Free template · Google Sheets · no account needed
YouTube content calendar template
You know roughly what you are posting this month and it lives in four different places.
What is inside
One row per video, in date order. Each row holds the publish date, the working title, whether it is a long video, a Short or a live stream, and where it has got to, picked from a dropdown that runs Idea, Filmed, Edited, Scheduled, Published. There is a column for the pillar it belongs to so you can see at a glance whether the month is all one thing, a column for the hook you intend to open with, and a tick box for whether the thumbnail exists yet.
Two grey columns do the nagging. One counts the days until the publish date. The other watches for a date that has gone past while the status is still short of Published, writes SLIPPED, and turns the whole row red. Pinned at the top of the sheet are three live figures: how many are published, how many are scheduled, and how many have slipped.
How to use it
- Open the link below and take your own copy, with File then Make a copy. The original stays untouched and your copy is yours to change.
- Read the Example tab, which has three videos filled in at different stages. The Calendar tab next to it is empty and is the one you type into.
- Put a date on every row, even the ideas. Then move the status along as the work happens, and let the red rows tell you where the month is drifting.
Why the date column comes first
A row with no date is a nice idea in a spreadsheet. Why your video needs a publish date before you hit record makes the case for setting the end first and working backwards into it, which is the habit this sheet is shaped around.
The part a spreadsheet cannot do
A calendar is a list of intentions until somebody updates it. This one has no idea whether the video was filmed, so the status column is only right while you keep it right, and the SLIPPED flag only fires because you set a date it could measure you against.
The video you schedule here is the same one an editor gets briefed on with the Editor Handoff Sheet. Both sit with the rest of the set at the template library.
Chewbr is being built to track that state across all 47 steps of a video rather than asking you to retype it. The waitlist is at /waitlist. No date on it yet. You will know first.