templates that can simplify your process.
Prefer tools that offer flexible pricing options and different tiers for varying business needs and team sizes.
12. Security and Data Privacy
Ensure the platform you use complies with data privacy regulations like GDPR and offers the option to restrict sensitive data to specific users. Also, check whether the software solution has automatic backups and a clear recovery plan in case of data loss.
13. Mobile Access and Remote Work Support
Lastly, you should prefer platforms that offer a mobile app to manage your content workflow. Even better is if it can support remote work with features like cloud-based access and mobile responsiveness. This is not a necessary feature, but a good one, especially if you have remote teams.
List of the Top Editorial Calendar Tools for Publishers
Now that you know what to look for in the best content calendar tools, we have reviewed and tested some of the best ones you can consider for creating content, publishing it, and analyzing its performance.
Here are our ratings of the best editorial calendar tools in the market:
|
Ease of Use |
Collaboration Features |
Content Planning and Workflow Management |
Integration with Other Tools |
Customization and Flexibility |
Scheduling and Planning Capabilities |
Content Performance Tracking |
Content Publishing and Distribution |
Reporting and Analytics |
Support and Training |
Pricing and Value |
Security and Data Privacy |
Mobile Access and Remote Work Support |
Score |
| Narrato |
4 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4.2 |
| Asana |
4 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4.2 |
| StoryChief |
4 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4.2 |
| Monday.com |
4 |
5 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4.2 |
| Airtable |
4 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
5 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
4 |
3.9 |
| Lytho Planner |
3 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3.9 |
| Bynder’s Content Workflow |
3 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3.9 |
| Google Docs and Google Sheets |
5 |
5 |
3 |
5 |
5 |
3 |
2 |
3 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
3.9 |
| CoSchedule |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
5 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3.6 |
| Trello |
5 |
4 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
4 |
5 |
4 |
5 |
3.6 |
| ClearVoice |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3.3 |
| PublishPress |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3.3 |
| Kordiam |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
3 |
4 |
3 |
3.3 |
Let’s check out how much these platforms fit our criteria for selecting the best editorial calendar software.
Editorial Calendar Software: The Future of Content Planning
With various content formats and platforms demanding attention, an editorial calendar is indispensable for planning and creating content, team collaboration, and strategic execution.
When selecting editorial calendar software, consider key features such as an intuitive interface, multi-user access, customizable templates, multiple viewing options, and direct sharing to social media and other channels.
Based on these criteria, several tools stand out in the market, each offering unique features and capabilities.
Tools like Narrato, Asana, Monday.com, and StoryChief received high ratings for their comprehensive feature sets, particularly in content planning, collaboration, and workflow management. While more basic, Google Docs and Google Sheets provide excellent ease of use and collaboration features, especially with the integration of AI assistance.
Ultimately, the choice of editorial calendar software depends on your publishing team’s specific needs and scale. However, investing in a tool that combines strong planning, collaboration, and tracking features is crucial for achieving efficient and effective content marketing.
FAQs
How to create an editorial content calendar.
Creating an editorial calendar involves defining your content goals, identifying your target audience, brainstorming topics, choosing content formats and channels, setting publication dates, assigning responsibilities, and outlining the workflow.
What is the difference between an editorial calendar and a content calendar?
While many publishers and content creators use these terms—“editorial calendar” and “content calendar” — interchangeably, there is a slight difference.
An editorial calendar focuses on the overall theme and strategy for your content. In contrast, a content calendar dives into the specifics of each piece of content, including publishing times and platforms.
However, most people use a combination of both to see all the details in one place.
What should a basic editorial content calendar include?
A basic editorial content calendar should provide a visual roadmap of your content strategy, including details such as:
- Content topics
- Content types
- Purpose
- Promotional channels
- Authors
- Publishing dates
- Status
- Title
- Headline
- Thumbnail
- Live link
- Document link
